By the 1980s, Jews had made it. Awkward suburbanization and Americanization had given way to a more upscale, mostly suburban Jewish life. Yet something seems to have been lost in this exchange. Both Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan and Joan Micklin Silver's Crossing Delancey turn the disappearance of Jewish difference into high comedy. In Desperately Seeking Susan, as an ode to classic screwball comedies, Roberta Glass lives vicariously through Susan before becoming Susan. She trades the New Jersey suburbs for the excitement of Lower Manhattan.
Izzy, the heroine of Joan Micklin Silver's Crossing Delancey, never left the city. Her uptown life, however, isn't quite proving as fulfilling as she imagined it would be. So her Lower East Side grandmother seeks to bring her back to the Lower East Side, to a world of matchmakers, hats, and pickles.
As part of the program, we spoke to Susan Seidelman about her career. A recording of that conversation is available here.