Memorable movies are still being made on the streets of Los Angeles — although Max DeFalco’s rakish indie “Ten Will” isn’t going to get on any tourist’s map to the stars. Filmed without permits for approximately the cost of a used car, it’s a cringe comedy about a newly released convict, Tennessee Williams (Mikul Robins), frantically trying to get across town to the East L.A. Sheriff’s Department so he can register as a sex offender.
On the hero scale, Ten, as he calls himself, rates a zero. Whiny and obnoxious, he’s the Larry David of lechers. We want him to accomplish his quest only because a dangerous guy like him shouldn’t slip through society’s cracks. But DeFalco is drawn to the sidewalk dwellers, street preachers and parking-lot boozers who also lurk down there and help (or hinder) Ten, usually at a loud volume. The filmmaker delights in making the discomfitingly watchable Ten suffer. For one sequence, he sends Robins in character onto Alvarado Boulevard to try to earn cash by forcibly washing strangers’ windshields — during a rain shower.
This is DeFalco’s debut feature after making several skits about weirdos with warped goals. A 20-something cemetery employee, he shot “Ten Will” in 13 days on the weekends, scouting locations during his commute from MacArthur Park to Inglewood. Both he and his film could share the same subtitle he used for his first short: “A glimpse into the penetrating insightful examination of the delusions of a bottom-dwelling dreamer.”
DeFalco is all about the hustle. Apropos for a story about people on the margins, his settings are liminal: a highway shoulder, a charred underpass, a real-life fast food drive-through. (Cinematographer Brandon D. Hill sneaks his footage from a nearby parked car.) Traffic intrudes. Helicopters thrum. Tension builds. The images are stunning when they want to be but enjoy being aggravating, too. The lens is always — always — zooming until Ten’s stress becomes contagious.
Like Richard Linklater’s own low-budget breakout “Slacker,” “Ten Will” is so crowded with vivid kooks that you could imagine the camera pivoting to follow whoever it meets. The script feels more improvisational than it is. Most of the ensemble is made up of exuberant nonprofessionals, at least one of whom agreed to barge into a scene for $50 and is so screamingly, gigglingly pesky that he’s well worth the money.
Robins, however, is an actual actor who’s worked steadily, and inconspicuously, since 1985 when he had bit parts in “Teen Wolf” and “Weird Science.” He’s not afraid of being loathed, squinting his eyes until they’re unreadable. If you look very hard, you might find sympathy. I didn’t. But I did see a human being.
Since the faces on display are unusually eclectic, the knee-jerk reaction is to fear the movie is making fun of them. In fact, “Ten Will” is audaciously neutral toward everyone, especially its lead. As Ten’s lovelorn prison pen pal Lillian, an immobile shut-in, Peggy Fields Richardson initially appears to be a punchline, but goes on to deliver a nuanced turn as a woman who’s long awaited her chance at romance.
To state the obvious, “Ten Will” isn’t for everyone. Even people who like the film will leave yowling at the ending. Still, devotees of John Waters, Sean Baker, Todd Solondz and the Safdie brothers will sense that DeFalco is a kindred spirit, a filmmaker with an open-minded curiosity about the rowdier parts of the human zoo.
Surprises happen when a film is cast purely from people DeFalco finds interesting. To play Lillian’s cranky father, DeFalco enlisted a garrulous beer drinker named Harvey Fisher whom he befriended golfing at the Los Feliz Par 3 — and, as a treat, the director pauses his flow to let Fisher croon a folk song on the guitar. Anyone can make art.
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