A troubled punk
Singer and his biggest fan get into a series of scrapes in Adam Rehmeier’s likable indie dramedy
“Is weird cool?” “In your case, no.” This pert exchange summarises the style of writer-director Adam Rehmeier’s indie dramedy, with two very good lead performers whose unexpected chemistry gradually makes this film likable. It’s about an angry punk singer with a pyromania fetish and a lonely and nerdy young woman with ADHD who is his biggest fan.
Kyle Gallner plays John Q Public (real name: Simon), the lead singer of a band called Psy Ops who performs anonymously in a balaclava; off-stage, he has a vocal-fry badass voice, like Ray Liotta in GoodFellas. Simon is experiencing furious musical differences with the rest of the band and is making money through selling weed and taking part in big pharma medical experiments. Emily Skeggs is excellent as quirky, dreamy Patty, who takes indistinct Polaroids of herself masturbating to his
music in her childhood bedroom and sends them to him via the mailbox address on the band’s flyers.