Sex, Love and Pickles: Amy Irving, Peter Riegert and Susan Sandler on “Crossing Delancey” | Interviews

I first saw prolific director Joan Micklin Silver’s transcendent 1988 romantic comedy “Crossing Delancey” when it aired on TCM during their 2015 month-long series called Trailblazing Women in Film. The series highlighted films directed by women from the silent era all the way to contemporary filmmakers still working today. It happened to be the same year that I was doing my viewing project A Year With Women, so it felt a bit like kismet. Like many women from my generation, I fell hard for this movie and, of course, for the pickle man. I have since seen it on 35mm three times and watched my old Warner Archive DVD more times than I care to share. It’s about time that Silver’s most beloved film got a proper restoration and high-definition home video release. 

Filmed on location in New York City’s Upper West Side and Lower East Side (which DP Theo Van de Sande washes in a rich, dreamy blue-green haze), the film offers a fresh twist on a tale as time. Adapted by Susan Sandler from her play, the film centers on independent bookstore manager Izzy (Amy Irving) who is happy in her carefree life, filled with many vibrant friendships, a situationship with a married man named Nick (John Bedford Lloyd), and a newfound crush on a self-centered novelist Anton Maes (Jeroen Krabbé). That is until, on one fateful trip downtown to visit her Bubbie Ida (Reizl Bozyk), she discovers her Bubbie has hired a matchmaker (Sylvia Miles), who subsequently sets her up with a successful pickle man named Sam (Peter Riegert). Initially hesitant to give into such an old-fashioned tradition, Izzy soon begins to question her own needs and desires as her attraction to Sam grows despite herself. 

Over the decades since the film’s initial release, its reputation as one of the best romantic comedies ever and one of the best films of the 1980s has grown exponentially. Sam the pickle man has become the ideal man for generations of viewers who hope someday to find their own version of the kind and soulful yet self-assured gentleman. The legacy of Izzy as a fully realized, yet flawed leading lady can be felt in the works of Greta Gerwig, Rebecca Miller, Jenny Slate, and even, as Rachel Syme writes in her essay accompanying Criterion’s release, Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City.” There’s even a Lower East Side bookstore that also sells pickles. 

In honor of the film’s new 4K/Blu-ray release, I spoke to writer Susan Sandler and stars Amy Irving and Peter Riegert about its creation and enduring legacy. 

These conversations, compiled from three separate interviews the week of Criterion’s new release of the film on 4K and Blu-ray, have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Susan, director Joan Micklin Silver showed interest in making your play into a film early on during its initial run. Were you a fan of her earlier work? What was your collaboration with her like?

Susan Sandler: I was a big fan of [her], you know, and particularly of “Chilly Scenes of Winter.” It was a film that spoke to me. [The author of the novel] Ann Beattie is a writer I really love. I got to meet her in Key West through friends of mine who were involved in the literary society there. I was very much in sync with her body of work and just ready to go to town. The collaboration with her was very pure. I was on set every day, and Joan was smart about using what I was bringing, both as a writer and then the details you read on the page that were realized so very gratifying across the screen.

Amy, how did you become involved with the film?

Amy Irving: I was in Spain, being a location wife with my son Max while Steven [Spielberg] was shooting “Empire of the Sun.” I hated being a location wife. It was a job I just wasn’t very good at. But I also wanted the family to be together. So it was very welcome when Joan called me through our people and asked to deliver a project to me in Spain because she and her husband were travelling around. It was just a lovely meeting. My mom and stepdad happened to be visiting me there then, and we had a great time with her. She was a mom with daughters, so I felt comfortable with her right away. 

I like working with women. That was really something special to have. On this movie behind the camera, there was Susan Sandler, who wrote the script, and there was Joan. Also, the main character is female, and there are a lot of women in the film. There was a comfort level and a communication level that was special. [On “Yentl”] Barbra Streisand turned me on to the only drug that had ever worked for period cramps. Can you ask a male director about that? This was back when Motrin first came on the market. And it was like, “Finally, something, it does work.” [Laughs] That is the best stuff. There’s something so nice about the sensibility of hanging with the women on set. 

Peter, you were also in “Chilly Scenes of Winter.” How did this working relationship with Joan Micklin Silver begin?

