No Picnic

Phil Hartman wrote and directed the picture, which proves for the zillionth time that a low budget doesn't have to mean low quality.

A wise man once said that every film is a documentary of its own making, and Philip Hartman’s No Picnic doubles as a chronicle not just of a lost paradise but a forgotten era — of downtown NYC, of genuinely independent moviemaking, of an alternate version of the “greed is good” go-go Eighties.

Finally receiving a theatrical release 20 years after it was made, Philip Hartman’s “No Picnic” emerges as an entertaining if flawed relic from a very different era.

It is impossible to separate Mr. Hartman's writing and direction from Mr. Horton's smooth, sophisticated camera work, which offers a broad view of the cluttered streets and also peers up narrow stairwells to suggest Mac's claustrophobic life. However their collaboration worked, ''No Picnic'' does not look or sound quite like any other film, and that's more than you can say about most movies of any size.