I just found out that I missed Hickey & Boggs on June 20 at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

This is the kind of movie film festivals still exist to serve up. Directed by Robert Culp, and written by Walter Hill, Hickey & Boggs was released in 1972 and is one of the finest 70s anti-hero, L.A. noir films ever shot. It stars Culp and Bill Cosby obliterating their I Spy good-guy facades. In fact, this is one of the last times in his career Cosby did any real acting, and he’s brilliant.

Cosby & Culp play two miserable, apathetic private eyes awash in the cesspool of their own abject failure. When they catch a break with a missing persons case which subsequently turns bloody, they cope with the same whiskey-tinged dystopic coldness that colors their lives. If you’ve ever wanted to see Cliff Huxtable gun down a mothafucka in cold blood, this is your movie.

Unfortunately, it was released once on DVD in a tiny pressing (the discs go for hundreds on eBay and Amazon), and that was a really shitty, unmatted transfer of an even more shitty hacked-up broadcast print. That same shitty transfer is available for download on Amazon, but it’s a terrible way to see the film. I haven’t seen it in a theater in 20 years, and I can’t believe I missed my chance.