It’s the last night of the semester at a college radio station in a small college town in the midwest. Radio personality Nick Watson (Jonathan C. Legat), his co-host, Andy Wolcienski (Eric Lipe), and show producer, Hannah Lorenz (Michelle Higgins), strap themselves in for one last show of the aptly named series, “Reality.” After the show concludes, Nick will graduate and, shortly thereafter, marry his college sweetheart, Michelle (Stephanie Wyatt), and move up in the world, by relocating to Chicago.
Shortly into their last show two pivotal things occur. First, Nick gets a call from an anonymous caller stating that his fiancée is having an affair on him; second, the snowstorm that’s been brewing outside becomes a blizzard, dumping many feet of snow on them in a very short period of time, which prevents him or his co-workers from leaving the radio station. Trapped in the radio station with all his feelings of betrayal, Nick must attempt to work through his despair and fury, with no one to relieve his radio shift until they can be (eventually) dug out. Since he’s on the air on a show called “Reality”, he feels that the best course of action is to air his fiancée’s indiscretion publicly and work through the “reality” of what he’s going through in real-time.
Despite her private reservations, his producer allows him to do so, provided he can stay within FCC guidelines as far as language goes. He walks a fine line of exposition that often threatens to alienate everyone around him and nearly gets the cord pulled on his show by Hanna, and it slowly becomes apparent that Michelle isn’t the only one with secrets.
When a massive snow storm
shuts down the TV stations...
...everyone ends up listening to
the last radio show of "Reality."
Content
The writing in this movie is pretty smart and tight, with Writer/Director David B. Grelck achieving a very Kevin-Smith style of pacing and feel that often reminds me of Clerks, if it had been set in a radio station and not at the QwikStop, that is. (Considering both White Out and Clerks dealing with dysfunctional relationships, betrayal, the perceived need to better ourselves for someone else, and a fear of embracing needed change, there are more than just surface similarities between the two films.)
Actor Jonathan C. Legat does an inspired job of animating the extremely agitated Nick, whose diatribes are constantly on the edge of soliloquy, yet rarely get too mired in this form of performance. (He reminded me quite a bit of a young, blonde-haired John Cusack in this role.) In one especially impressive sequence that Legat engages in, which is part acting and part camerawork/lighting, he goes through Gollum-like tirade in a bathroom. (The Gollum scene being referenced here is a scene in LOTR: The Two Towers where Gollum argues with Sméagol, his more innocent half, with the filmmakers/animators using different camera angles and cuts to make his two personalities seem like two different physical people.) In the sequence, two parts of Nick’s personality (the fair/balanced and the angry/self-righteous) argue with one another in a mirror, with different perspectives and lighting being used for each of his personality points. Cool blue lighting is chosen to complement the rational side of his personality while angry, festering green lighting is used to highlight the obsessed, jealous part of his personality.
Michelle Higgins, who took a little bit of heat for her often two-dimensional performance in last month’s Irving Renquist: Ghost Hunter, fully redeems herself as the strangely troubled, fully-fleshed out show producer, Hannah Lorenz. She manages to equally play the hard-nosed producer who is trying to keep Nick from bringing down FCC fines, and the old friend who is trying to keep him from doing something that could destroy his life. Her character’s private worries and concerns are stamped on her face through much of the film in a very authentic and realistic manner. And unlike in Irving Renquist, when she’s angry, it isn’t a uniform, melodramatic anger, but is instead the realistic mixture of emotions that happens to flow out as anger at times because of stress, fear, and concern.
The only onscreen actor who had believability issues was Eric Lipe, whose Andy Wolcienski character often seemed to be trying to get all the words of a particular verbal barrage out in a single breath. Fortunately, about a third of the way through the film, he was able to get his feet under him and come into his own in the part, presenting a believable foil to Watson. (While this covers the onscreen characters, there were a number of off-screen characters that have performance issues. I would say about half of the radio callers have believability problems, sounding entirely too much like they’re simply reading from a script, rather than actually asking a question or making a real point. Hopefully, now that the movie has been picked up by Boll AG for distribution, some of these callers could be re-recorded to have a more natural and believable performance.)
It’s the last night of the semester at a college radio station in a small college town in the midwest. Radio personality Nick Watson (Jonathan C. Legat), his co-host, Andy Wolcienski (Eric Lipe), and show producer, Hannah Lorenz (Michelle Higgins), strap themselves in for one last show of the aptly named series, “Reality.” After the show concludes, Nick will graduate and, shortly thereafter, marry his college sweetheart, Michelle (Stephanie Wyatt), and move up in the world, by relocating to Chicago.
