THE SWEEP OF THE SECOND HAND

An insomniac slacker just might find true love—if he can stay awake—in this lo-fi, comic debut.

Years ago, Malcolm’s father needed a money-losing business that he could use as a tax write-off. To this end, he picked up an aging film palace on the outskirts of an unnamed midwestern city and had his going-nowhere son run the place. With no incentive to turn a profit, Malcolm manages the Arcadia Filmhaus as if it were his own private screening room. Since he doesn’t deal well with people, the fewer customers who show up for a film, the better. It’s all Kurosawa, Fellini, and Bergman at the Arcadia (and only the ones with short titles—he’s afraid of heights and doesn’t like being up on the ladder changing the marquee longer than necessary), screened in a poorly ventilated theater with concessions served up by Ginny, the rude and attitudinal teenager who’s Malcolm’s only employee. Even though he works only about six hours a day, he sleepwalks through it all looking like the living dead: “I’ve got yellow jackets in my wall and I’m not getting enough sleep” is his refrain to anyone who asks him what’s going on. Obsessed with a belief that he’s losing exactly one minute of z’s each night, Malcolm goes to doctors and snooze therapists who tell him nothing’s wrong. Meanwhile, his girlfriend of seven years, Lena, is getting married to a doctor and he’s halfway falling for the singer (“I do post-punk ballads and dirges”) from a band called Circadian Rhythm Section whose name he can’t remember and whose dates he keeps falling asleep through. Malcolm’s schlumpy appeal is considerable, and all Monti has to do is ease him through an occasionally forced-feeling set of blackly comic episodes (Malcolm’s laughable attempt to run a film festival is especially predictable) for this to work.

Playwright and storywriter Monti has a gift for laidback humor that marks him as a writer sure to gain a dedicated if small following.