Peter Riegert: Well, I first heard of Joan with the release of “Hester Street,” which starred Carol Kane, who was nominated for an Oscar. She was of my generation. I was impressed with the movie, and I was still doing off, off Broadway, so my dreams of making movies were just that, but I was really impressed with what she did. Then, in 1976, I did a David Mamet play, who was still unknown at the time. This was his first play in New York, called “Sexual Diversity in Chicago”. And Joan had come to see the play while she was casting for “Between the Lines.” I remember getting an audition through the agent. Still, of course, being young and naive, I thought, “Well, she kind of just saw me. What do I have to audition for? She was right in the audience?” I obviously didn’t get the part. 

Then, in 1978, she was casting “Chilly Scenes of Winter,” and I couldn’t get in. But John Heard, a friend of mine, said to Joan, “Why don’t you give Peter an audition?” And, as I recall, she said to him, “I’m thinking of somebody taller.” I think she had Jeff Goldblum in mind. But John said, “What are you talking about? The audience isn’t going to know how tall anybody is. It’s a movie.” So, through his sense of humor, he convinced her to give me an audition, and that’s how I got that job. That was my first job. Joan wrote the screenplay for that film, and she’s a good writer, but she’s good at casting. Not because she hired me, but everybody else in that movie was pretty impressive, as was “Between the Lines” and “Hester Street.” 

Then in June of 1987, I got a call from Joan saying she’s going to do this movie called “Crossing Delancey,” which a few years earlier I had been offered as a play by Susan Sandler, who wrote the play and the screenplay, but I couldn’t do it. Susan, very sweetly, said, “Well, maybe you’ll get to do the movie. How often does that happen?” So anyway, everything was put in order, and we started shooting in October of 1987, and the movie came out in September of 1988.

Susan, what was the most rewarding aspect of transforming your stage play into a screenplay?

Susan Sandler: I teach an adaptation course at NYU, and it’s about the difference between dramatic writing, where you’re dealing with all of the constraints of the theater and everything is about compression, and in film, which is so much about stepping outside and letting your characters walk out into the world. So I thought about every possible place I could bring each of these five central characters from the original play, grow their friend circles, grow their experiences in New York, and grow the sense of how the genre can support it most authentically. The key for me was thinking about everything authentic and true and not forcing rom-com genre tropes into the work, but looking around at the worlds—the literary world and the Lower East Side world—and then Izzy’s journey from Uptown to Downtown.

I went caroling with The Roches. Their music just infused my work. I wrote with that soundtrack in mind, so I wrote the soundtrack into the script. Then I took Joan to the Bottom Line to hear them live. We were sitting there, and she said,” Ooh, Suzzy would be interesting for the film.” So we went backstage and started talking. The creative process was so much more than the writing. I was very involved in location scouting. I brought the location scout to my apartment. We shot in my lobby, and we shot in my Bubbie’s building. It was like, let me bring you to this world in every way. I was highly engaged in every aspect. A performance artist friend of mine, Pat Oleszko, was included in one scene. So, the process was like imagining how to bring all the joys of my life and all the details of my life into the script and story. 

Like Izzy seeing the lady singing in Papaya King, the hot dog place, on her birthday, which happened to you in real life. 

Susan Sandler: Exactly. You collect the experiences as you walk through the world every day. As a writer, you journal, and you figure things out, you know, in terms of your writing, how you’re going to let stuff filter into your lens. It was very much a moment of a street character. I don’t know if the real person sang that song, but that was the song I brought to the scene to connect emotionally to that beat in the story. But I love the idea of how theatrical characters from the street life of New York have almost like a mind-reading kind of connection to your own life. So that was the inspiration.

Amy, what did you like so much about Susan’s script after that first meeting with Joan?

Amy Irving: Joan presented me with this script—I’m a product of the theater. I was brought up on the stage in a theater family—and you tell me that this was adapted from a play, you’ve already got me listening. Then I read it, and it was a charming script. It was beautifully written. It was in New York City, which was a really exciting prospect, to be filming on the streets of New York City. I’d never done that before. Izzy was a character who was wonderfully flawed. She was, as The New York Times said, a bit of a snob. She felt she wasn’t a part of the more traditional Jewish world of the Lower East Side. She felt she belonged in the literary world, even though all she did was manage a bookstore. She felt she had more affinity with this writer, who was an asshole, than with the pickle man, just because it wasn’t an exciting choice of career. And it was still back in the world of her Bubbie. He represented something she was trying to get away from so she could be more progressive and modern. 

