Happy New Year, Schlubs! A few days ago, I sat down to eat at Kroll’s East in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Both an institution and a dive, Kroll’s East is home to the greasiest burger I’ve ever encountered. Paired with a brandy old-fashioned, it’s unbeatable. The bar room is a long corridor bordered by plush leather booths and filled with sturdy wooden tables. There is no music. The chatter at the bar is soft, and the lights are softer. It was as if I had pulled up a chair to one of many locales featured in the films we’ve covered together — a perfect sendoff to our first year.
As I’ve mentioned before, Schlub Cinema came from my desire to return to the dive bars, bowling alleys, and dimly lit centers of community that I missed so much in the early pandemic. So for our first anniversary, I reached out to friends and readers to submit their own Schlub Cinema classics.
An immense thank you to everyone for their submissions and continued readership! See ya when I see ya — Gray
Night Moves (1975): Heavy-Eyed Harry
by Karina Hernandez
In Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975), Gene Hackman is the pinnacle of all things schlub! Hackman’s character, Harry Moseby, is a lonely private investigator that wants to be perceived as an expert of his craft. However, he repeatedly fails in his profession (and life) by never actually understanding the events that play out right in front of him; His marriage, his profession, and his case all slip through his fingers. He’s a spectator in his own existence. WAKE UP MOSEBY!
It’s amazing how few people actually know of this movie, which adds to its charm and makes it undoubtedly an underrated cult classic for me. It resists the neo-noir hero, yet still has the elements of a typical neo-noir that I love so much in cinema — the unbalanced framing, the 70’s hotel lobby soundtrack, blurring the lines between good and bad, the use of sound or lack thereof, and of course the sweet sweet motifs. Night Moves is a near-perfect movie that I recommend to anyone who loves the genre. And if you don’t take my word for it, well, I’ll leave you with the wise words of Harry Moseby himself:
“Harry thinks if you call him Harry again he's gonna make you eat that cat!”
Written by Karina Hernandez, Co-host of the podcast Hear Me Out on Spotify. Instagram: @podcast_hearmeout
Pusher (1996), Pusher II (2004), Pusher III (2005).
by Wyatt Fair
One of the great filmic delights of my 2022 was going deep into what I lovingly called “The Pusherverse.” This would refer to Pusher, Pusher 2, and Pusher 3, a trilogy of crime movies directed by the slick Danish bastard himself, Nicolas Winding Refn. These flicks imagine a world where you can rip cigs in any building and do cocaine while the sun is out. They’re like watching a Grand Theft Auto cutscene if Trevor had to take Lexapro to handle the pressure. Miserable vibes, in the best of ways.
The major players in the series are Kim Bodnia (scary guy in Killing Eve), Zlatko Burić (your favorite cheeky Russian capitalist in Triangle of Sadness), and of course, the legend Mads Mikkelsen. While we’ve maybe hit somewhat of a critical mass in the Dudes Rock discourse, it goes without saying Mads is one of the coolest in the game. His portrayal of Tonny is sensitive and volatile — scary and yet sort of lame. He’s the most depressed criminal you’ve ever seen, but with zero fuck-you Tony Soprano swag. He spends most of the second movie (his story, and probably the best of the batch) swaddling his infant son while her mother rips lines of coke in a bridesmaids dress. Perhaps it’s the Scandinavia of it all, but I find the depressive, restrained nature of these gangsters quite compelling, especially when compared to the loudmouths you might get in a Scorsese or Mann. Not that I don’t love a loudmouth, of course. If you wanna watch a guy in a tracksuit decapitate a bartender and then feel really bad about it, these are the movies for you!
Wyatt Fair is a writer, comedian, and cinema freak living in Los Angeles. Come see his sketch comedy group The Shrimp Boys at Littlefield in NYC on January 25th!
@wyattfair on Twitter / @malibusmostwyatt on IG
Big Trouble in Little China (1986): Big Schlubble in Little Cinema
by Ian Erickson, Connoisseur
On its surface, Big Trouble in Little China seems like any other 80’s action star vehicle. Macho, manly hero is dropped in a fantastic situation, forced to fight enemies through sheer strength, force of will, and some ratio of guns/punching. There are a million and one ways where this movie starring a buff, white male protagonist set in a predominantly Chinese-centric story, goes wrong. But it doesn’t. In fact, it holds up incredibly well because, in the age of Rambos and Terminators, we get Jack Burton.
