Charles Melton’s first Criterion Closet pick? The very Philly ‘Mikey and Nicky’

Sure, The Inquirer’s list of 50 Best Philly Films may not have published when May December star Charles Melton made his way into the Criterion Closet. But his first pick was a very Philly film: Elaine May’s 1976 Mikey and Nicky, which ranks at 16 in The Inquirer’s list of 50.

The Criterion Closet is a three-walled library of DVDs distributed by the home-video distribution company. As a part of a popular video series, filmmakers and actors are invited to pick DVDs of their favorite films from the closet. Melton, in a video released Monday, picked 14 films leading with May’s gangster film, which is, as The Inquirer’s Jake Blumgart puts it, “the opposite of a crime epic.”

May, who was born in Philadelphia, based the characters of Mikey (Peter Falk) and Nicky (John Cassavetes) — the two best friends — on people she knew growing up in the city. They belonged, as Blumgart writes, to “a family that was connected to the Mafia but many rungs below the equivalent of a Michael Corleone.”

Melton, who played Reggie Mantle in the TV series Riverdale, starts the video saying that he has already “pre-selected a few, but I keep on adding. Because there are so many great movies here.” He then confidently fishes out a copy of the “incredible” May film. “Nicky’s in this...delusion...he thinks he is going to get murdered and killed, and you realize that it’s true,” he says, rattling off a possible spoiler.

Filmed over 60 days in Philadelphia at the city’s ragged 1970s worst, until Falk had to go back to L.A. to shoot for Columbo, Mikey and Nicky is “a classic Philadelphia movie,” Blumgart argues, with small-time crooks and protagonists who are losers and underdogs but not in the glorious Rocky way. “Sometimes losers are just that,” he writes.

May, who left three cameras running for hours when making the film, overshot the budget. Mikey and Nicky was eventually a flop. She didn’t direct another film for a decade. In 2019, the Criterion Collection released a director’s cut of the film.

Melton sure is glad they did. “I can watch this over and over, everyday,” he said of the film.

Other films in his closet picks include May December director Todd Haynes’ 1995 horror flick Safe (starring Melton’s May December costar Julianne Moore), Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, and Andrew Stanton’s Wall. E.

‘Mikey and Nicky’ screens on Jan. 18, 7:30 p.m. at Philadelphia Film Center, 1412 Chestnut St, Phila. https://filmadelphia.org/events/mikey-and-nicky/