But her values got all mixed up because of that, you know? It’s like she was looking for something, but then she didn’t notice or even realize it was a folly until she got burned. She learns that you look at the person and that people aren’t what they do but who they are. How many actors do you like their work, and then you meet them and go, “Oh, I’m really sorry I met my hero.” You know, it’s not about the talent. 

I was only ever attracted to talent. That was my thing. I wasn’t into celebrity. I always liked talent, personally. But the talent isn’t necessarily who you have dinner with at night. It’s not about that. I believe that anybody I end up with must have talent because I need to respect them in their chosen field. Sam was good at selling pickles, and he knew how to keep the stink off his hands, and he was just a regular, wonderful human being. Sometimes, you have to fall on your face before you can look up and see what’s real and what’s true and what will touch your heart.

Susan, what was your creative process to open up Izzy’s world beyond Bubbie’s kitchen from the stage play?

Susan Sandler: In Izzy’s world, I thought about who would be the characters who could help move the story like setting up Izzy with a friend who was looking for Mr. Right, and building out that character so the setup for the scene in the Mexican restaurant could happen. Then, thinking about the bris scene, that actually happened to me. A friend of mine was a single mom, and I used a lot of the details for that scene from her, including the dad who almost faints in the background. So it really was a kind of organic process of thinking very truthfully about who fills this world and how those people drive the story. The story ultimately puts as many obstacles as possible in front of what is wanted: this connection between Sam and Izzy.

I find the Nick character very unique in cinema because his relationship with Izzy is not exactly defined, but you get hints. 

Susan Sandler: He’s part of what keeps Izzy going. They support each other in essential ways until it doesn’t work. I was honestly drawing from my own experience. I mean the idea of people in my life who were close friends, who were also important to me in a very intimate way, and who were not necessarily accessible or even on the track of being partners in a kind of permanent way, but were very important. That’s a very honest way to look at our experience. We bring people into close settings who will give us what we need. Nick was bringing something very important to Izzy, and she gave him the comfort of being able to show up casually, although some nights there was a bed for him and some nights there was not. 

Amy, how do you approach a character who has to interact with people who represent so many different facets of her life?

Amy Irving: Don’t you have a lot of relationships with a lot of different people? I do. And it’s true, sometimes you act differently, even in real life, with different people. Different people bring out different things in you. So it was fun to see how they work once you get on the set and deal with the actress or actor in those parts. I’m instinctive; I don’t think, “Okay, this is my high school friend. This is a bris now,” or whatever. I just plant the seeds inside of me and take it from there. I don’t overthink it.

Susan, Sam the pickle man is a new kind of dream man for at least two, maybe three generations of women. What was the origin of the character?

Susan Sandler: I’m thrilled about it. It’s very exciting to have created a character who has appeal through generations. He is a dream, but he’s also very complex. He stands up for who he is. He has genuine pride in who he is and his world. The idea of Sam was inspired by my partner, who has an enormous amount of kindness, authenticity, modesty, and poetry. All of those pieces helped me to create who this character is. 

But the absolute definition of the pickle man began way, way, way, way back. We carry stories around in characters and fragments that we, you know, store and then use in different ways. I wrote a poem called “Ode to the pickle lady” when I was in high school, and there was a pickle lady who lived in my Bubbie’s building. And so that character of the pickle lady morphed into the pickle man.  And that was the first scene that I wrote of the play. It had to do with this really unlikely business of the matchmaker courting me by my Bubbie’s bench and the thinking of who would be the most unlikely character to arrive in that proposal. And that’s how he was born.

Peter, did you have an inkling that Sam the pickle man would become an archetypal dream man all these years later?

Peter Riegert: Not really. In my experience, that’s the kind of phenomenon that happens within a culture by generation or, in this case, generations. Because it’s an unactable thing to me, it’s hard to act like an archetype. I just thought the writing was so spectacular. The writing was rich, and Joan got an extraordinary cast together. I recognized Sam’s value as a part, but I would be lying if I said I knew it would have the impact it had. And what’s nice is that it has survived its time. 

The pickle man as someone to wish for happened when the movie came out. I had endless people come up to me on the street and tell me they were the pickle man or were going to marry the pickle man. And the fact that it’s kept going to your generation and younger is very moving because Sam is just a very special character. 