Jack Burton (played with serene himbo-grace by Kurt Russel) is an antihero. But not in a “playing poker with Tony Soprano and The Joker” or “changing the hierarchies of power forever” kind of way1. Jack Burton is THE ANTI-hero, by which I mean he is one of the most successful deconstructions of the modern Hollywood hero. He may be hunky and tastefully jacked, but he’s also a bumbling oaf and constantly eats shit. In one battle sequence before fighting, Jack pumps himself up by firing his gun in the air, only to dislodge chunks of ceiling that fall on his head and knock him out. Also, he never knows what’s going on and won’t shut up about it. In another scene where a newly introduced character gives a highly expositional piece of dialogue, Jack halts all momentum to ask who the hell this lady is and what any of what she just said means. And at the end of the film, where any normal hero gets the girl, when Burton’s pompous braggadocio aimed at Kim Cattrall finally seems to pay off, Burton is asked if he is going to kiss her, to which he looks at her, pauses and goes, “...No,” as he walks off towards his truck on the horizon.
He rules because he sucks ass.
Ian Erickson, @ian___online on Twitter.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010).
by Meggie Gates
Schlub Pilgrim Vs. the World is well deserving of schlub cinema status. With a run time far shorter than what it should be (8760 hours, 365 days a year), SP captures the toxic modernity of early twenties and turns it into an epic of insane proportions: elevating pettiness, revenge, and age-inappropriate relationships to God level absurdity. Every day I don’t spend watching Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is a day wasted. Every day I do, a masterpiece.
Meggie Gates is a writer whose work can be found here. Their podcast, @YA_WeReadIt, is on Apple Podcasts.
Boogie Nights (1997).
by Toler Wolfe
Every time I watch Boogie Nights I’m in awe. How did 26-year-old Paul Thomas Anderson pull this off? The sprawling story and huge ensemble cast offer a thousand places to fail yet the film deftly balances the lives of its ambitious losers. Boogie Nights is alive and pulsing, populated in every corner by characters Anderson treats with tenderness, humanity, and humor. There’s no cruelty here, though Dirk Diggler and his adoptive family make an easy target to mock, their lives are taken seriously and their goals are the goals of anyone: money, success, a fulfilling career, and a loving family. When the 80’s roll around and our heroes' lives take a turn for the worse you can’t help but be nostalgic for a time when there was still artistry in porn.
The cast has a genuine understanding and love of outsiders and losers. John C. Reilly, William H. Macy, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, all built their careers playing outcasts and downtrodden nobodies. Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly are electric playing off each other’s stupidity. I could go on and on about the endlessly funny lines in this film but Reed (Reilly) reciting a barely literate poem for Dirk who proclaims, “That’s fucking great man,” always sticks in my mind. Boogie Nights is an achievement and a reminder that the minutiae of human lives can be enthralling and touching.
Toler Wolfe, ig @toler_wolfe.
The Kid Detective (2020).
by Emma Kraus
I firmly believe that humanity’s greatest sin has been underestimating the cultural significance of Adam Brody. Known by most as the beloved 2000's manic pixie dream boy Seth Cohen, Brody has since become a staple supporting player in Hollywood, consistently elevating ensembles on network sitcoms and summer blockbusters alike. Yet, despite being canceled in 2007, The OC’s legacy still manages to cling to Brody’s every move. To this day there remains a remarkable awareness of Brody's emo beginnings that seeps into every job he takes — and while that may come off as a criticism, dear reader, I assure you it is anything but. Brody’s unique ability to embody a long-forgotten aughts-era subculture is what makes him such an invaluable asset. It's a space that only he can fill, and one that I, along with every other teen looking for validity in their love of Brand New and DC Comics, needed in 2006 and need just as much today.
As they say — always the emo best friend and never the bride — as it wouldn't be until 2020 (after over two decades in the business of show) that Brody would finally get his starring role in director Evan Morgan’s debut indie feature The Kid Detective. Floating somewhere between Rushmore and Chinatown, The Kid Detective follows washed-up PI Abe Applebaum as he struggles to live up to his childhood fame as his sleepy hometown’s loveable gumshoe detective. Abe’s brief stint solving adorable crimes of missing cats and stolen PTA funds came to a screeching halt when he was (understandably) unable to solve a bona fide adult mystery — the disappearance of his best friend Gracie. Fast forward 20 years, Gracie’s case remains unsolved, and a traumatized Abe has descended into a full-blown sad sack. Scraping by on few-and-far-between gigs and loans from his parents, Abe receives a chance at redemption in the form of Caroline (Sophie Nélisse), a high school student who hires him to investigate the murder of her boyfriend. The familiar cliché of such a grizzly crime happening in Pleasantville USA is not lost on the film, and we are treated to a series of other over-the-top noir staples as Abe and Caroline hunt for clues and, of course, untangle a gruesome web of horrors plaguing their little town. The deeper we get into Abe and Caroline’s investigation, the darker the story becomes — a darkness that peaks in a shocking final act that would leave even the most seasoned crime junkie with a pit in their stomach.
