Elliot Gould said a few words Friday night before a BAM screening of Little Murders, the 1971 film based on Jules Feiffer’s play, which Gould starred in and produced for first-time feature director Alan Arkin. The event came towards the midpoint of a retrospective at the Brooklyn theater dedicated to Gould’s 70s-era peak, and the actor seemed humbled by the thought of so many snapshots of an era lined up for quick consumption. “It’s my life,” he said wistfully. Then, with a little wave of a hand and a vigorous shake of his head, he corrected himself: “Well, it’s all of our lives, isn’t it?”

Gould noted that he’d “probably never” seen Little Murders “with a real crowd”–when the film was released in the States in February of 1971, Gould was in Sweden shooting The Touch for Ingmar Bergman, and thanks to its disappointing box office, it didn’t have much of a life for a while. Not that Gould took time out at the time to dwell on its failure. After the screening, Gould’s answers to questions from both the audience and moderator Bruce Bennett continually circled around a kind of “fear” the actor experienced at the peak of his career. After a 1970 TIME Magazine story in which he was anointed both “the urban Don Quixote” and “a star for an uptight age”, Gould worked constantly because he was afraid that if he stopped to catch his breath––or picked the wrong project and fell on his face––his allure would cool off and he wouldn’t be able to find a job.

You can’t say he didn’t make the most of this workaholic bender. In the first half of the decade, Gould appeared in one minor masterpiece after another, including the three films he starred in for Robert Altman (M.A.S.H. has wrapped and The Long Goodbye has one more screening at BAM tonight; California Split plays next weekend). It was Gould’s appeal to the Hollywood establishment (born from his genuine rapport with audiences–that TIME story devoted paragraphs upon paragraphs to the ways in which viewers were “comforted” that Gould “seems so ordinary as that he seems so little like a star”) that got Little Murders made.

Feiffer’s play, about the unlikely Upper Manhattan meet-terrifying and marriage of incurable optimist Patsy and unrepentant apathist Alfred, barely lasted a week in its initial Broadway run. After Arkin mounted a successful revival off-Broadway in 1969, Gould and producing partner Jack Brodsky bought the rights and tried to charm Jean-Luc Godard into directing Little Murders as his first American production. In his recent interview with Gould for the New York TImes, Dennis Lim said the relationship between Gould and Godard dissolved after the former sought a firm commitment and latter said something that “is not printable.” Last night, Gould elaborated.

“I’m not a businessman, but The Establishment really wanted to work with me. But no one wanted to work with Godard––he was much too dangerous.” Gould says he and Godard were walking down the street in New York when the actor sought assurance that the god of the French New Wave wouldn’t lay his rep to waste. “I said, ‘If I’m going to produce for you, you have to show up for me.’”

According to Gould, Godard responded, “‘If my wife and son ask me to tell them I love them, I tell them to go fuck themselves.’ And I said, ‘That’s very strong, Jean-Luc, but I’m not there yet.”

Arkin didn’t prove to be a more commercial choice. Initial critical reaction was mixed, and audiences didn’t get it. Though surely intended in its era as an over-the-top comic satire on the city in which it’s set––one which looked awfully prescient when Manhattan devolved, at the end of the decade, into virtual hell on earth––Little Murders plays today almost like science fiction. The idea of a Manhattan turned toxic by senseless crime and pervasive insanity is unfathomable in the age of the truly square post-Giuliani Times Square and a downtown that’s seemingly been redesigned to complement Dean and Deluca.

Which is not to say that Little Murders has lost a bit of its incisive social commentary over the years––it all still works in the realm of metaphor. Certainly, Alfred’s inability to fight or feel feels familiar in a modern New York that ticks on fashionable apathy. But today Little Murders feels less like a film about a single city than a diagnosis of global angst: in a world that truly seems to be crumbling under the weight of assorted wars and the guzzling of natural resources, with back-up plans barely in sight, nihilism sometimes seems like the only safe philosophical armor for an uncertain future.

For Gould, Little Murders‘ lasting relevancy is without question, and the strongest parallels are environmental and political. “If the picture got made today, I think it would hold up, because of its real interest. We didn’t even talk about global warming or gasoline. I thought if the current president of the United States was available, he could play Alan Arkin’s part brilliantly.”

When a member of the audience mentioned that things have changed quite a bit in nearly four decades, Gould shot back, “Nothing has changed, except that we’ve become more extreme. We’re out of control, and to have an administration as fucked up as it is, it’s like an Our Gang comedy!” The packed crowd cheered, essentially proving Gould’s point: after 37 years, Little Murders has finally found a choir to preach to.