The movie starts out with a comedic scene with B.J. Novak (Ryan from "The Office") talking to Taylor Swift's ex boyfriend, John Mayer (apparently playing himself--he goes by John in the movie) at a rooftop party in New York talking about life and dating. Their friendship and their conversation is intentionally and wildly vapid. Talking about how they're not afraid of commitment but rather, committing to the wrong person, which justifies the hookup culture they enthusiastically participate in.
They agree with basically every shallow and shortsighted thing each other says with "One hundred percent" to the point that you can tell that the writer and director (BJ, who also stars in the film) doesn't believe a word they're saying either. But it's a nice way to introduce us to this character and give us a peak inside the psyche of a culturally brainwashed city-person in modern America.
A few moments later, BJ sits down at the party with a woman with a fairly high position at a company that produces podcasts. BJ's character is a writer for the New Yorker who's obsessed with podcasts and is sure creating a successful one will offer him fulfillment, and he's pitching her what he believes is an idea. That idea states:
America is divided. But it's not for the reason that we think. We think that America is divided by geography: red state, blue state, city, country. We're missing something far more profound. America isn't divided by space. America is divided by time. We don't live in the moment anymore. And why would we, when we can live in any moment that's ever been recorded? And when we experience something we really love, our overwhelming instinct is to somehow file it away for later. We don't watch movies in the theater. We don't watch TV when it airs. We don't even have conversations at the same time because we text. And when you text, I can say "Hi," and you could say "Hi" back in a second, or a minute...which is kind of my point because we're all living in our own individualized times. That's why we're living in divided times."
The woman responds that she likes that. Then he asks her if she thinks it be a good story, and she says it's just a theory. He retorts.
Theories are stories. Stories about an idea. And America is an idea. That's what makes it so great.
But she replies:
No, America is its people. That's what makes it so fucked up.
And she shoots him down with some comment about him already being a successful writer for the New Yorker and that "not every white man in New York City needs to have a podcast."
He then says:
I want something more. I don't just want to be a writer. I want to be a voice. As dorky as it sounds, I care about America. And not in that faded Lana Del Rey way. And now I see it falling apart, and we're just standing in the corner, like, making fun of it, you know? I'd like to try to tell some story that...connects.
She replies:
OK well then let me help you out. With all your ideas about America--even if they're good, right?--you gotta put em in a story. Cause Americans listen to stories. Cause Americans are people. They're not...ideas. You're--you're here (pointing to her head). You need to be here (points to her heart). Does that make sense?
Looking blankly as if she's just spoken to him in Mandarin and dejected he says:
A hundred percent.
It then cuts to a shot of a subway train driving by with a quick shot of a small American flag painted on the side, and him riding the subway home, listening to a podcast titled "American Moment." He's still listening to the podcast on his headphones when he gets back at home and we see him typing on his laptop on his coffee table with a copy "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Toqueville. He takes a swig of brandy (we see a framed stock photo behind him that contains another American flag) and sees a text pop up on his laptop from "Brunette Random House Party" that says "Herrrreeeee."
He then closes his laptop and buzzes in "Brunettee Random House Party" in, who is now apparently blonde. He makes mention of this and then asks "How's the book world?" Her confusion tells him that she doesn't work for Random House, and he didn't meet her at a party thrown by Random House, and realizes that he just met her and some random...house party. She comes in, we can assume what happens next although we aren't shown, but it all plays up the the vapidness of hookup culture so we're sure to get the point.
A few hours later he gets a phone call from a number he doesn't recognize from a man telling him the bad news that his girlfriend just died. Confused, because he doesn't, and likely has never had a girlfriend, asks a few more questions so he can scroll through his phone really fast and figure out who the guy is talking about. The guy is her big brother, by the way, and he invites him to the funeral. BJ tries to politely decline but his unwillingness to be direct about it fails to deter the man on the phone and he soon finds himself feeling obligated to go. The location of the funeral we're told is some tiny town a five hour drive from Dallas out in the middle of nowhere.
