NonDē/Filmstack Spotlight: 'Clocking the T' and 'Don't Die' + Filmstack Challenge #8

ft. Michael Thibault, Jeremy Burgess, and an absurd confession from yours truly

Gods, am I ever happy to be writing this right now.

I won’t lie to you all; I’ve been going through it. I’m not unique in this regard and I’m also one of the lucky ones. There are many things, I think, that the human mind was never prepared to reconcile and/or absorb, let alone multiple of those things at once. If you have enough money, this relativity becomes a strategy, and I am very wary of what happens to me when this strategy works.

Semi-related note: Highly recommend deleting the Substack mobile app if you’re looking to turn cinderblocks into balloons and can still access the platform via computer.

But I’ll address that on my own time. Right now, I’m just glad to be directing my energy at a space predicated on community, honesty, and a shared love of film and creativity. That phrasing feels platitudinal and trite, and that is quite frankly the most beautiful feeling I can think to have at this specific moment in time.

Anyhow! Today’s reviews are dedicated to Clocking the T, a romantic comedy directed and produced by one Michael Thibault, who also co-wrote the script with Pedro Jiminez; and Don’t Die, a crime/survival thriller penned and produced by Jeremy Burgess over at Dust On The VCR. I encourage all who read to give both films some love at their earliest convenience, or perhaps at their third or fourth-earliest inconvenience. Whatever, just throw some weight behind your fellow cinematic rebels, I tells ya!

Clocking the T

Winner of Best Romantic Comedy, Best Screenplay, and Best Original Song at the 2018 Studio City International Film Festival¹, Clocking the T stars Jana Nawartschi as Candace, a romantically frustrated HR worker who strikes up a somethingship with Dave (Ben Hicks), a dodgy astroturfer in the midst of a major job that his client promises will land him buckets of cash. This pairing alone proves to be the romantic equivalent of off-roading with a trunk full of nitroglycerin, and that’s before taking into account how one of them is harbouring a secret that probably shouldn’t be a secret.

Dave being a full-time astroturfer is the main hook here. For those not in the know, that means he gets paid to troll people who write negative reviews of the products owned by the person/company who hired him. More broadly, “astroturfing” denotes any top-down marketing campaign that’s disguised to look as though it came about by unprompted and spontaneous public affectation.

In other words, if we understand that the purpose of any artificial performance — social, romantic, commercial, what have you — is to paint oneself in the performer’s ideal light with only marginal regard for how truthful it is, we can understand astroturfing as employing an additional layer of obfuscation for the express purpose of actively hiding the truth. Channeling this essence, the film cleverly freewheels its plot and characterization to riff on the nature of truth.

Being a rom-com, one would typically prepare to cheer for our two leads to find love with each other, but Clocking The T subverts that by intentionally rendering Candace and Dave as unendearing, per their snide behaviours and general immaturity. So right away, the truth of this particular rom-com is out of line with the advertising inherent to the rom-com genre as a whole.

Naturally, Dave and Candace’s dialogue — loaded with ironic wit — does most of the heavy lifting in rendering them as these snide cynics. Said ironic wit, of course, doubles as their main tool for avoiding honesty/vulnerability with each other, and so we can understand this wit as performative/artificial, i.e. incongruent with the truth.

No, this isn’t a mistake; this is a still from the movie.

This goes a step further when Dave, early on in the film, admits how he’s not as funny in real life as he is over text², which is a form of truth-telling, and yet his aloof demeanour remains.

What’s happening here isn’t actual honesty, but loophole honesty; observable truth without actual, vulnerable truth.

This speaks to the film’s ultimate suggestion that the human quest for satisfaction and authenticity isn’t satisfied by listening to or observing things that are technically true, but by really making a concerted effort³ to learn and uncover that which is honest.

Put another way, if you’re counting on the world around you to be honest in your stead, you’re going to be very disappointed; it’s as simple as the limits you put on your honesty translating to the limits on your ability to experience the world. The film’s midpoint revelation and ending⁴ both speak to this. I will spoil neither of them here.

It also ties back into Dave’s astroturfing job; both he and the reviewers that he trolls operate on the assumption that their word is going to be taken as some proto-gospel about the product, and that any potential customers aren’t going to take the risk/make the effort to see the truth of the product for themselves.

