AMERICAN JOB

USA | 1996 | DCP | 90 min.
Director: Chris Smith
Cast: Randy Russell, Matt Collier, Tom Wheeler
The Cinematheque celebrates Labor Day weekend with a new DCP restoration of the filmed-in-Wisconsin American Job, one of the funniest and most authentic depictions of working-class life ever committed to celluloid. A few years before he broke out with American Movie, director Chris Smith devised this deadpan work of cinematic fiction that follows around Randy Russell in a series of minimum wage jobs: plastic factory worker, fast food server, hotel room cleaner and more. Smith and co-writer/star Russell uncover one mundane absurdity after another in an ingenious gem that “rivals comedies such as Mike Judge’s Office Space as a workplace classic” (Nicholas Rapold, NY Sun).