When you play somebody who knows who they are, there is something very attractive about anyone who seemingly knows who they are. If you dig deep, where you get to know them more, you uncover their complexity. No one’s perfect, but I think Sam took on life with open arms. It is very rare to play somebody like that, who, in the wrong hands, in terms of director and casting and Susan’s writing, could have come off treacly or sentimental. As I’ve said, the writing attracted me to the movie. In my experience, a screenplay is paper; it’s not the movie. A lot of things have to go right. I was thrilled with the result. It’s so rare to be lucky enough to be in something that I still get to talk about almost forty years later. 

I would love to discuss the scene where you put the pickles in jars. It’s such a visceral scene where Izzy sees you with your hands in the pickle barrels, and we hear the liquid swishing. It’s such a powerful moment.

Peter Riegert: It’s interesting that you bring that up because scenes that can evoke smells or texture are always fascinating. You can’t smell a pickle in a movie, but the idea of him comfortably immersing himself in the brine of the pickles…life and pickles are at the center of the story. That’s the same day we shot the handball scene. Both have to do with his hands. It’s really very well thought out. It’s nothing I thought about that day; I just recognized the hand imagery, right as we’re speaking, the fact that he can play with his hands and work with his hands, yeah, and, of course…

Make them smell like vanilla.

Peter Riegert: It works in such a seductive, subtle way. I had so many wonderful scenes that the audience could lean into. Again, at least for me, you know that there will be an audience, but the movies are wonderful because they’re so intimate. The camera is an intimate machine. In the theater, you’re projecting your seduction out, but in the movies, the camera is seducing you. It’s this bizarre relationship. When I see performances that I admire, it’s that wonderful alchemy. It’s one of the pleasures of being an actor, whether it’s live theater or the movies, that a group of strangers comes together and becomes one brain. If you go to a museum and look at a beautiful painting, you can move and look at it from this angle, and it’s there. It’s not going anywhere. The beauty of the theater is that it’s gone at the end of the night—a movie you can see again. 

Amy, what do you think it is about Peter’s performance as Sam the pickle man that still resonates with viewers today?

Amy Irving: What I love about Peter and why he’s so perfect as Sam is, he didn’t push. He was very “come to me, baby,” you know? You would think this character would be the kind who would try hard. He’s attracted to this woman, and she’s from this other world, and you think he would try really hard. But that wouldn’t necessarily be attractive. So he didn’t try at all, you know? He just stayed who he was. He didn’t put any different energy towards it. He said, “This is who I am. You want it, you come here and get it.” 

I was used to having a little more energy behind the woo in movies. There wasn’t much of a woo. I like to be wooed, and I didn’t feel like Sam was wooing Izzy. But it was subtle. It was with gestures. That made him alluring. At the time, I wasn’t sure what was going on. Then, when I watched the movie, I so badly wanted him for her. I didn’t know I’d feel that way, but that chemistry came out in the film because of his choice not to push.

Susan, your relationship with your Bubbie must have been special. 

Susan Sandler: I think she was very unique, but in many ways, she inhabits a lot of people’s lives as a character. What’s been very gratifying is to think about how the film has traveled internationally and across many cultures. The idea of who a grandmother is for people and how grandmothers can just have this purity of knowing what happiness looks like and what they want for their grandchild. 

My Bubbie came out of a tough immigrant experience where she learned how to take care of her family. She learned how to take care of herself. She was earthy and truthful and full of her own kind of joy and authority. I always wanted to please her. I always wanted to be with her, and those trips to visit her were very important. But, you know, there was no way I could deliver everything she wanted. She had an image of what my happiness would look like. And finally, I was able to do that. But it was very much about her accepting me as me.

Amy, are there any memories about filming on location in New York City that stick with you?

Amy Irving: My favorite moment was being on the Upper West Side, walking down the street two blocks from where I lived, and Steven brought my son Max to the set. It was Halloween, and he had a purple dinosaur outfit on. It seemed like I was in my neighborhood, with my son and husband. Or filming in Papaya King, which was the Papaya King I always go to, you know? The only place I hadn’t spent much time in was the Lower East Side, which was a new discovery for me because I hung out in the Lower East Side when Eighth Street had all the good places to get your ears pierced and your fake furs. It was kind of a hippie area that I frequented, but going that far downtown hadn’t been in my purview. It was like going to a foreign country at that point. It was another part of New York City. 

