A briefcase with a mysterious content provides Max with eternal youth, while the old characters around him stumble with perfectly combined coincidences out of animated vignettes created by Bob Sabiston.
“The worst mistake you can make is to think you’re alive, when you’re really just asleep in life’s waiting room,” assures Guy Forsyth in Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. Sal (Nick Offerman), in turn, proclaims something similar in Somebody Up There Likes Me: “I think it’s funny we all sort of think we’re not gonna die.” The symmetries aren’t casual. Bob Byington recruited another Bob (Sabiston, Linklater’s collaborator) for the film’s animated interludes, with episodes that rank among the best mumblecore has given us. The film alludes to the passing of time without the need of showing consequences in the characters’ faces. And it’s impossible not to perceive the correlation between the hilarious apathy of these individuals and the very personality of a filmmaker that openly refutes the notion of a shoot as an instant of joy: “Film isn’t pleasant, it’s the defense of an idea.” MA
D, G: Bob Byington F: Sean Price Williams E: Frank V. Ross DA: Leila Dallal, George Dishner S: Greg Armstrong, Gopal Bidari M: Chris Baio P: Hans Graffunder, Nick Offerman, Marla Quintana PE: Stuart Bohart, Morgan Coy, Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Brenda Mitchell CP: Somebody the Movie LLC I: Nick Offerman, Keith Poulson, Jess Weixler, Stephanie Hunt, Marshall Bell
Harmony and Me. Bob Byington T +1 415 992 2072 E robert.byington@gmail.com W somebodythemovie.com
He was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA in 1971. He directed several films, including RSO (2008) and Harmony and Me (2009) and 7 Chinese Brothers (2014), screened at this edition of Bafici. He currently lives in Austin, Texas.