When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked at as a teenager in New Jersey, he finds the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. FLIPSIDE documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years. In the process, Wilcha captures This American Life icon Ira Glass in the midst of a creative rebirth, discovers the origin story of David Bowie’s ode to a local New Jersey cable television hero, and uncovers the unlikely connection between jazz photographer Herman Leonard and TV writer David Milch. This disparate collection of stories coheres into something strange and expansive — a moving meditation on music, work, and the sacrifices and satisfaction of trying to live a creative life.
“Though it’d be easy for Wilcha’s journey to play like a hodgepodge of discarded parts, FLIPSIDE, a film produced by Judd Apatow, is like a perfect, wondrous B-side collection: It is filled with the ideas you wished had become singles, and the intriguing conceptions that, even in their failure, tell you a bit more about the artist.” —Robert Daniels, IndieWire “For all the potential pitfalls that could pitch this picture into an abyss of groaning solipsism, FLIPSIDE deftly leaps over each one, landing on something funny, thought-provoking, and sublime.” —Kristy Puchko, Mashable “It’s a borderline-profound and philosophical expression of satisfaction with everything that is unfinished in life…. The idea that maybe what seem like loose ends from our past are actually plotlines awaiting unexpected resolution is both pleasantly Dickensian and wonderfully uplifting, if you think about it.” —Daniel Fienberg, Hollywood Reporter
