- Simultaneously funny and dark, this documentary follows Jon Hyrns, a porter aboard a refurbished 1930s luxury train. Passengers on the Seattle to L.A. trip know him as "Johnny Berlin" - the man responsible for making their beds and cleaning their toilets. We get to know him differently - as a middle-aged, struggling writer with a workaday job and as many dreams as he has beds to clean. Boyishly charming and with many stories to tell, Johnny takes us on a trip through his life. He's a true wanderer, a man without a home base, whose only plan is to spend his savings on a trip to Cambodia to write his long-gestating novel. The film is ultimately an intimate, offbeat, and humorous portrait of mid-life crisis presented as a traveling monologue.—Michael Perkins
- Jon Hyrns (AKA Johnny Berlin), a porter aboard a luxury train, expounds upon his life as a struggling writer while holding down a workaday job. His stories about his oddball adventures while constantly traveling and trying to maintain some semblance of a life on board the train are simultaneously funny and darkly pathetic. While going about his business, making beds and cleaning toilets, he talks about not having a date in five years, trying to sell his liver for cash, asking his father to increase his life insurance policy so hell get a larger inheritance, and taking a writing sabbatical in Cambodia to write about a man who decides to roll across America. The filmmaker follows his subject on a weeklong trip down the West Coast from Seattle to Los Angeles. The film is ultimately an intimate, offbeat, and humorous portrait of mid-life crisis presented as a monologue.
It's almost as if Johnny is aboard some form of ghost-ship, destined to walk the corridors like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. In fact, Johnny does bear some resemblance to the Jackster and sometimes lets out the odd off-balance observation, which does cock the eyebrow.
The film itself is structured like one long rambling conversation and you can't help getting the feeling that it's just you and him together on the train. There's a slight feeling though that something is buried deep within this character (good or bad we're not sure) but this doc has real warmth and a style that celebrates the "everyman" and highlights the fact that poetry exists everywhere.
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