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The titular company is a scam record label, duping amateurs into signings that require a down payment on recording costs (real labels, of course, wait more patiently to screw artists out of money). Into this world of hotel-room auditions and spray-painted gold records enters Martin (Pat Healy, like a meeker Neil Patrick Harris), paired with the imposing Clarence (Kene Holliday) on sales calls disguised as A&R. These scenes incorporate actual audition footage, with Healy and Holliday doing naturalistic improv in response to genuine amateurs, which somehow comes down on the side of naturalism rather than the condescension of reality TV. But halfway through, the film stalls. The auditions become redundant, and for a while Martin seems to get more naïve about his job just to delay and then accentuate a stagey desperate-salesmen routine. Before the inevitable sets in, the film is a gently, sometimes brilliantly, discomforting evocation of music-industry fringes — a seedy B-side to Once.
Opens September 14 at Landmark Sunshine, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas
Opens September 14 at Landmark Sunshine, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas
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