Flipside is about Christopher Wilcha a documentary filmmaker, or as he says he is a commercial director. He just got started in the filmmaking business as a documentary filmmaker. His first film, The Target Shoots First, was a breakout hit twenty years ago or so. Since then he has struggled with his career and moving to Los Angeles was supposed to help him in his career, but it proved to be a new challenge for him and his family.

The move to Los Angeles opened up an opportunity to do a documentary for Judd Apatow, who became a friend of his, but in reality caused him to stop doing the films he loved doing, documentaries. After a long and prosperous career of doing commercials Chris still had a drive to make documentary films. When he went back home for a spell he visited his old job at a records store called Flipside Rrcords and Tapes: An Old Record Store in New Jersey. Where he worked for Dan Dondiego Jr. He loved that job and chose to make a film about it and the owner and his time working there. Like most of his other film projects it was a start and stop.

This film is a culmination of a lot of his projects all rolled up into one. There are multiple characters that are focused on from a photographer Herman Leonard, to an author Starlee Kine to the host of a television/radio host Ira Glass and finally a comedy sketch show, Uncle Floyd, host Floyd Viviano. All of these characters combined with the record store owner and the filmmaker make for an interesting film. Just not a great one.

Wilcha played around with a lot of different things in this film. A framing sequence about his own life is the part that was most interesting to me. This man uprooted his whole life to try to follow his dream and he ended up doing something with his life he said to himself when he was young he wouldn’t do. He didn’t want to be what he believed to be a sellout. It’s about making money and raising a family in the end though so he did what he had to do to make a life for himself and his family. His story is the most fascinating part of this film.

The rest of the characters were interesting but not that interesting to make full films about. Wilcha used all kinds of tricks in documentary filmmaking to create this hodgepodge of stories. Archival footage, recordings and various other tricks of the trade that were combined to put this all together. It was still a little over an hour and half long. So that was good. I just think I would have liked to see it be more focused on one or two subjects like the filmmaker and the record store owner.

Flipside like the title suggests is a flipside in various people’s lives. Some people are moving on with their lives, some people change their lives for the better and others just go forward the way they have for many years. The film is edited together to combine multiple stories which is an interesting way to do a documentary. I would rather it be focused on a couple people rather than the seven it focuses on. It’s a little all over the place in that regard. This is a good documentary overall though. 

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen