Robina Rose’s bewitching NIGHTSHIFT invites viewers into the private rooms of a surreal London hotel in the 1980s during the wee hours of the night. An enigmatic receptionist (London artist, model, and counter-culture icon Jordan) is the go-between, performing a nearly wordless ritual of check-ins, sorting, prepping, tidying, and bearing witness to her tenants’ idiosyncrasies.
NIGHTSHIFT’s 4K restoration brought it to the Trylon, giving Jason and Harry the perfect reason to shine a halogen bulb right at its pallid, smirking face and see what’s underneath the stony visage! (That means we talk about it for almost as long as the movie actually is.)
References:
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Show art by Emily Csuy. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: “Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter” by Penguin Cafe Orchestra from the NIGHTSHIFT soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 342: NIGHTSHIFT (1981)
3:11 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
5:42 - What NIGHTSHIFT is "about"
10:30 - The Portobello Hotel as a real place
21:30 - A movie about performance, construction, and maintenance of the self
25:50 - Pamela Rooke/Jordan as the audience lens and a surreal character of her own
29:58 - The strange lodgers and the worlds they inhabit
37:17 - That song the receptionist keeps playing
42:47 - What do we make of the world waking up?
52:46 - The Junk Drawer
1:01:26 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1981
1:07:04 - The Harry Hotel (hotel-adjacent movie trivia)
