Every Friday Chris hand-selects a streaming recommendation for your weekend.
This Friday’s Featured Flick
The Primary Instinct on Hulu
THE TRAILER
THE DETAILS
DIRECTOR: David Chen
CAST: Stephen Tobolowsky
GENRE: Documentary, Concert Film
RUNTIME: 73 min
YEAR: 2015
THE PLOT (via Letterboxd)
Actor Stephen Tobolowsky has acted in over 200 TV shows and films over the past 40 years, possessing one of the most dazzlingly diverse filmographies on the planet. But even more compelling than the stories he’s been apart of onscreen are those he tells offscreen. In ‘The Primary Instinct,’ Stephen plays himself and uses the art of storytelling to take the audience through a riveting and moving journey about life, love, and Hollywood. Along the way, he just may answer one of the questions that’s dogged humanity since the beginning of time: Why do we tell stories in the first place?
THE REASON
If Stephen Tobolowsky’s face doesn’t look familiar to you, you should probably get checked for face blindness. The man’s an ever-present “that guy” with 241 acting credits on his IMDb page at the time of writing this. If you watch movies or TV at all you’ve seen him pop up once or twice. From Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day, to FBI Agent Jerry Barkley in the FX series Justified, to Sammy Jankis in Christopher Nolan’s Memento, Tobolowsky is known for his small, but extraordinarily memorable roles.
In his forty year career on screens big and small Tobo has accrued more than a few stories and life experiences, and damn, does he know how weave them together into a beautiful tapestry of narrative and humanity. If you’re unfamiliar with the storytelling podcast he does with David Chen, The Tobolowsky Files, I cannot recommend it enough. Subscribe right now! There is hardly an episode that doesn’t completely blow my mind by the end. Tobolowsky’s ability to tell a story, move on to another and another and another and then wrap them all together in an immaculate thematic bow at the end is stunning.
The Primary Instinct is exactly that. But now with moving pictures! In this concert film Tobolowsky takes on the nature of storytelling itself, asking why we tell them in the first place. If you have a free afternoon this weekend you could do far worse with an hour and some change than kicking back and taking in Tobo’s narrative prowess. Watch it now on Hulu.
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