(1999)
"Sometimes I'm only pretending to listen." "Sometimes I'm only pretending to talk!" The verbal volleys go back and forth in actor/filmmaker Michael Barron's feature debut, a made-in-Cleveland comedy that plays as though Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard, Whit Stillman got tossed into the same burning Cuyahoga River together and clung to a Drew Carey-shaped flotation device for safety. Barron plays Fitz, a young man facing the world (i.e. dreary jobs at places like Burger Bazaar) armed with a worthless creative writing degree, a car composed mostly of rust, and arcane philosophies nurtured along by his slacker housemate Austin, ten years a lazy mall janitor and proud of it. Austin is able to pull some strings with upper management and gets Fitz in a position - wearing a urine-stained bunny costume at an Easter display. Just when it looks like things can't get any worse for the hero, a guy calling himself the devil offers to buy his soul, adding that Fitz should sell now, while it's still worth something. e8a Written by Michael Barron