Moreover, if we think back to the fundamentals of astroturfing — i.e. that layer of performance that’s actively, knowingly trying to obscure the truth — we can understand the film’s maxim as the inverse of that; actively trying to confront the truth.

This is all alluded to in the same moment we understand that we’re about to watch a rom-com called Clocking the T. “Clocking the t” is a fairly unorthodox way of saying something adjacent to “telling the truth,” and the film’s trailer, knowing this, even defines the colloquialism as such for us, anticipating that we may not know what it means.

And how would we figure out what it means? Well, by proactively seeking out the definition, of course; the exact kind of enterprising truth-seeking that the film — a rom-com whose actual nature isn’t revealed to us until we actually commit to watching it, by the way — holds as a gold standard. In doing so, we may learn that “clocking the t” isn’t as simple as being a one-to-one translation of “telling the truth,” at once fortifying the film’s thematic philosophy.

You see? It’s one thing to passively cruise and accept the resulting observations as truth, but actual truth can only be realized when we really make an effort to find and face things about the world, other people, and ourselves. Clocking the T, then, is comedic romance looking to evolve into the dutiful erotic, and encourages us to do the same. Kudos, Michael!

Don’t Die

Winner of Best Alabama Film⁵ at the 2023 Sidewalk Film Festival, Don’t Die stars Theodus Crane as Jenks, a medically-desperate man who robs a drug store for some medicine, but accidentally injures an employee, Julia (Virginia Newcomb), in the process. Altruistic at heart, Jenks drops everything and tries to save her life, but when Julia gives him increasingly sketchy instructions on how he can help (involving a white van, a burner phone, and absolutely no hospitals), he soon gets tangled in an underworld that… okay, it wouldn’t put Big Pharma to shame, not even close, but he’s still going to have a hell of a time trying to detangle himself from this.

Now, as I’m preparing to write this, it’s occurring to me that I don’t know how to talk about Don’t Die the way I want to without heavy spoilers, and while I personally believe that spoilers can’t compromise good art, I think it would be bad emblematic form to recklessly spoil the work of a fellow Filmstacker, especially a film that derives so much of its momentum from patiently-paced revelations.⁶

As such, I encourage you all to skip down to the section on Filmstack Challenge #8 if you haven’t yet seen Don’t Die (a brisk 80-minute watch), and then read my review after the fact; a review that will officially begin following this still of Jenks peeking out from behind a door:

Peek the spoilers if you dare!

During his exploits, Jenks discovers that Julia — a pharmacy employee — moonlights as a thief as part of an underground network known as The Counter, who steals medicine from pharmacies and redistributes it to sick civilians, free of charge, in an act of rebellion against the American “healthcare” system. The group consists of Julia, Sally (Leilani Smith), and Trevor (Frank Mosley), and it’s Trevor that I want to focus on here.

We notice pretty early on that there are none too few tensions in the group, mostly stemming from a lightly antagonistic Trevor, who’s critical of The Counter’s business model in the spirit of any white guy who ostensibly spends his free time fantasizing about GDP growth. We’re also meant to infer that the group as a whole views Jenks as a liability who might spill the beans on their operation, hence why they keep secrets from him and don’t let him leave, and hence why they also — or so we think — drug him and strap him to a medical table.

And then:

• Trevor rolls up in surgical garb, revealed to be a failed med student who wants to harvest all of Jenks’ organs for the sake of “saving lives,” with Julia having only agreed to the removal of Jenks’ liver⁷ for the sake of one of their patients.

• An escape sequence ensues, Jenks is aided by Julia and Sally as Trevor pursues him.

• Trevor is eventually killed during a struggle, and Julia says to Jenks “You were a liability, but so was he.”

And like that, the bigger picture snaps into place: Trevor was blackmailing Julia and Sally; so long as he gets to practice his twisted organ harvesting and force blood and organ donations out of strangers with the pretense of helping people, he won’t compromise The Counter.

What’s so interesting about this is how the film rightly insists upon the altruism of The Counter⁸, but also recognizes that evil loves — and tends to be exceedingly capable of — passing itself off as altruism, not only to trick others into thinking there is no evil, but also (and mainly, I would argue) to convince the perpetrator that what they’re doing isn’t actually evil.

