In what may be the latest ever recorded, we finally give out our first straight A grade of the year for a 2024 release, halfway through July.
FLIPSIDE (A) - I'm not the only one who wonders what would have happened if I had taken a more creative path in life. Never has a contemporary of mine captured that mix of regret and resignation until this urgent video essay. It's a friendly nudge but it comes with the resonance of a gut punch, right up until the final credits, as Paul Westerberg wails, "Look me in the eye and tell me ... that I'm satisfied."
Here we get another paean to a music store. (See also, "All Things Must Pass" and "Other Music.") At least ostensibly this one is a beloved Gen X hangout in suburban New Jersey, Flipside, but it, too, is about way more than trading in CDs and vinyl.
Chris Wilcha has assembled his collection of failed and stalled film projects by creating a pastiche about creativity, facing head-on a question that haunts our generation -- have we been sellouts? Wilcha made a minor splash with a documentary 30 years ago about his work experience at Columbia House, the onetime emporium of records, tapes and CDs. But he would go on to make commercials for the next 30 years to pay the bills. He had a number of false starts in the documentary world, but those stalled projects end up on hard drives that stack up on shelves.
Wilcha smoothly hopscotches along his themes here -- hoarding, career crossroads, roads not taken. He weaves in fascinating characters who each represents a touchstone in the narrative. He bookends the film with footage from a failed project profiling Herman Leonard, a photographer from jazz's classic era of the '40s, '50s and '60s. Wilcha was recruited to document Leonard's dying days by TV writer David Milch, who is more connective tissue, an example of someone at the other end of the spectrum, who was too devoted to the creative process, such that he ignored his family. Wilcha found Milch through Judd Apatow, who had given Wilcha a potential big break -- directing the making-of video for 2009 comedy "Funny People." (That project now languishes as an anachronistic DVD extra.)
Everything seems connected here, and that is the work of a journeyman in his craft who has finally assembled his masterpiece. The main character besides Wilcha is Dan, the disheveled proprietor of Flipside, a cluttered, rundown store stuffed with music -- vinyl and discs of all genres, from disparate eras. Wilcha figured he would make a film about Flipside (where he had worked as a teenager) and get it back on the map; but that project stalled, of course, and when Wilcha returns a decade later, Dan is still trapped in a bygone era, figuratively entombed amid his life's work; some months he doesn't make enough money to pay the rent or keep the lights on.
Wilcha must come to terms with Dan's decision to snub the modern world; improbably, there's another vintage record store that opens within walking distance, also owned by a person named Dan, but thriving with fresh young customers connected to the store through social media. (Grumpy other Dan refuses to develop a website, meaning he can't participate in the annual Record Store Day.) With those two goalposts set, Wilcha treats us to his own odyssey -- juggling his soul-sucking corporate career with his repeated documentary duds, all while supporting a family. Wilcha actually has an assured auteur style as he curates a lifetime of footage, both personal and professional.
More characters come and go. Flipside is a favorite of Uncle Floyd, the onetime host of an ironic local kiddie TV show (which fleetingly went national), who now, potbellied, serves up shlocky songs at conventions along the rubber-chicken circuit, and Tracy, Wilcha's former Flipside co-worker (and ex-girlfriend), a former punk who now, in middle age, dispenses wise koans while occasionally looking in on the old place. Wilcha also checks in with his father, who had a thoroughly satisfying and celebrated career in marketing; the son returns to his childhood home to finally clear out all of his old stuff (mostly music paraphernalia), under the watchful eye of his parents, and to confront footage of his brash teenage self. The emotional buildup in his childhood bedroom is nearly as suffocating as the physical one.
There is no way to convey how profound this all becomes. Leonard, the photographer in his 80s, also provides sage advice and perspective. His negatives sat for 40 years -- like Wilcha's hard drives -- before he finally became celebrated for his art. (We're also treated to glimpses of some of his celebrity visitors in his last days, including Lenny Kravitz and Quincy Jones.) Wilcha also introduces us to a would-be author, Starlee Kine, who is stricken with writer's block shortly after Wilcha thought it was a good idea to do a documentary about someone writing a book. (That all failed, naturally.) Both Kine and Leonard distill the essence of the artist here -- to be seen, to be validated, to leave a legacy. (NPR host Ira Glass provides additional "celebrity" cred here, but he has little to add while we watch footage of his midlife crisis.)
This all might hit you particularly deep if you are of a certain (middle) age. Not 10 minutes in Wilcha flashes a series of photographs of him and his teenage friends having fun in the old record store in the late 1980s, and I started to tear up a bit. By the end, when those credits rolled and that Replacements song kicked in, I had to shake off a blissful stupor while bobbing my head and remind myself that the name of that song is not "Satisfied," but "Unsatisfied."
Here's to the suggestion that it might never be too late for any of us to craft that masterpiece.
BONUS TRACKS
"Flipside," in a scene inside the record store, literally drops a needle on Tom Rush's 1966 take on Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love":
We get a clip of David Bowie singing a tribute to Uncle Floyd, called "Slip Away":
The Replacements with "Unsatisfied":
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