Well, clearly so we can have a movie at all, he goes. He absolutely nothing about this girl he hooked up with once, but for whatever reason, her surviving family all thinks he was her boyfriend, and he's not in the mood to let them down, so he plays along. After the funeral, he's driving back to the airport with the brother who invited him, and once again, Ben (BJ's character) gets himself into more trouble by saying something he doesn't mean about how close he felt to the family. Again saying "100%". This inspires the brother to slam on the brakes, pull over, and tell him his theory (that his sister didn't die of an overdose "She'd never taken so much as an Advil in her life", but in fact as murdered) and his plan (to find out who killed her, and to exact vengeance--with Ben's help, of course).
At first Ben tries to wiggle out of it, but then the brother drops the line he needed to convince this particular hombre to stay. He says:
Stay down here and avenge Abby's death with me. What a story that would be.
Say no more. He calls the podcast lady and tells her where he was, why he was there, and what just happened to him, and pitches her a new idea: that obviously nobody killed this girl, the brother just can't cope with the suicide and has made up a story to make himself feel better and
This is about a new American reality that people can't accept so they invent these myths and conspiracy theories so they can cast themselves as heroes because...the truth is too hard to accept. The death of Abilene, is about the death of American identity and the need to find someone to blame for it. This isn't just a story about vengeance. It's a story about the need for vengeance. The meaning of vengeance.
She pauses, cause she's not sure that's really the real story I assume but she's gonna give him a little slack and, grasping for a reason it might sell says:
Dead white girl?
To which he responds:
Holy grail of podcasts.
He tells her the brother is "such a character" and has said so many crazy things already that he wished his recorder had already been on. She asks if he can get close to the family. He replies that of course he can, they think he was her boyfriend and (looking a little conflicted at the sleeziness of it) "I went to her funeral for God's sake."
She replies:
That's good. I mean, it's fucked up...but it's good...for this. Ok, let's give it a shot.
He then pitches the idea to the brother that they make a podcast about their vengeance tour with the rationale being he can draw national attention and recruit people around the country to help them solve the crime and the brother goes for it.
Now they're off.
Now we get to really see some caricatures of small town American Christians who lean right politically when he goes to stay at the family house closer to town. They talk about guns and God and family and Whataburger and how good it is "Just because it is" but you can tell that, while the family seems simple initially. they have good hearts, and they love each other, and those things are real and matter. When they ask him how he plans to help he gives them an answer that they don't buy but are too polite to call him out on and the mother replies with a simple "Bless your heart" (which we come to find out later is the polite Texas way of saying "Go fuck yourself" but Ben doesn't know that yet. He doesn't know how sharp these people are yet and he thinks he can get away with a subtle insult to their intelligence that they'll surely be too stupid to pick up on, but they do, and the mother answers him in kind. Brilliant little moment.
The brother then escorts Ben to the room he'll be staying in. Abilene's room. And says "I guess we have a guestroom now." Ben looks at the picture onf the wall and the Harry Potter books on the shelf, and sees her phone sitting on the bedside table but it's locked so he can't read what's inside. He opens his text thread with her from months earlier to see if he can find any clues but he gets nothing.
In the morning, he and the brother set off to find the girl's murderer. First stop is at an oil field manned by one of his friends who corroborates the brother's story that Abilene "never took so much as an Advil in her life" and reiterates the theory that she was killed by a Mexican cartel drug dealer who was obsessed with her. Then he says:
He's just a piece of it though. It's too big to understand. You got Deep State, in bed with pill pushers, cartels, pedos, the law...and you...you're a piece of it too.
We then cut back to Ben at the house interviewing the family. They go on and on about a burger place called Whataburger. He keeps asking why they like it so much and the brother says:
Asking why you love Whataburger is like asking you like Christmas or your dog. I mean you can point to the reasons but the reasons aren't really the point. You just love it. And that's how love works.
Ben then decides that since Abilene used to record music, he'd go to the recording studio alone to ask the guy who owns the place what he knows about Abilene, and here's where things got very interesting to me.
