Reconnecting with Donald
A hilarious and believable portrayal of the childhood friend that time forgot
Donald Cried is the first feature from writer/director Kris Avedisian, based on his short (22-minute) film of the same title from 2012, which won an honourable mention at the Slamdance festival. Avedisian also plays Donald in both versions, which leads me to wonder if he has anything else in the tank.
But that’s a question for his next film, which I’m sincerely hoping happens. In this one, he’s utterly, frighteningly, hilariously believable as Donald Treebeck, the childhood friend that time forgot.
The plot, just solid enough to hold water, finds Peter Latang (Jesse Wakeman), travelling by bus from Manhattan to his small hometown to deal with the death of his grandmother. But he loses his wallet, and so knocks on the door of his former neighbour to ask for a lift to the funeral home, and the loan of a few bucks.
Enter Donald: unkempt, unshaven, clad in too-large glasses and distressingly little else.
He’s puppy dog excited to see his old high school friend, and launches into a lengthy diatribe about how he always imagined Pete would have become a bounty hunter, riding a Harley, with rippling muscles and flowing hair decorated with totems gathered from those he had killed.
Pete, trying to find a way to edge into the conversation with his request, listens with his face frozen in the expression of a man whose grandfather is telling racist jokes at Thanksgiving. When he manages to ask, Donald is happy to oblige, on the condition that they hang out and reconnect.
The film’s 88-minute ramble through the rest of the day, an awkward evening and a squeamish morning after, works so well because the characters are so utterly believable.
You buy Pete and Donald as former buddies who tolerated each other’s company due to a shared love of girls, pot and heavy metal. (Successful rock bands have been built on less.)
You believe that Pete moved away, put away those memories and promised never to look at them again, while Donald has done little else all these years. When he hears that Pete works in finance in the city, he wants to know if he has “the keys to the vaults,” and then suggests a robbery plan that would leave a 12-year-old snickering.
And while it would be pretty easy for the more successful friend to roll his eyes at his former buddy’s bumpkinly behaviour, it’s also clear that Pete is, somewhere deep inside, still the guy who could befriend Donald as something of an equal, once upon a time.
You carry your childhood within, whether you leave it behind for bounty hunting or banking.
Or whether, in Donald’s case, you never leave it behind at all.