Jason Sondhi
Drug-dealing is an unsavory business and it deservedly has a pretty crummy reputation, but does it have to be so? Can’t drug-dealing be a kinder, better vocation? Barry, an “aw shucks” sort of gent, intends to find out in this darkly comedic short that premiered at SXSW 2016.
The drug business operates like other, ordinary businesses in many ways, as one can learn from the work of sociologists like Sudhir Venkatesh. So certainly there are lessons to be learned for enterprising dealers by looking to worlds of management, marketing or strategy advice. Stringer in the seminal TV show, The Wire, took business classes at his local community college after all. In that vein, Barry has a secret formula for cocaine salesmanship that is jaw-dropping in its conventionality: excellent packaging, warm customer service, and a popular Facebook page. When his business starts to blow up though, can Barry keep up with demand?
Starring familiar TV-face Pete Gardner in the titular role, Barry exudes an abiding wholesomeness in his role as drug dealer and the contrast this provides with your expectation of life in the drug game is a large part of the joke. While one fears that this approach would become one-note, the film is economic in its length, and its writer and first time director, Jay Rondot, does a good job of adding material on the margins to deepen the themes and extend the comedy. Partly this is accomplished through some excellent supporting characters—Rondot casts himself in the funniest role, that of a sleazy LA customer whose anxiousness to acquire product (I have to take my nephews to Chuck E Cheese tomorrow!) sets the film in motion.
Another part of the formula is the subversive pleasure that Rondot, a working TV and web series writer for over a decade, takes in being a student of the genre that he’s spoofing, incorporating well-known tropes like “one last job and then I’m out of the game”, and having kingpins lay out in front of mansion pools. Rondot alerted us that the film’s opening shot is an homage to Michael Mann’s Heat, and his discordant dip into the great American songbook, plucking out The Carpenters’ “Top of the World” for the montage sequence in the middle of the film is a move cribbed straight from Scorcese. The conclusion of the Barry even veers into social satire—it is a bit crazy how much we reveal over Facebook, isn’t it?
While not a complicated production, Rondot proves with Barry that his honed comedic voice translates to direction, and with a prestigious festival run in the books, we hope to be treated to more work like Barry from Jay in the future. He let it slip that he is currently writing a feature he intends to direct, so best of luck!