The owner of the recording studio out in the middle of nowhere is a guy by the name of Quentin Sellers (referred to by Mike, one of the two local police officers--half of "Mike and Dan" who the locals all say are a joke--at the end of the movie as "Q") played by none other than...Ashton Kutcher.
Now I don't know how much you know about Ashton Kutcher but there's a couple of things about him that I find pretty interesting:
First, he used to star in a reality show called "Punked." The aim of this show was to use Ashton's connections within Hollywood to place other famous actors in fake, but highly stressful situations, that they didn't know were fake, to see how they'd react. The moment things got too serious and it seemed like one of his star studded friends were about to lose it, he'd come running out of some hidden trailor with his camera crew and let them know they'd just been "punked." It was a blast of a show, honestly, to see how famous people would react to horrible situations in real life, when they didn't know they were being recorded. Kinda makes you think.
Now, a few years ago, Ashton helped found an organization called Thorn to help develop technologies that would help deter human trafficking. Here's the site: https://www.thorn.org/about-our-fight-against-sexual-exploitation-of-children/
People Magazine ran an article back in 2018 saying Ashton had helped save 6,000 children from human trafficking with that organization. See here: https://people.com/movies/ashton-kutcher-saves-6000-kids-human-trafficking-thorn-organization/
(Continued in comments...)
Not too long after that article ran, Ashton was "struck" with an apparent autoimmune disease that made him deaf, blind, and unable to walk. He never said what caused it, but he said it took him an entire year to recover from it. And nobody knew about it when it happened until Ashton revealed it in an episode of a TV show he was filming with popular survivalist Bear Grylls in 2022. It was written off by most as a Covid symptom since he said it happened in 2020. But something tells me we would have heard of that symptom for a high profile guy like that but nobody knew until 2022. See here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/ashton-kutcher-vasculitis-autoimmune-disease
Strange indeed.
Now, I don't know what the rest of you think of Ashton Kutcher as an actor. Personally I've always found him very funny, but never thought of him as someone to be taken seriously as a serious actor, but here he is in this film--his FIRST film since this mysterious illness that apparently almost took his life--and he's in a movie that talks about the Deep State and human trafficking, among other things we're familiar with here. And he was phenomenal.
The choice to play this particular character, however, was an interesting one to me for a number of reasons. First of all, as I said before, we don't hear it until the very end of the movie but his character, Quentin, is apparently referred to by the locals as simply "Q."
Now, "Q" is a FASCINATING character. He's a record producer out in the middle of Nowhere, Texas. His facilities are state of the art though, and aside from his smooth country drawl, he's anything but a hick. Our first introduction with him is he's sitting in a recording studio on the other side of the glass from what looks to be about a 14 year old girl with braces on who's about to record a song.
She starts off weak and he turns on his own microphone to stop her and give her some words of advice to see if he can inspire her to do better. At first, Ben finds his words trite, but as he continues, Ben is taken aback by his eloquence and depth. Here's what he says to the girl that got Ben's high brow city ears to perk up:
The girl then belts out a sad but beautiful ballad and Ben is amazed.
The scene then cuts to Ben and Q walking outside and talking. The dialogue is interesting. Q talks about his love of Andy Warhol (the artist that liked painting tomato cans as realistic as possible) showing his knowledge of art, eveals he's not from there and he went to school in New Haven (Yale?), and that he thought about staying there but "This is a place that needs something like this."
Ben asks how. Q says "Make recordings. Real people. Not what people think that they already know and want to hear. Real people. Not some generic stereotype or generic song. Real people."
He then asks Ben what his podcast is about. Ben says it's about America. About the myths that we tell ourselves. To which Q responds:
To which Ben responds that the podcast is about Abilene. Q looks surprised by this. And Ben, apparently fearing he's just lost some face with a man he's now in awe of starts to walk it back "Well, it's a little about Abilene. I mean I'm trying to make it more about..."