And while the unexpectedly bleak twists make for a fun watch, Adam Brody's performance as Abe pushes The Kid Detective into sleeper hit territory. The down-on-his-luck, alcoholic PI is such well-tread territory at this point that it is essentially a non-character, but Brody injects such a freshness and relatability into the role that you end up feeling like you’re checking in on an old friend, one who you probably should have been checking on a lot more often. From his dusty Chuck 70’s to his palpable disdain for young people, Abe’s entire demeanor reeks of Elder Emo - that is, those of us who grew up listening to Sunny Day Real Estate and whose pain is truer and more profound than everyone else's. It's the adult Seth Cohen if he grew up in Milwaukee instead of Orange County. It's your friend who you went to basement shows with in college. It’s a role Brody was born to play, and one that could easily feel like a hacked homage to his teen soap past. But while lesser actors would drown beneath the immeasurable weight of Seth Cohen, Brody wears the persona like a glove. And despite my never being an alcoholic PI, an occultist pop-punk frontman, or a precocious emo nerd living in a mansion in Orange County, I never feel quite as seen as when I’m watching Adam Brody on screen. I’m starting to wonder why it took us 20 years to let him star in a movie.
Emma Kraus, Fan art enthusiast + full-time prequels apologist living in NYC. You can follow her on instagram @miss.viscera or visit her shop here.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986).
by Matthew Byrd
A million miles away from the twee true crime podcasts and overproduced Netflix series’ that define the sleek, romanticized modern image of the American serial killer lies director John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, perhaps the most disturbing film produced by American independent cinema in the 1980s. Filmed on the grimy, wet, neon-lit streets of pre-gentrification Chicago, Henry features a chillingly terrific lead performance from Michael Rooker (in his screen debut) as the titular killer, joined in his crimes by his ogreish roommate Otis (Tom Towles), which they try to keep hidden from the view of Otis’ naive sister Becky (Tracy Arnold), temporarily living with them as she searches for work in the big city.
There is nothing glamorous or fascinating about the killings we witness in Henry. They are simply bluntly depicted, horrific episodes in the story of an evil society. Henry is a horror film deeply in tune with the economic traumas of Reagan’s America. All three of the leads have been run through the gauntlet of degradations that define working-class life in America — abuse, incarceration, isolation, precarity — and have a range of psychosexual pathologies and emotional vacancies to show for it. Otis and Henry’s killings seem to spring less out of compulsion than a desire to pass the time in between dead-end jobs and parole officer meetings. A great film that you may never want to watch again after the ending credits roll on.
Matthew Byrd is a sometime librarian, sometimes writer, and most-of-the-time movie watcher who lives in Chicago. You can find him on Letterboxd here.
Blow (2001).
by Josh De Lanoit
CW: Classic rock, Johnny Depp’s bad haircut, Drug-use
Blow is at its best when Johnny Depp is ripping joints and doing business with Paul Reubens on the beach in ’70s L.A. — set to a myriad of classic-rock dressed montages of the duo making money and slinging dope. The high life and the high tide of the film; silly but fun — like Depp with this haircut and sunglasses.
Depp plays George Jung, a bumpkin from Massachusetts who just gets the drug trade. The film is less concerned with his navigation of the marijuana and cocaine business and significantly more focused on Jung’s relationships — with his father, his business partner, and his wife. But, that’s the rub for me. Seeing a fish out of water come to rule the drug trade in SoCal and how he pivots to become one of Pablo Escobar’s biggest traffickers are by far the most exciting parts of this film. Once that is accomplished, Jung quickly descends into a reasonable cocaine madness (his partner stabs him in the back) that results in his ultimate fall from grace… and now there is a 40-minute purgatory of George — now a penniless sad-sack loser who is desperate to connect with his daughter who we just met an hour and twenty into this flick.