But, you know, you get exposed to something in everything you do. I just love being a student. You get exposed to worlds you didn’t get exposed to before. I wasn’t brought up Jewish. So, even though Izzy isn’t embracing the Jewish faith, I learned a certain amount of Jewishness that I didn’t know about. My father was Jewish, but my mother was not. We were brought up in the Christian Science church and weren’t practicing. So I didn’t know much about the Jewish faith, but between “Crossing Delancey” and “Yentl,” I’m immersed.

Peter, what was your relationship with the Lower East Side and the Upper West Side?

Peter Riegert: I used to work at a settlement house on the Lower East Side on Eldridge and Rivington, so I knew that whole area. I didn’t even have to do any homework. I knew the streets, and I knew the restaurants. I lived on the West Side, on 79th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus. So, you know, the Upper West Side is where Amy’s character was living. She’s living on the Upper West Side, and I always love the title “Crossing Delancey” because, in a way, she’s recrossing Delancey, she’s going back. I vaguely remember being told that the phrase “crossing Delancey” was something you said when people left the neighborhood for a nicer location. So, think of it with an old Yiddish accent, they would say, “Oh, so you’re crossing Delancey?” Meaning, you’re leaving the neighborhood. “When did you become a big shot?” 

That’s true of all worlds. Anybody who leaves their home is a threat to everybody who stays home. For example, when you’re in high school and leaving for college, if you got into college, people get very scared when their friends leave because it’s like you’re missing out on some adventure. I think that’s intriguing; this centrifugal pull in “Crossing Delancey” is her heritage, her grandmother, and Sam, in his way, because he lives down there. 

Once upon a time, in the early 20th century in New York City’s Lower East Side, there was a pickle store on practically every corner, and you took it for granted. There was a soda shop. It hardly exists anymore. It exists in different ways and different groups. The immigrant story is an American story. You’d never know it based on our politics today, but basically, it is the story of the movement of people back and forth and across the country, and it’s an extraordinary, fascinating part of our history.

Amy, how do you feel about this new life the film is having? 

Amy Irving: It didn’t get the attention I always felt it deserved when it came out. And I’ve got to say, I didn’t get to enjoy it as much then, because as soon as it came out, that was when my marriage to Steven fell apart. So when I was promoting the film, a lot of the journalists, all they cared about was asking about my breakup. It was disappointing, and it was hard. But now it’s like the film is having another chance,  and it seems to be getting embraced by a different generation of people, which feels great because I think it’s a timeless film. 

First of all, it’s a feel-good movie. You know? It feels good. I think it’s a really smart film about romance. I’m a ridiculous romantic. It’s what I care about more than anything. I filter a lot out of the world. I’m a very positive person. I like harmony all the time in my life in any way I can get it. I will adjust to ensure that harmony happens, sometimes to my detriment. But I think that what’s great about the film is that when we are dealing with relationships, sometimes you just have to get out of the clouds, be more realistic, and see who that person is that you’re looking at and give everybody a chance. 

Peter, why do you think people still love this film so much?

Peter Riegert: It’s very timely because it’s an old question, whether it’s from a man’s point of view, a woman’s point of view, or anybody’s point of view:  How do you choose? How do you choose in love, work, and whatever else, you know? It’s just a special thing to see the movie holding on, or more than holding on. It’s holding its own. Also, when you’re young, it is really hard to stick to your guns and not be swept up in whatever the currents are of what’s popular, or what’s, you know, what’s the flavor of the month, as the cliche goes. The movie is about being true to who you are. What makes it endure is that it’s all of us. 

We all face choices in which we get to say, “No, I don’t want to participate.” I was watching something I found on YouTube about Herman Melvin, who wrote “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” a fantastic book about this strange character who decides not to participate by saying, “I prefer not to.” I think that’s one of those magical phrases. Like what I say to Amy’s character, “I’m not defined by my pickles. I’m not defined by where I live. Take me for what I am. I’m taking you for what you are.” 

Susan, what do you hope people will take away from this film?

Susan Sandler: I am so gratified that Criterion is making it available in such a beautiful package with care and tenderness and that the film has this legacy. For me, it’s about the courage to reach out to the people we love without needing the approval of whatever layers of accomplishment feel acceptable. We’re looking for the human being we can love in that pure way. I think that’s the spine of the story: being able to listen to your heart and to be able to hear your feelings truthfully, without societal pressure, without anybody telling you what’s really in your own heart. That’s the message. I hope that remains.