Then Ben asks him for some advice about his writing and his podcast. To which Q responds:
Now....right as Q is giving this speech, it's impossible not to notice the placement of what appears to be just a large wall hanging on the overhang in front of the front door of his recording studio in the background behind him but is situated just to the side of his head so you can't really ignore it. Practically looks like it's poking out of the left side of his cowboy hat. Then the camera cuts back to Ben, and then back to Q, but moved slightly to the left so now the star looks like it's jutting out of the right side of his cowboy hat.
Now there are three things here that fascinate me about this. One is the movement from left to right from our perspective (right to left from Q's--think mirror?), the other is that, that star is five sided. Yes, that's the Texas star, but it's still technically a pentagram, and as we learn more about this Q character later in the movie this feels more like a deliberate tell about the smooth talking character we're dealing with.
But the other was something I read about here a while back, something about a bunch of 8kun autists thinking they had found something that human traffickers were using to help each other identify safe houses to help them move their victims across the country, and it was that five sided Texas star on the front of rundown, apparently vacant houses, all across the country, not at all limited to the state of Texas. And given Ashton Kutcher's efforts in that area, and the mysterious illness he came down with that he took so long to reveal to the public, and the fact that, as we'll see later on, this Q character he's playing is clearly supposed to be the Devil who sees no point in trying to nab souls back in the big city, and has come down to "God's country" to hunt for souls instead, and knows how to sell a lie by weaving it together with beautiful truths, as any good liar would do...I find that telling.
Now, I realize it's confusing that Q and the Devil are the same person in this movie, but based on BJ Novak's other miniseries, "The Premise" that deals with politics as well, I think you'll see that he doesn't ever like to be too obvious about what he's saying. Honestly I think it's what makes him an excellent writer. He knows how to force his audience to really think, and he doesn't make it easy on you. Watch this movie and his miniseries "The Premise" and you'll see what I mean.
This encounter has really moved Ben. He drives home admiring a beautiful sunset and he tries to come up with something profound and lands on "Oh who am I kidding. It's fucking beautiful!"
Ben heads home and has a sweet moment with Abilene's fat younger brother, about 10 years old, who asks him to help him unjam his gun, and if he can sleep on his floor.
The next scene, we're taken through a montage of Ben interviewing a number of people about Abilene, each one surprising him with their intellect and their breadth of knowledge on topics he wouldn't expect them to know anything about. Ben reports back to his podcast contact in NYC, and then goes to a rodeo to really experience the small town Texas life. Has a deep-fried twinky, he gets teased by the announcer of the rodeo for supporting the University of Texas, rather than Texas Tech, and then they head to the party where line dancing is going on.
Here Ben finally gets to meet the drug dealer his temporary roommate suspects might be the killer. A super cholo hardass, when Ben gets him alone and asks him about Abilene, the guy comes clean that he was in love with her, because she was so sweet to him when nobody else was. But to Ben's surprise, he agrees that Abilene was murdered, but that it wasn't him. He then repeats the same thing her brother did "She'd never taken so much as an Advil in her life." (Someone also makes a pretty good quip about him being Joe Rogan meets Seth Rogan--a shot at Ben obviously being a Jew, and that may be loaded a bit all on its own--but it's really neither here nor there as far as the movie is concerned best I can tell. But who knows.)
Our assumptions are once again challenged though by the revelation, proven by a picture of him with his niece in Tulsa for an Adele concert the night that Abilene was killed. But he likes that people think he killed her because it's good for his drug dealer street cred. He reveals that Abilene died at a party that "Everybody goes to but everyone says they weren't there."
At this point Ben has a lucid moment. He doesn't have great proof but he's got a gut feeling that there's something bigger going on. This is big for Ben, because up until now he hasn't put any stock in gut feelings. He wants evidence and evidence only. Yet this place seems to be changing him somehow. Albeit subtly for now.
