Whiffed Out
From the Archives
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30-Sep-2014
Director Jason Giampietro sets 'em up & knocks 'em down in this hilariously straightforward story of an anxious New Yorker's ruined summer. The neurotic man, perpetually wearing a ratty aqua short-sleeve, lets a friend store a bike in his hallway for what he promises is only a couple days. Three months later, the bike is still there, always in the way, requiring a shuffle dance to maneuver around each time, and it drives the aqua man completely insane. "I tell ya, what these cats (people) are doing to you is messed up," an aging cool guy friend chimes in, before suggesting that he could take the bike off his hands & use it to get a job at a pizza parlor. Like a sitcom with no jokes (unless you consider lines like "Quit the amnesia act" a joke), "Whiffed Out" is a one-of-a-kind bizarro TV show movie, a comic yarn about 3 months in the life of several hurtling NYC street characters. Director Giampietro is a singular voice of the city, he uses classic corniness to frame unhinged street personalities, portraying them like family. Characters like this dominate actual NYC but are rarely represented in films about it, and it's a sight to behold when they are convincingly captured in their natural habitat, saying things they probably say 10 times a day, like, "I wasn't brought up that way, I'm honest." A modern tussle, mundane, absurd, in manic New York City.
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