Love Letter

THE GOODTIMESKID

Indie comedy The GoodTimesKid is the second feature from director Azazel Jacobs, son of avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs. Taking a more mainstream tack than his noted ancestor, the interestingly named Azazel constructs a gentle, good-hearted if slightly inconsequential tale of romantic estrangement around three disillusioned thirtysomethings crossing paths over 24 hours in LA.

Shot in fourteen days with a crew of six, on film stock lifted from a major Hollywood studio, the film is low-budget and proud of it. Taking its cues from early Jarmusch, Hal Hartley and classic Chaplin, the film develops almost wordlessly. The minimal narrative centres around two men, both called Rodolfo Cano, and their helpless attraction to an unnamed girl, charmingly played by the director’s girlfriend Sara Diaz. Indeed, the entire film could be seen as something of a love letter to Diaz, as the two Rodolfos find themselves in orbit around this unpredictable creature.

There are scenes of real beauty in The GoodTimesKid: a central sequence of tentative romance on a houseboat unfolds almost flawlessly, opening up these taciturn characters, drawing us into their world. The camera is used to magical effect, intimate close-ups capturing every flicker across the actors’ effortlessly expressive faces. There are a few indie clichés on display here: hints of artful dispassion; helpless, existentially traumatised men; a free-spirited woman who expresses her independence by dancing to old jazz records. But the film is perfectly constructed, strikingly photographed and never less than involving. The enduring impression is of a sweet, transitory experience, as slight as a backward glance but just as intriguing.

Tom Huddleston

Electric Sheep Magazine

semi-weekly film recommendation

"As the now-redundant mumblecore movement has the press of the print world a-twitter this week, just as they have enthralled the film blog world for a few years, I thought I’d point out a film that, for no reason I know of, slipped under most people’s radars. As someone in his 20s, I connected more with what The GoodTimesKid had to say about young life and love than with whatever the followers of Mr. Bujalski seem to be mumbling on about. I’m not intending to knock Funny Ha-Ha (2002) or Mutual Appreciation (2005). Those films accomplished a great deal and with very little, making a strong statement about this generation. But beyond that, I’m ready for what was once a humble core of filmmakers to get over their ineloquence. Speak up! or shut up. For the most part, Mr. Jacobs refrains from flapping his gums, letting the characters’ action and inaction do the talking. Made the same year as Mutual Appreciation and ’shot on stolen film’, The GoodTimesKid goes deeper than the rambling nature of the ‘talkies’. The GoodTimesKid sends-up, at the same time it effectively deals with identity-crisis - two charcters share the same name, and something more than just hilarity ensues. What’s more, the reality of today’s world - war, albeit a war fought ‘over there’, but war, nonetheless - lurks in the background, threatening to intersect with the lives of the characters. This, coupled with the emotional late night bus ride of two hearts competing for the attention of another, leads to one of those rare, soul-stirring moments that only film can achieve, causing this audience-member to hold his breath. The need an audience has for a protagonist to root for - Viva Depresso! - is as cinematically timeless as it is universal. The GoodTimesKid provides three such protagonists with whom to identify. Whether you root for one or all of them is up to you. Just as Jacobs is not interested in clearly revealing characters’ intentions, he not going to dictate how to feel about them. And yet, he is making a singular cinematic statement. With a few Godardian audio cuts and more than a few Jarmuschian tableaus, Jacobs takes cues from these predecessors in order to fit his take on the current moment into a larger picture, one that I predict will last longer than the aging-prone mumblecorers. At the heart of it, the new DIY movement makes a well-intentioned clarion call - anyone can pick up a camera and tell a story. And that’s all fine and good, and they may make some Bujalski rip-off with ease, but The GoodTimesKid is not just a statement about the current generation of twentysomethings that anyone could have made. It is a film that only Azazel Jacobs could and did make."
Cinema Stubble

My Guitar Hero!

Mick Jones is gonna be forced to watch our movie!!!!!
http://www.nme.com/news/iggy-pop/30165

Time Out Chicago

"Check out Azazel Jacobs’s The GoodTimesKid (Thu 16, 6pm), the quirky, charming story of three lost souls (two men and a woman). While not a comedy, Kid has a lightness and wonderful sense of rhythm that recall early Jim Jarmusch. Jacobs is a director to watch; he has a natural eye for composition, and his camera movement is subtle and resonant. A delightful and assured film, Kid rarely hits a false note."- Patrick Friel

full article

Chicago

"The Goodtimeskid Filmmaker Azazel Jacobs calls this "a story about stolen love and stolen identities shot on stolen film." He's the son of Ken Jacobs (Star Spangled to Death), with some of his pa's anarchic spirit, and because he apparently stole good 35-millimeter stock, he doesn't have to worry that much about the story anyway. The slender premise--two guys are named Rodolfo, one of whom gets renamed Depresso by the girlfriend of the other--seems mainly an excuse to hang out with these people, and it's a tribute to Jacobs's skill that this is enough. He knows how to put air around his characters, pace their movements, and chart their interactions in various locations, and when the heroine starts dancing at one point, she's so good that I wanted to cheer. 77 min. "(Jonathan Rosenbaum) arrow Chopin Theater, 6 PM.
Chicago Reader

Chicago screening 16th of August

GoodTimesKid in the Chicago Underground film festival

Date	August 16, 2007 6:00 PM
Location	Chopin Theater 1543 W. Division Chicago, IL 60622 [map it!]
Info Line	773-278-1500
tickets