JOSHUA BURGE IN BUZZARD

Slacker crook in the Midwest

Joel Potrykus's 2012 Ape (Best New Director Award at Locarno), set in the filmmaker's home ground of Grand Rapids, presented a pyromaniac and failing standup comic whose greatest pleasure is in burning his worst jokes. The Voice called Ape "an unnerving hybrid of Harmony Korine's Gummo and Frank Whaley's overlooked The Jimmy Show." Joshua Burge, who has been Potrykus' chief collaborator in all his films short and long, stars in Buzzard as Marty Jackitansky, an office temp scam artist. For half of Buzzard, set in Grand Rapids again, Marty focuses on redeeming stuff he hasn't bought and cashing third party checks cut at the bank where he's working. Most of the time he hangs out with, though he has his usual contempt for, coworker Derek (Potrykus himself). But fear that his check gambit has got him in trouble at the bank makes Marty flee to Detroit, where he at first celebrates by overnighting at a nice hotel and gobbling "a $20 plate of spaghetti" from room service, then switches to a ghetto dive and sinks into more sinister and illegal behavior, using a homemade "Power Glove" as a weapon and barely eluding homelessness.

Seeing Marty rapidly put away an entire heaping plate of spaghetti and meatballs in real time exemplifies the Burge-Potrykus team's ability to go the whole way in scene after scene. Clearly Potrykus and Burge work well together, and all the secondary characters -- store, bank, and motel clerks mostly -- do good work. At times the film seems like a series of schticks, but as Marty Jackitansky Burge is a character who never runs out of gas or backs down, even when the cops are coming. The madcap dark humor Potrykus and Burge weave is fresh and engaging as well as slightly macabre.

Buzzard, 97 min., was picked up by the new punk distributor Oscilloscope at the SXSW festival. Screened for this review as part of the 2014 Film Society of Lincoln Center-Museum of Modern Art series, showing alsong with an 18-mins. short, Dustin Guy Defa's Person to Person. ND/NF showtimes:Sunday, March 23, 6:15pm – FSLC and Monday, March 24, 8:30pm – MoMA.

Buzzard got limited US theatrical release in March 2015. See review by Armond Wite for National Review.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.