Saturday, June 9th @ 8pm > Headliner’s Music Hall > 1386 Lexington Rd
Q&A following with director Rick Alverson
Buy Tickets
If everything’s a joke, is anything funny? Testifying to how un-funny Rick Alverson’s film can be, the screening at Sundance inspired walk-outs and shrill denouncements. The film follows a straight white man—wealthy enough not to need work, even though he plays at having jobs—through a series of social encounters. He seems a bit like what would happen if the boys from South Park got older without growing up: everything he says and does seems classist, racist, homophobic, or all of the above, and his seeming obliviousness to his impact, coupled with his friends’ dubious comments on the definition of good humor, makes whether he’s really joking a difficult question. To dismiss him as a sociopath, however, misses the film’s potential significance. Edited together with near-flawless rhythm, the character sketches highlight the moral ambiguities of a culture saturated with postmodern irony while also inviting critique of the very privilege that enables the main character’s bad behavior. The film is too slippery and artful to have a clear agenda, but how much or how little you sympathize with characters and events is likely to reveal a great deal about you and the people you know. – Andrew Cooper
Directed by
Rick Alverson
Writing credits
Rick Alverson
Robert Donne
Colm O’Leary
Cast
Tim Heidecker … Swanson
Eric Wareheim … Van Arman
Neil Hamburger … Bobby (as Gregg Turkington)
James Murphy … Ben
Kate Lyn Sheil … Waitress
Cinematography by
Mark Schwartzbard
Film Editing by
Michael Taylor