Next scene, Ben starts doing some real investigative work. He talks to Mike and Dan, the local deputies, and they tell him where that party takes place isn't their jurisdiction, and that he needs to talk to the county Sheriff. The Sheriff tells him a little about the drug trade in that area, but he also says that's not his jurisdiction, an area called "the after party." He points him to Highway Patrol, since it happened along the highway. But Highway Patrol points him to Border Patrol, who also says it's not their jurisdiction. As it turns out, that spot is at the intersection of overlapping jurisdictions, giving all of them a reason to say it wasn't their problem.
Ben goes home and pops in the thumb drive Q gave him when he first met him (which I forgot to mention earlier) and watches a video about Abilene talking about how her little brother sleeps on her floor cause he's afraid of ghosts.
The next scene, Ben is trying to connect the dots and record some good material. He notes that intuition is a real thing, and that if enough people believe something, despite not having proof, they might still be on to something.
Ben walks outside and his car blows up. Kind of out of nowhere, and it turns out it was just a prank some Texas Tech fans played on him for daring to root for the wrong school. Ben hardly even knows football exists so he's amazed when he finds out the reason, but there's a couple of reasons this is important. First, it's kinda funny. But second, he ends up in the hospital, and the family he's staying with comes to pick him up. Ben says:
To which the mom replies:
Ben's heart is clearly warmed, and they all go to Whataburger together. While they're eating, the grandma asks him if he has family in Texas. He says no and she says "You do now." Coup de gras, you can tell that Ben is sold on these people. He gets a call from the lady back in New York saying the story was great but now that he's in real danger it's time to come home. She tells him her conscience tells her she has to choose a person over a story (she's actually a very good person, you can tell, especially within the context of everything).
He refuses, and goes back inside to eat with the family at Whataburger. Then the grandma lets slip that Abilene was a "huge pill popper."
This is the crisis moment of the film. Ben realizes these people haven't been perfectly honest with him, and suddenly he feels completely hoodwinked and bamboozled, and that he's been investigating nothing at all. He and the brother go outside and they get into an argument, and here's where something else gets really interesting to me.
In another breakdown I did of a Q connection to the movie "The Adjustment Bureau" I noticed something exceptionally important (can't remember what it is right now--I wrote the thing like two years ago, but I remember it was important) happened at exactly one hour and 17 minutes into the film. With that in mind, I decided to go back to this movie and skip to that exact moment in this film, and it turns out, that's the exact moment the crisis happens. I said it was in the Whataburger, but it was really in the parking lot as the brother is trying to explain to Ben why he lied to him. At exactly one hour and 17 minutes in, right after the brother says "It's complicated" Ben opens his mouth and says:
The brother reminds him that if not for them, nobody in the world would have gone to see him in the hospital when his car blew up, and then says he probably wouldn't have done anything good for Abilene and Ben reveals she was just a girl in his phone. Then the brother punches him in the stomach and as he's reeling on the ground, the mom gives him a nice little speech:
They leave without him, and there's not an uber for hours, so he's forced to walk back to the house, but despite all that, they still let him in the door and let him stay there that night.
He records something on the way home:
The little boy sleeping on his floor that night says that he's scared. Ben asks of what, and the boy says "Of ghosts." Ben says ghosts aren't real. The boy asks "If they aren't real, how come everyone knows what they are?"
Ben replies:
The boy then says something that makes Ben realize the code to Abilene's phone and he opens it up. He finds a text thread with his name on it but that's not actually the text thread he had with her. She's been using his name as cover for someone else she's seeing. He calls it and his phone doesn't ring, which means someone else's is ringing.
He grabs a cowboy had and some boots and a gun, and heads out to that night's rendition of the "after party" where Abilene died and where a party is happening right now. He arrives, learns about who blew up his car and why, rolls his eyes, and then bumps into Q....
Q asks him why he's still in town, that he thought he was finished with the Abilene story, and invites him to his tent to talk. Says he's got a story for him. Tells him the history of opium in America. And mentions the modern opioid epidemic. Says:
Ben follows, and inside the tent he sees a girl doing some drugs, of which Q has an entire stack of boxes full of it.
