Flipside

description

Exploring themes of art and failure, FLIPSIDE is a comical attempt to save a New Jersey record store and confront a mid-life crisis.

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. 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.

OFFICIAL SELECTION
Toronto International Film Festival 2023

DIRECTOR'S BIO
Chris Wilcha has won two Emmy Awards and two International Documentary Association Awards for directing and co-executive producing a TV version of Ira Glass’ acclaimed radio show "This American Life" for Showtime. He has directed promos, pilots and short films for MTV, PBS, Sundance Channel and TV Land. Wilcha also directed and shot a first person video diary called THE TARGET SHOOTS FIRST, about his tenure in the marketing department at the mail order CD and tape club Columbia House in the early 1990s, which won numerous festival awards, screened internationally, and was broadcast on Cinemax and The Sundance Channel. FLIPSIDE is his latest film.