It’s a film about the easy come-and-go of money — that money can’t secure a family or a good life. But, Blow teeter-totters on campy, dirty drug-trade tales and this family story so much that the film becomes lackluster on both sides. I never got enough time with his family (or Depp interacting with them) to care, and ultimately I lost interest and fell asleep… and then finished watching (doing) Blow the next day.
Josh De Lanoit is a motion designer/ human man and is doing that and posting silly pics @joshua_delanoit
A Christmas Story Christmas (2022).
by Megan Stringer
My family broke holiday tradition this year for the first time in at least a decade by not watching A Christmas Story on Christmas Eve. Instead, we watched A Christmas Story Christmas — the new sequel to the original 1983 film. Ralphie is all grown up and with a family of his own. Notably missing is one of my favorite schlubs, Ralphie’s Old Man.
The 1940s dad in the small, industrial northern Indiana suburb probably isn’t seen as a good father in the traditional sense. He curses in front of the kids and introduces “the soft glow of electric sex” in the form of the iconic leg lamp to his two kid sons. His big surprise gift to Ralphie does actually get his son injured.
But the Old Man knew how to celebrate the Christmas spirit with his family. The sequel finds Ralphie trying to replicate all that holiday goodness for his own kids. And Ralphie has his own schlubby moment when he finds himself breaking into his old friend’s bar to steal a star for the tree topper.
But the person who saves Christmas, in the end, is still the same schlubby Old Man who contributes holiday spirit from beyond the grave. No more spoilers!
Megan Stringer, on Twitter @megstringers and meganstringer.format.com
Wonder Boys (2000).
by Jeff Lehman
“It was a shock to see him, shuffling into the room like an aging prizefighter. Limping. Beaten.” When washed-up novelist Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) hears this passage read aloud by his editor Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.), he recognizes its inspiration immediately. His wife left him that morning. His last book was seven years ago. His leg is still bleeding from a bite from his boss's dog. The writer, his star student James Leer (Tobey Maguire), has been Grady’s responsibility for a Pittsburgh literary weekend. He's chaperoned him through February's nightly snows and daily rains.
The foundation of Schlub Cinema is a granular sense of place, from the New York of The Taking of Pelham 123 to the Seoul of Memories of Murder. Wonder Boys shows us Pittsburgh, the Great Schlub of the Rust Belt, America’s “wonder boy” city. “It’s had this glorious past of wealth and success that ended,” said director Curtis Hanson. “And then it had to deal with figuring out what’s next. What happens after triumph?”
We find answers in the warmest performance by Douglas, the absolute King of the Schlubs, who lights a joint he pulls from his glove box at the film's five-minute mark. His voice crackles, softly, like a vinyl record. He leans against a stone pillar as Crabtree continues, with what could be called the Schlub’s Scout Oath: “His heart, once capable of inspiring others so completely, could no longer inspire so much as itself. It beat now only out of habit. It beat now only because it could.”
Jeff Lehman is a writer in Atlanta, GA and spent his Wonder Boys years with Gray in Iowa. He builds curated playlists and writes about music every week for Earwryms.
Inherent Vice (2014): Fuckin’ zoinks!
by Austin Smoldt-Sáenz
There’s purple carpet and brass flowers on the walls, Neil Young is on the radio, and there are people missing. True to the Thomas Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice is a meandering, convoluted neo-noir set just after the wave of peace and love crashed on Gordita Beach, California. The ocean spit out the hippies, leaving people like Doc Sportello to watch their big, beautiful wave soak into the sand. Things were tipping back towards the straight world.
Each scene is a hit from one of Doc’s endless joints with the movie pulling on new threads, further entangling the web of missing people. Phone calls and beers lead to new details, taking him down a hole that involves his ex-girlfriend, Shasta, and her new real estate mogul lover, the LAPD, and an international drug syndicate.
“People like you lose the claim to respect the first time they pay anybody rent.” Harsh. Doc is a perceived schlub – a “dirty little hippy” to every straight-laced goon in a suit. His presence is met with threats of arrest and calls for security. Anyone wearing opened-toed shoes is of a lower class. But what they miss is Doc is a schlub on the rise. He’s got an office now, wouldn’t you know?
Austin is an illustrator and designer based in Portland, OR. Visit austinsmoldtsaenz.com to see his work.
Special thanks to everyone who submitted to this newsletter. As well, thank you to Austin Smoldt-Sáenz, Elena Bruess, Joshua De Lanoit, and Max Seifert.
If the Rock ever remakes this movie I will kill myself! - Ian