Kansas City Blog

Martin soon finds himself on a team of Southern good ol' boys that also includes Martin's soon-to-be sales partner, Clarence, an older black gentlemen (played magnificently by Kene Holliday) who is equal parts bravado, drive, and desperation. The salesmen are gullible, earnest men, just looking to make a buck, impressed beyond measure when Shank drops the names of one-hit-wonder pop stars he's allegedly worked with -- and even more impressed when Layton calls his bank on speaker phone, enters his checking account number and smiles greasily when the automated voice announces that he's got a balance of more than $13,000.

Layton and Shank begin training the salesmen to "sign" amateur musicians. In teams of two, these dupes are to go to motels hither and yon, where they will set up shop, having people who have responded to newspaper ads bring in their jamboxes, guitars, theremins, voices and whatever-elses to perform one song, after which the salesmen do everything they can --"massage them with metaphors" Shank suggests -- to squeeze a down payment from them that will supposedly be used to produce a full album out of Great World of Sound's professional-quality studio in Nashville. All you need is three thousand bucks; the label pays the other 7K it will take to record, mix, master, press, package and promote your blockbusting debut. Just be sure to make your check out to "GWS" not "Great World of Sound." GWS, by the way, is Shank's initials.

Odd couple though they are, a garrulous black man and a nebbishy white nerd, Clarence and Martin become GWS' best team, unwittingly cajoling (they set out believing they're helping people's dreams come true) a parade of broke bands and musicians out of whatever they can get toward producing that album. The actors and probably real musicians whom the filmmakers tap to portray the American South's rich fauna of talentless noisemakers and yodelers are jaw-dropping in their verisimilitude. There's the broheim with the puka shell necklace, his veins popping in his neck as he plays acoustic guitar and belts out his nu-rock anthem. There's the bespectacled Christian doof who brings in his elaborately produced, joyous praise anthem on CD ("It's kind of like a Christian Peter Gabriel," Martin remarks). There are gospel singers, metal bands, bluegrass bands, a pedal-steel-cello quartet, and countless others, all of whom are real Real REAL.

Most of all, there's young Kyndra Kent, who comes to Martin and Clarence to sing her new national anthem, a bizarre and vaguely threatening ("got my finger on the trigger" is one of the lines) but stately little ditty that moves Martin so much that he pays half of the down payment to get Kyndra into the studio. (The actual song, "New Anthem," was composed by David Wingo of the Brooklyn band Ola Podrida, who scored the film -- listen to the sweet and funny song on the movie site's jukebox player.)

As the story progresses, Clarence becomes increasingly bent and manic, hectoring aspiring recording artists with the repeated question, "Do you believe in yourself?" and pretending to take pictures of them with his company-provided cell phone, which has no actual camera. Martin, meanwhile, becomes doubtful and sullen -- not because he's able to see through GWS' obvious scheme but because he becomes spiritually worn down by the process of pressuring so many untalented, unattractive, innocent and honest people into investing huge portions of their life savings into their so clearly unmarketable dreams.

When one of the GWS salesmen asks why they're supposed to sign all the musicians they encounter and not just the good ones, Shank answers with one of his metaphors: Their label is like a university. Not everyone makes it through to the end, but everyone -- even "the guys with their hats turned backwards" -- has to pay in order to keep the institution operating.

Things do not end entirely well for Martin and Clarence. It's not tragic, but it is a hard lesson, especially for Martin. The more resilient Clarence, who spent three years on the streets of Houston and has six kids now, makes it through relatively unscathed. When the two are stranded in Indianapolis, they have a fight -- their only fight -- over the nature of their business, and Clarence bellows, "You think this motherfucking country runs on talent?"

The movie's not exactly an upper, but it is a feast of authentic, uncontrived (or brilliantly contrived) and very human comedy. It's loaded with perfect moments, such as when Clarence is so overexcited about their first out-of-town audition session that he begins curling the motel room TV like a kettlebell.

So even if you have no friends or family members who may be in danger of getting taken by unscrupulous label owners, you should still see this movie. I give it 5 cans of gold spray paint.