Austin Film Festival Review: Sell Out

Nobody self-castigates like an artist, lashing out at the world for not appreciating their genius and themselves for being worthless, talentless pretenders. Sibling filmmakers Josh and Nick Ashy Holden turned their bleary, sardonic eye to Austin’s barely-making-it actor community in AFF 2016 selection The Golden Rut. Now they return to the festival to sensitively savage the challenges of being a professional writer in A-Town with Sell Out, the story of an author falling off the ethical straight-and-narrow.

Benny Dink (brother Nick, pulling double duty) isn’t looking to sell out. After all, he’s a big deal crime novelist, working on his next book about the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election – the year when outright racist David Duke won the Republican Party nomination. It’s pretty likely that some of his relatives voted for the Klansman, which is one of many reasons why Benny hightailed it to Austin for his career, and why he’s not so happy to return to the Pelican State for the third wedding of his sister, Amelia (Stephanie Hunt). However, it’s a great way to avoid the reality that his relationship is collapsing, his career is stalling, and the only way he’ll make any money is ghostwriting a book for the kind of tech bro that’s taken over West Lake Hills.

Sell Out is somewhat formless, but that’s arguably the point. Benny doesn’t know what he wants or what to do next. As he meanders from Austin to Lafayette, his lack of direction is given a degree of structure through the coteries of characters he meets, each adding a different comedic shade to the story, from the lackadaisical oddness of Benny’s tarpon-hunting stoner dad (Bill Wise) to his old high school friend turned populist right-wing politician Charlie Monk (Temple Baker) and a brief, charming appearance by Andrew Bujalski as Benny’s proctologist.

There’s a gentle lyricalness to Sell Out, rooted in the idea that it’s easy to claim that you’ll hang on to your principles but the bills make a convincing argument about moral flexibility. Even while Benny can be tad insufferable in his self-justifications, he never becomes an annoyance deserving his comeuppance. However, just because Sell Out isn’t pointed, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a point. Just as sibling Josh gave texture to Scottie, the actor backing away from the edge of success in The Golden Rut, Nick gives Benny a messy complexity as he mouths off about staying true to the real you (whoever that is). The film is also quietly about the rambling path to creativity, with the final decision about what Benny’s next book will be really a question about how artists live with themselves.

The obvious tiny budget, and the fact that some familiar Austin haunts fill in for Louisiana, aren’t really enough to cast a shadow over the subtle shading. The Ashy Holdens continue to write smart, intriguing, low-key scripts that build up their layers. Indeed, Benny’s internal conflict becomes a bigger conversation about whether Austin has sold out, and what selling out even means. Luckily, and in keeping with the film’s understanding ways, their answers aren’t simple “things were better in the past, period” nostalgia. Sell Out may ramble in a seemingly directionless fashion, but it’s the digressions and detours that make it interesting.

Sell Out screens again Thursday, Oct. 30, 7pm, at the Galaxy Highland.