Being Flynn (2012)

Plot Summary

Nick Flynn

Nick Flynn is a depressed young man ( who feels lost. His girlfriend, who is frustrated by his lack of initiative, moves out and Nick is forced to find a new home. He finds it with a few other young men who are rooming in an old strip club in a violent New York City ghetto that was closed down by the government due to unsafe conditions (the film takes place in the '90s).

Meanwhile, Jonathan Flynn--Nick's father--is a cab driver struggling with mental illness. After taking a break to have sex with a person who rode his cab, he becomes infuriated by the noisy music played by his neighbors and barged into their apartment with a cudgel. As a result, he is evicted.

Jonathan calls Nick, who he hasn't seen in eighteen years. Jonathan gets Nick to help him put his items in storage.

Jonathan goes to an old friend and asks if he can move in for a bit, but the man refuses since Jonathan is volatile and delusional. Jonathan lives in his cab.

One of Nick's roommates introduces him to Denise, a woman of roughly his age. Denise works at a homeless shelter and she gets Nick a job interview. Nick is put on a list to be a substitute worker, but it turns out he has consistent full-time work.

Jonathan Flynn

Nick and Denise have a one-night stand that leads to a true relationship. Denise reads some of the writing Nick has done (Nick wants to be a writer) and is interested, though she is concerned by the constant depressing nature of Nick's work and thoughts.

Jonathan loses his job and the cab (which is provided by his work) after he crashes it while driving drunk. He goes to the homeless shelter where Nick works to stay, though he insists it is only for "research" on his self-proclaimed masterpiece memoir.

As the weeks go by, Nick becomes increasingly frightened that he will end up like his father. Meanwhile, Jonathan gets more and more confused and loses his grip on reality frequently. Usually drunk, he acts irrationally and gets into fights, though he frequently tries to connect with Nick.

Nick frequently recollects his mother, who committed suicide. He starts to abuse alcohol like his father. He purchases cocaine from one of his roommates and becomes addicted.

Jonathan is banned from the homeless shelter for two months due to constantly attacking people. When the staff vote him out, Denise votes for him to stay but Nick says he should go even though it is frigidly cold.

Jody Flynn

Denise breaks up with Nick because she says he is too messed up by the drugs and she lost a beloved brother to it. Nick realizes he is ruining himself and goes to rehab. He quits cocaine.

Nick hears from a homeless woman that Jonathan has been beaten up and was nearly murdered. He finds Jonathan out in the cold sleeping on the ground. He brings him back to his house.

Jonathan asks Nick about his mother. Nick confesses that she committed suicide after reading an unfinished story in Nick's diary. The story was of his mother and it was very depressing, but Nick had planned to finish with a declaration of his love. After reading the story, Nick's mother had killed himself.

Jonathan tells Nick that he doesn't believe a story could cause someone to kill them self. He says people kill themself because they hate who they are. He says that he doesn't hate who he is because he is a genius, and since Nick has his genes he is a genius too.

Denise

Nick begins to write more frequently. A few months later, he leaves working at the shelter. He thanks Denise for helping him.

Months after that, on one of his frequent visits to the home Jonathan is able to rent (with government help and Nick's help), Nick shows Jonathan a book he wrote that was published. Jonathan is immensely proud of his son and shows Nick his book. The book has potential but devolves into Jonathan's own incoherence. Nick realizes that it is like Jonathan's life and what he left to his son--a great amount of potential and genius genes and an unfished story to complete.

Nick introduces Jonathan to his new wife and daughter. Jonathan says that Nick can have "the last word," symbolic of how Jonathan's unachieved gifts can be brought about in his son.

Production

The Title

The book on which Being Flynn is based is called Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. After film executives asked, the MPAA made it clear that neither the world "bullshit" or any variations of that word could be put in a movie title. The movie was thus given the title Welcome to Suck City, but apparently this turned off potential filmgoers. Therefore, the picture was named Being Flynn, as it dealt with the connection between the father and son in the Flynn family.

Critical Reception

Being Flynn received mixed reviews from critics. 53% of the 79 Rotten Tomatoes reviews (so 39) were positive; as a result the movie got a score of "Rotten." On Metacritic, the movie got a score of 53 as well, which is in the categories "Yellow" and "Mixed Reviews." Of that site's reviews, 11 were positive, 13 were mixed, and 3 were negative.

Despite the somewhat low scores, many critics gave the film near perfect ratings, including Ken Hanke of Mountain Xpress and Richard Roeper of Reelz and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Box Office

Being Flynn performed poorly at the box office. Opening in four theatres, it made a decent $43,000 in its opening weekend. It didn't climb much after that, though--its world total is well under a million.

That said, distributor Focus Features didn't give it much of a push, obviously intending for it to make its money on DVD.