Flipside

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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“Flipside,” a new documentary by Chris Wilcha is an engaging and wistful rumination about pop culture, nostalgia, the mania of collecting, and the passage of time. It is constructed like a stream of consciousness collage from different sources, but all of the different elements make up the mind and the worry of Chris Wilcha the filmmaker.

In the 1990s, Wilcha was hot on the documentary scene with his film “The Target Strikes First,” a character study of disgruntled office workers. After this success, Wilcha worked with Ira Glass on the TV version of “This American Life,” but the show had a short life. Wilcha had dreams of working with MTV, yet his opportunity did not match his high hopes. He made commercials for companies. Then the Director Judd Apatow called. Wilcha thought he had made the big time at last, by filming a documentary for the much-respected comic director. Disappointingly, the film went straight to video with very little financial return.

Wilcha, now married with children, was forced to continue commercials, becoming in short, a salesman very like his father. Wilcha is plagued with guilt and director’s block agonizing over not being able to finish large projects.

Wilcha returns to New Jersey and his childhood record store Flipside Records in Pompton Lakes. In its unbridled passion, mania, and clutter for what it loves, it is a kind of Gotham Book Mart for the musically intense.

For Wilcha and for others, Flipside Records becomes a lighthouse of sonic memory, a beacon and a springboard for nostalgia and new ideas. The store is a crammed and beautiful Rubic’s cube of audible history. Its core is jumbled, gray and wild and smells like meat. But here you can find virtually anything, whether your ear desires it or not.

Wilcha sees the store as a symbol of himself. It is stuffed full of disparate sounds and musical artifacts very like the director’s mind. The store at many points, seems a hair’s breadth from closing. Still, it carries on. 

And Chris Wilcha carries on. He interviews jazz photographer Herman Leonard, TV producer David Milch and the zany Uncle Floyd who is a regular store customer. Floyd had a hard to classify comedy variety show that ran for 24 years on New Jersey television. David Bowie paid tribute to him with the song “Slip Away.” The song expresses the perils of creativity, work and the sadness of time passing. 

Wilcha decides to work for Ira Glass again, this time on Broadway, but the show folds and the film is never made.

The director returns to the record store, but the owner is taciturn. Wilcha reasons that this might be in part because of his own lack of execution or perhaps because of a city citation involving a damaged sign.

In a rhythmic cycle of memory, revery and melancholy, Wilcha regularly returns to the store. Now it is even more cluttered and in disarray with few customers. And there is another similar store in the vicinity.

Wilcha finally decides to sell his records giving them to Flipside competitor Station One, reasoning his albums will be more enthusiastically appreciated in those hands.

Wilcha is at first, ridden with guilt by his action.

This film is a highly personal and immersive meditation on the reality of time, the fear of losing both places and objects and one’s personal self as well as the insistent urge to hang on.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com