Presented in conjunction with CEPA and the exhibition A Cindy Sherman Retrospective: Works from the Gerald Mead Collection (February 3–April 22, 2023)

Directed by Cindy Sherman (1997, 81 min.)

Starring Carol Kane, Molly Ringwald, Barbara Sukowa, & Jeanne Tripplehorn, with Michael Imperioli (Goodfellas, The Sopranos, The White Lotus)

Twenty years after moving from Buffalo to NYC in 1977, world-renowned artist Cindy Sherman made her feature-film directorial debut with this campy commentary on the conventions of the horror film and the horror of corporate life in the '90s. A meek and mousy copyeditor (Kane) goes on a bizarre killing spree when her job at Constant Consumer magazine is downsized. Produced by Christine Vachon; written by Tom Kalin and Elise MacAdam, with additional dialogue by Todd Haynes; music by Evan Lurie, brother and bandmate of John.

This is the third time Hallwalls is screening Cindy Sherman's first and only feature film Office Killer—once again (for no particular reason) in April, the "cruelest month." The first time was 25 years ago, on April 3, 1998, during its initial theatrical release, in 35mm, in partnership with UB Dept. of Media Study. The second time was April 24, 2014, in partnership with the Castellani Art Museum, in conjunction with its exhibition Western New York Collects: Cindy Sherman (March 23–June 29, 2014).

This time, too (for the first time FREE OF CHARGE!) this screening is being presented in conjunction with an exhibition, namely CEPA's A Cindy Sherman Retrospective: Works from the Gerald Mead Collection (February 3–April 22, 2023).

Listen here to actress Molly Ringwald talking about working with Cindy on the film:
www.thebroad.org/content/office-killer-molly-ringwald

"Office Killer, by photographer and first-time director Cindy Sherman, impresses more than perhaps it should, thanks mostly to its ingenious blend of high-power dramatics, macabre humor, and a new twist or two on a time-worn formula. What compensates for the basic amateurishness of this movie is a brilliant performance by Carol Kane as the deranged Dorine Douglas and several harrowingly suspenseful murder sequences that leave audiences grabbing for their seats. Add an atypical ending, avoiding the easy cliché of the tagged-on-moral-to-the-story, and you have the characteristics of a fresh outlook on the much-exploited slasher/thriller genre, familiar to audiences since Hitchcock's days, but this time with a woman performing the killings. The comic touches add a dimension of irony and paradox to the revolting sights of random slaughter and decomposing bodies, intensifying an awareness of madness loosened upon innocent bystanders.

"Setting up a group of people of the most uninteresting kind—office workers—at first the plot seems bland and commonplace. Dorine, an innocuous-looking young woman with owlish eyes hiding behind thick glasses and wearing outdated dresses, gives the impression of both innocence and ineptitude, especially of the kind that results from being trampled under. The weekly magazine she works for is currently downsizing, meaning Dorine from now on will have to do part of her work at home, on a laptop computer she barely knows how to handle. The only denizens of her furniture-bare apartment are a grouchy invalid mother and a mouse-hunting cat, both diabolical. Dorine is seen dropping a dead mouse down a garbage disposer. She pronounces her words as a robot first learning to speak English would, elongating the vowels and crisply spitting out the consonants. She is the joke at the office, considered…useful but disposable, barely a female and only borderline human. Her co-workers, elegant women with boyfriends, tempers, and super-charged ambitions, include Norah Reed (Jeanne Trippleton), Kim Poole (Molly Ringwald), and Virginia Wingate (Barbara Sukowa), whose asthma condition compels her to constantly breathe into a tube. In this competitive woman's world, the last will become first, and it is Dorine, the one trampled under, who will eventually dominate" (Constantine Santas, Senses of Cinema, February 2001).