Indeed, Trevor knows he can’t openly acknowledge his desire to fetishistically slice open human beings against their will and take their organs and blood, so he passes it off as though he’s a bold utilitarian; twelve organs for twelve potential lives saved, and suddenly he’s halfway to gaslighting us into thinking that we’re the bad guys for preventing him from sadistically murdering Jenks.

If he actually cared about saving innocent lives, he’d donate his own liver instead of jumping at the chance to victimize an innocent life.

Everyone — audience and characters alike — can of course see the real reason why Trevor wants to do what he does, but that doesn’t matter; all that matters is that Trevor can justify it in his own head. The fact that he’s the only male member of The Counter — and, again, is suspiciously combative about business models — absolutely tracks here; he’s the type of guy that capitalists will bank on to prove them right about socialized healthcare. “See?!” they might say, “Who’s gonna stop the government from forcibly taking your blood and organs if we centre healthcare around keeping people healthy and alive! Checkmate!”

But that’s the thing about the colonial mind; it cannot comprehend the state of not being subordinate to another, nor can it stomach the idea of a human expression not being dominated. So when it comes to frameworks that centre human prosperity, the colonial mind immediately jumps to how that system can be used by bad actors to control and exploit people, because using that system to control and exploit people is precisely what the colonial mind — armed with its fundamental fear of the human expression — would do.

This logic — of the evil that could occur in these human-first frameworks — is meant to scare people away from embracing said frameworks. It’s meant to make us believe that these frameworks will open the doors for boogeymen like Trevor, and these boogeymen are further implied to be numerous, because — again — the colonial mind is predicated on the assumption that human beings are bad.

It’s not completely untrue; every human is capable of evil; we all absolve ourselves of guilt by not being completely honest with ourselves about where our actions come from. It doesn’t matter what the act itself actually entails — it could be anything from making fun of a kid in your class to harvesting Jenks’ organs against his will — all of it stems from that same refusal to not check the action for what it is and how it relates to your ego. That same evil, unwitting or otherwise.

The question, then: Are you going to try and unsuccessfully preempt this evil by suppressing the human expression that it comes packaged with, or are you going to build your systems around enabling the human expression to fight back against its shadow and live as freely and authentically as possible?

Put another way: Are you going to kill off innumerable people by inflating the cost of healthcare just because you’re scared of Trevor, or are you going to dedicate your framework to saving lives and actually face whatever Trevors of the world may be lurking, rather than pretend they only exist in a world of free healthcare?⁹

Because I’ll tell you this: Trevor’s not the one that the capitalists are actually afraid of.

Consider my hat tipped, Jeremy!

Filmstack Challenge #8

I didn’t make a pet short, but here is a pet nonetheless. His name is Max, he’s 16, and he loves pizza.

For November’s Filmstack Challenge, Alex Rollins Berg called upon the NonDē community to put our money (or lack thereof) where our mouths are and “shut up and shoot something,” be it a commercial for our newsletters or a microshort of our pets. Part of the deal was that we didn’t need to actually post what we shot; we could simply talk about the experience.

And in the spirit of my college creative writing days, I’m going to abuse this rule here and also break the content-of-the-shoot rule entirely.

But I think you’ll forgive me for that, because this is the part where I tell you all, officially, that I’m making a movie. A full, feature-length movie with no budget, and with no one but myself and two others (they act and produce, I’m writing-directing-producing-acting-etc-etc). Pridefully, I can’t imagine a film less dependent than ours.

I’m not going to reveal the title¹⁰ nor any plot details here just yet, but as it stands, I’ve finished the second draft of the script, have completed principal photography, shot some test footage, and have test-edited said test footage. I also have a hell of a marketing campaign that I plan on drawing up in the later stages of production. It’s all quite exciting.

And yet, the standout takeaway so far feels like one of the most insane things I’ve ever had to acknowledge:

I’m not entirely certain I enjoy being a filmmaker.

FRAUD

Here’s the thing: It is a very plain fact — and one I welcome uncompromisingly — that I’m a writer before anything, and that will always be my primacy in the film sphere, regardless of what other space I end up occupying in it. The page is how I tell stories and engage with the stories of others; it is, quite simply, what makes sense to me.

