This week consecrates a major turn in the 50-year career of Alan Rudolph, which began as an assistant to and screenwriter for Robert Altman before transitioning into decades writing and directing original, romantic, occasionally unnerving American cinema at a time parallel to (if never quite reaching the fame or acclaim of) Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, and David Lynch. The turn is not a new film, but Criterion anointing 1984’s Choose Me, perhaps the best entry point into his corpus, with a 4K release that marks an astonishing restoration of both the film itself and its long-neglected reputation.

For this release Nick Newman had the fortune of speaking with Rudolph in an hour-long conversation that detailed Choose Me's creation, how his films both before and after are now defined by it, and honest perspectives on a career just slightly outside the celebrity-auteur spotlight.