From Omeleto.

A writer struggles.

Sam has been a ghostwriter for most of his career, but what he really wants to do is finish his first detective novel. But he’s 75, and he fears time is running out, struggling to finish it before it’s too late.

But at his lowest moment of doubt, he finds himself in the midst of some real-life mysteries. The lines between his real and fictional lives blur, giving him inspiration for his book — but putting him in danger in the process.

Directed and written by Will Pinke, this short comedy is both a fun riff on the neo-noir genre and a meditation on time, aging and mortality, as experienced by one man who has not achieved the dream and goal that means the most to him. Sam has used his talent to write other people’s stories to make a living. But when it comes to his own stories, he’s stuck. And at age 75, he’s feeling the pressure to finish his detective novel before it’s too late. That internal pressure collides with the increasingly surreal world around him, confronting him with his worst habits and tendencies while giving him a kick in the pants when it comes to creative inspiration and motivation.

With its New York setting, late-night timeframe, jazzy piano-and-sax score and classic sense of storytelling, the visual storytelling evokes old Hollywood film noirs, laying out clues to an unraveling mystery that Sam finds himself mixed up with as the night goes on. We meet him at a classic diner late at night as he tries to work on his book, but things aren’t going so well. The proceedings take a nose dive when he leaves: he takes a fall, hits his head and then awakens to someone shaking him down for an unpaid debt. From there, the story unfolds with quirky, strange touches that add an element of the dreamlike to Sam’s increasingly unsettling night.

The story is less interested in generating taut tension than creating a kind of puzzle box for Sam and the viewer to work through. Actor Bill Gold plays Sam with both wryly funny befuddlement at life’s challenges and the melancholy of a man who knows he is running out of time and is wondering what happened to the time already passed. All this while navigating an increasingly sticky mystery, one that culminates in a confrontation. But just as the plot thickens, the film takes an outright swerve, unlocking the key to Sam’s first book — and maybe a few of his own existential mysteries.

THE END concludes in a clever way, one that evokes a rueful acceptance of life’s ironies. Perhaps more importantly to him, it gives him exactly what he was looking for: an immersive stream of inspiration, allowing himself to live the stories as much as tell them. It promises to unfurl like a dream, one that will never fall short, or perhaps even end.

THE END. Courtesy of Will Pinke at https://willpinke.com.