Things make less sense to me when I’m the one behind the camera. Maybe it’s the limitations on my equipment and resources, but I don’t find the same sense of fulfillment in filming something that I do in puzzling something out on the page. I mostly find the physical act of filming to be quite tedious¹¹, and that’s just in the context of my film and its ultra-undemanding scenes; I don’t imagine my indifference to tactile cinematic hurdle-jumping would diminish with the advent of even more demanding tactile hurdles to jump.

This is, of course, just an assumption. As time and filming goes on, it could very well be the case that I come to love directing, and find a new passion in the physical act of making movies, particularly if I’m lucky enough to make more movies with more resources that give me more filming/storytelling options. As it stands, though, the experience so far has been confirming to me what I was already anticipating: that my filmmaking love lies, in its totality, with the act of writing.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about this hunch on account of the rather erotic entanglement between writing and directing. On the one hand, for example, I’ve long subscribed to the Billy Wilder school of thought where the story is put before any cinematography that might call attention to itself, so it tracks that I respond to writing more than the machinations that bring it to life in the physical world. I think my criticism reflects this.

And yet, on the other hand, I’m also deeply fond of technical work that directly contributes to the story in its own right, and that simply isn’t satisfied by writing the equivalence of such on the page¹². This, too, is reflected in my criticism (Anora, Small Things Like These, and Nosferatu are some of my favourite examples).

All this to say that, so far, I only like the parts of directing that are fun to me as a writer, which is another way of saying that I may not actually like directing. Want me to give my ideas on how a shot should be framed in service to the narrative while the main director does everything else? Great! But don’t make me deal with anything else; not because I can’t, but because — based on my very non-definitive(!) experiences so far — it simply doesn’t drive me.

Heavily cropped test footage still

Whatever my final emotional verdict on directing will be, I’m doubtless that I won’t be disappointed with it. If time reveals that I actually do love directing, I suddenly have another thing that I love to do. And if it turns out that my love stops at writing, then it means I have more space — both in and outside of filmmaking — to explore that love (scriptwriting, film criticism, novels that I will write at some point in my life, what have you). Making this film will be an invariably and overwhelmingly positive experience for me.

What I’m left wondering, in fact, is which outcome I’m actually hoping for. Do I want to have control over my stories as a director, or do I want to indulge my love for collaboration by being a screenwriter who would partner with a director? Do I want to graft filmmaking onto a larger portion of my work, or do I want to free up space to apply my writing in other fields?

I simply do not have eyes on the great plan, folks, and frankly, that’s how it needs to be. All that matters on my end is that I will not — and cannot, in good conscience — accept a reality where I’m not telling stories or otherwise externalizing the extent of my voice.

And you know, maybe that’s why I’m not gelling with directing all that well; how can I be drawn to a role that’s predicated on figuring things out, after all, when I know in my heart of honest hearts that there’s nothing to figure out? I am supposed to tell stories, I am going to tell stories, and that’s all there is to it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to shut up and go shoot something.

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1. Plus Best Screenplay and Best Actress at the 2018 Orlando Film Festival.

2. In the hands of one who does not want to be known, texting allows for much more artifice.

3. This effort can take the form of logistical hardiness, but also emotional vulnerability.

4. In this case, the ending as it applies both to Dave and Candace, separately.

5. Haters will say the category was rigged against non-Alabamian films.

6. Revelations which, again, would still work with spoilers, but stand to gain much more without them than other, less-revelation-heavy films would.

7. I admit I’m actually blanking on the specifics of the organ, but I’m 99% sure it was the liver. Not important to the review, in any case.

8. And, more broadly, of people-first economic models.

9. Implicit in the colonial system is the promise that you needn’t take responsibility for the world you live in and the environment you foster. Hence the emphasis on police, hence the amount of evil that’s justified so as to protect the capitalist ego. The nihilism in play is monolithic.

10. Tell ya what, we’ll go with Avengers: Doomsday as the working title.

11. There is, of course, conceivable tedium within every artistic frontier; the key is paying attention to what satisfies you as an artist. This is what makes the tedium worthwhile, even preferable.

12. I, being a chronic direct-on-the-pager, should know.