As he says this, the girl who was doing drugs and is now passed out gets dragged out the tent by some unseen person. Ben asks where she's going. Q says "The afterparty."
Q offers him some drugs. Ben declines.
Ben takes out his recorder and appears to turn it off.
Ben then proceeds to tell Q his theory. That he drugged Abilene, and took her phoen away so she couldn't call 911. And then dragged her out to the desert to die. Q confirms that was the case, and then Ben busts out his recorder to reveal he's been recording the confession. Q seems unconcerned and says:
In fact...here's a link to the actual clip on youtube. It's great you should just watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZeDzBzLsMU
Now it cuts off before the end, but here's what Ben says in reply:
With Lana Del Rey's "Looking for America" playing (check out the lyrics) you can see on Ben's face that he's having a crisis of faith. Or rather perhaps, a crisis of unfaith. He knows he's standing face to face with Nihilism itself. With Satan himself. He's standing face to face with the Devil. The thing he had up until this point in his life unwittingly and ignorantly worshipped. And he can either accept, or rather, go on accepting the Devil's version of reality or...he can embrace what he's learned on this little excursion to small town America, and change. To embrace love, and to see people as people. As something of worth in and of itself. As something to be protected and reverenced and respected and loved.
He grabs the recording from his pocket.
Hits pause.
Pulls out his gun.
And shoots Quentin Sellers, the Devil, Nihilism, the great liar, square between the eyes.
He exits Q's tent slowly, in shock. Then pulls the recorder out of his pocket and deletes every recording he's made since he's been in Texas. Apparently deciding completely that he's not going to release that story and let the bad things Q said would happen happen. He's going to let Abilene rest in peace. As a person. Not live on as a recording.
He leaves the party with Abiline's brother and they stop at Whataburger on the way home. There they hear the police get a call that Quentin Sellers has been shot, and that's the first time we hear him referred to as Q. "Q? Didn't think he was very accicdent prone."
The next morning Ben is talking to the mom at the breakfast table, she's enjoying a cup of coffe and looking out the window, then says:
Then you cut to them in the pickup truck driving down the road and she says:
I love this movie. I think it's one of the best I've ever seen. It hits deep. BJ Novak has a talent. The cast is conspicuous. The writing is beautiful. The music works. The lessons are powerful. As an American. As a believer. As a Q follower. It hits all the buttons. And it makes you wonder about the man who wrote, directed, and starred in it and what his motives were. Whoever BJ Novak is. Whichever side he plays for, this movie has depth, and it took a lot to pull it off the way he did. And I honestly feel like it enriched my life. Highly recommended. I realize I gave you the play by play...but it's still worth the watch, I promise.
Excellent summary and thoughts on the film. I saw the film and to be honest while I loved parts of it the sadness I felt caused a cognitive dissonance where I did not process or perhaps understand as much about the division in America in the way you have noticed and pointed it out. I am definitely going to rewatch it.
I was up until 4am this morning writing that, so I'm glad someone was able to read it haha. I did forget to add something though: what struck me most about this movie was that it felt to me very much like a meta exercise by B.J. Novak.
It watches and reads and feels to me like he's dramatized his own personal transformation on the topic of America and conspiracies. The decision to bring in Ashton Kutcher seems deliberate. The mentioning of Q right near the end. The introspection and transformation his character undergoes...it all feels so...personal. He wrote it. Directed it. And starred in it. His character's name is Ben (I wonder if B.J. stands for Ben Joseph--a common Jewish name). The character, like him, is Jewish, they're both writers. I think when he says he really does love America, B.J. really does love America, and when he says he sees it falling apart and he feels like he's just standing in the corner making fun of it...it definitely feels like he's talking about himself.
The movie feels like a really vulnerable confession to me. It feels very raw and personal and I just think it's as close to a masterpiece as I've ever seen. When Q says "You got your opus" it feels more like he's referring to the film we're watching. Not the story of Abilene that he ultimately deletes.
Think Ill be watching this. Thanks.