Thank you to Richard Linklater for making a movie about my current special interest

A decent enough movie that takes a few liberties with the source material that dilute the impact of a very rich text. Billy’s death needs to be a suicide for the story to really work.

Both this movie and ‘Beau is Afraid’ feature images of a jacked up goon outfitted in paramilitary gear running full tilt toward the camera before getting brutally merc’d at the climax of the story, in moments that feel both pivotal yet deeply inconsequential. 

Gives us a world that is intimately familiar yet altogether alien with the depiction of cultural and societal waves that haven’t been / can’t be fully reckoned with or subsumed into a shared understanding. Everyone’s personal deluded version of reality is accurate.

Quite a ridiculous premise!