The San Luis Obispo International Film Festival has given SLO Review the opportunity to review some of the narrative and documentary feature films on its 2024 program schedule. Follow the links to purchase tickets to see these notable films for yourself.
The Perils of Thinking in Absolutes
Fantasy and reality are difficult to tell apart at times, just as “relationships” and “titles” seem to be two technical ways of understanding human notions about love and responsibility, but also, and perhaps more importantly, considering self-acceptance and identity.
Good Bad Things, Shane D. Stanger’s first film, explores these themes while offering a critique of the perils of thinking in absolutes.
The film takes us intimately into the seemingly perfect life of Danny Kurtzman (played by Danny Kurtzman, who co-wrote the story with Stanger). He lives in a fabulously spacious and cleanly white contemporary house in Southern California with his best friend and business partner, Jason (Brett Dier). A dashingly handsome and lovable young white socialite, Jason seems to have extended his college-years life of carefree partying and high society living while maintaining a fun and sexy non-committal relationship with his beautiful and stylish Black lover, Lexi (Aneisha Hughes)—whose character sadly gets little development.
Danny and Jason own a glitzy marketing company and are in the midst of rebranding a floundering dating app called Rubi.
Shortly after creating his Rubi profile, Danny gets his first match, an unbelievably beautiful, artistic, intelligent, and accomplished woman . . .”
The obstacle in Danny’s otherwise perfect life is FSH muscular dystrophy. Despite this difficult condition, Danny hangs out with Jason, works hard, and parties hard as well. Jason is his intermediary with the world, and much of his mobility and social connections are easier because of his selflessly loyal friend.
Jason cajoles Danny into using the Rubi app to do “research,” and Danny reluctantly gives in and makes a profile, changing his profile picture to only show his head wearing sunglasses with black and white checkered frames. Danny tries to resist, protesting that the person who answers will be a fraud and get his account information and steal his identity.
The ever-faithful Jason has a simple answer: “It’ll be worth it then.” The small exchange is prescient as it is Danny’s identity that has become his dungeon.
Shortly after creating his Rubi profile, Danny gets his first match, an unbelievably beautiful, artistic, intelligent, and accomplished woman named Madi, who becomes very interested in our Danny.
Madi is a high fashion photographer who invites the boys to join her for a photoshoot in the desert around Palm Springs. Madi’s two friends are more beautiful bodies in bikinis than characters, nymphal extras for a surreal scene of booze and shroom-induced swimming pool bacchanalia in the desert night. They even coax Danny into the water, where Madi holds him gently and securely in the water in a tender and motherly baptism-like scene, contrasting with Jason and the now topless naiads cavorting and frolicking in the background.
The group retires to the spacious white house’s bedrooms, Jason with the two beauties, and Danny with Madi. From this passionate and intimate encounter, tenderly captured by cinematographer Nathan Haugaard, the major problems of the story are born.
Danny realizes what’s important in life and relationships—believing in the potential and goodness in people, even when they are unknowns . . .”
The two decide and jointly agree to photograph a full shoot of Danny naked on the bed, and while Madi posits that the photos will be just for them, Danny says she can do whatever she wants with them. When she later reveals she has shown them to an art curator named Marco (Timothy Granaderos) who wants to showcase the pictures at his gallery, Danny reacts bitterly, and their paradise dissolves.
The story reveals some inconsistencies in Danny’s ideas about himself in the world. While he acts as though he believes he is just like anyone else in his social life and business, he doesn’t seem to really believe it when his boundaries are tested. He likes to believe that he can live in a blended gray area in the world, but as the blatant contrasting of clear black and white colors throughout the film’s visuals show, his current world is not gray at all.
Danny is brought out to face himself with surgical precision by Madi (who doesn’t like titles, but has become his “girlfriend”): “What’s keeping you trapped?” “I think I am.”
Danny and Jason’s chic house is all brilliant whites, as are the offices at their company, while Danny always wears black—unlike Jason, who wears a variety of colors in the whitescapes of the film’s cinematography.
The emblem for these motifs features prominently in a reverse silhouette art piece in the background in more than one scene in Danny and Jason’s house. A blank white cut out of Peter Pan on a black field displays the self-imposed separation Danny has from his world. In Pan’s world, he teaches Wendy and her friends to fly: “Think of a wonderful thought.”
Danny’s thoughts are often negative worst-case scenarios because of bad experiences with previous girlfriends, and he is unable to fly. It is only during a grueling meeting with the Rubi corporate brass that Danny realizes what’s important in life and relationships—believing in the potential and goodness in people, even when they are unknowns and our experience drives us to silo ourselves for protection.
After a painfully emotional scene of Danny in his caring father’s arms, shuddering with wracking sobs, Danny changes as he accepts his new, more integrated identity (his father is played with a masterful tenderness by Gale Hansen).
If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that we too often only envision the worst result in life situations, particularly in relationships.”
At the film’s end we find a new Danny at his own photo premiere at Marco’s gallery. He wears a stylish blazer with thin black and white tiger stripes, and the movie moves from tragedy to comedy.
He even reunites Jason and Lexi, bringing white and black together there, too.
Though Good Bad Things is steeped in fantasy, we do get a heavy dose of reality throughout, and by the end, we feel Danny’s frustration and fear of change. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that we too often only envision the worst result in life situations, particularly in relationships.
It’s difficult to believe that people may just like us better than we imagine or fear, and that we’re all missing out on necessary human connections because we comfortably isolate ourselves from the love of others. Danny learns this with much difficulty, and we feel his painful and exuberant growth in the last scenes.
Much of Good Bad Things views like fantasy, but that’s exactly what enables us to reach beyond the boundaries that keep us from being our best and truest selves.
:: Thomas Patchell
The screening of Good Bad Things (run time 96 minutes) at the SLO International Film Festival is sponsored by Ascendo Coffee.