Alan Rudolph

Choose Me

Alan Rudolph’s Choose Me is a 1984 romantic comedy-drama set in a neon-lit Los Angeles bar, where a drifter, a bar owner, and a radio host orbit each other in a cycle of concealment and confession. Shot in three weeks on a modest budget, it favours mood and gesture over exposition, with performances that withhold as much as they reveal. Its themes—self-deception, persona, and urban isolation—are sustained through Jan Kiesser’s dusky cinematography and Phil Woods’ smoky score. Though structurally loose and emotionally elusive, it coheres as a singular, unhurried tone poem about choosing, again and again, without certainty.