Red, White & Wasted

2019


Directed by
Andrei Bowden Schwartz & Sam B. Jones
Edited by
Michael Vollman & Barry Poltermann

Tribeca Film Festival 2019
Premiere

The Florida Project captured one kind of poverty in the shadow of Disney World; Red White & Wasted depicts another. Embedding in a culture where the term “redneck” is used proudly, the documentary follows the family of Matthew Burns, who, with the nickname Video Pat, was a tireless chronicler of the off-road revelry at an Orlando-area mudhole — a site where locals would drive their trucks through the muck and engage in gone-wild-style partying. The directors, Andrei Bowden Schwartz and Sam B. Jones, follow Burns and his daughters through a period of transition, including an unexpected pregnancy and certain evolving attitudes. (This is a movie in which people say things like, “I’m not fully racist. I’m not racist at all, really.”) The result is an oddly poignant portrait of family and of the wisdom that comes with aging.

Ben Kenigsberg
New York Times