It’s Unstreamable! Where Jas Keimig and Chase Burns recommend movies and TV shows you can't watch on major streaming services in the United States. We post on Wednesdays unless we’re tired or busy 😊 This week, we’re introducing our next screening at Northwest Film Forum.
Got a recommendation for Unstreamable? Give us the scoop at unstreamablemovies@gmail.com.
NEW SCREENING! Early this June, we’re showing Richard Shepard’s ‘90s indie comedy The Linguini Incident as the next movie in our Unstreamable series with Northwest Film Forum.
More from Northwest Film Forum:
Lucy (Rosanna Arquette) is a under-paid, under-appreciated waitress at a terminally hip NYC restaurant called Dali. She’s also an aspiring escape artist desperately in need of cash to buy Harry Houdini’s wedding ring. Monte (David Bowie) is the shady but charming new bartender who desperately needs to get married at any cost. Together they join forces – along with Lucy’s best friend, the self-defense bra designing Viv (Eszter Balint) – to rob the popular restaurant, and all the “trend-sucking leeches” who dine there. As one might expect, it doesn’t go as planned, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Funny, romantic and wonderfully odd, the cult classic The Linguini Incident, co-starring Andre Gregory, Buck Henry and Marlee Matlin, is “an off the wall treat,” according to the LA Times. “A contemporary screwball comedy that actually works.”
USA, 1991, 108 min, Dir. Richard Shepard
The most remarkable part of this movie is that it feels like no one's heard of it—and David Bowie is the lead! and he's pretty good in it! Its VHS cover at Scarecrow features the tagline, "He wants to be tied down. She wants to be tied up. It's not what you think." At first, I hoped this was some kind of Americanized version of Almodóvar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, but, as the tagline reads, it’s not what I thought.
Instead, The Linguini Incident is a comedy about a strange man from the UK who needs to get a Green Card ASAP (played by Bowie, a man who "wants to be tied down"), and an eccentric woman who is trying—unsuccessfully—to be a professional escape artist (played by Arquette, a woman who "wants to be tied up" and has this great line: "You don’t know how hard it is to escape from a straight jacket with tits").
The cast is a bunch of proto-hipsters who live in New York City in the early '90s. They all work at a surreal restaurant that sports a giant Salvador Dalí clock and makes its waitstaff wear uniforms made of silver lamé. It's got, almost, A Fish Called Wanda vibes, but without the English slapstick comedy. Fans and potential fans are in luck—it’s getting re-released as a director’s cut, which we’re excited to see with all of you at the Forum this June 😉 CHASE BURNS
Find it in the Comedy section. In-store rental only. VHS.
Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.
*The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. We don’t consider films on sites that interrupt with commercial breaks, like Tubi, to be streamable. Tubi is like Neu Cable. And yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.
