’Screwball’ Director Billy Corben On The Roots Of ’Florida Man’

When I bought Billy Corben on the cellphone this week, I requested how he was doing by means of opening pleasantry. “Exhausted, thanks for asking,” Corben informed me, an comprehensible response from anybody doing a press tour, as Corben is, to advertise his new documentary, Screwball (which I lately described as “an insane masterpiece of Floridiana.”)

Then I requested my first actual query, and Corben proceeded to offer some of the expansive, caffeinated interviews I’ve ever carried out. This is exhausted? Billy Corben’s drained makes my wired seem like Steven Seagal after a pair quaaludes.

I quickly discovered that Corben is straightforward to wind up, loves to inform tales, and is a superb salesman, which in all probability helps clarify what makes him such nice documentarian — whose principally Florida-based ouvre consists of Cocaine Cowboys (1 and a pair of), Dawg Fight, and The U (1 and a pair of). Where some documentarians appear to have an ordinary model information that they merely apply to totally different topics (Ken Burns’ picture zooms come to thoughts), Corben’s topics appear to encourage his formalistic strategy.

In Screwball, which is about steroids and Alex “A-Rod” Rodriquez — or extra particularly, “the fact that the career of the highest paid baseball player in history effectively ended over a $4,000 debt between a cocaine-addicted fake doctor and his fake tan-addicted steroid patient,” as Corben places it — this meant hiring youngster actors for the recreations.

Even in his supposedly-exhausted state, Corben had heaps to say about it, the type of interview topic who continually makes you assume each “oh boy this is great stuff” and “oh no, am I going to have to write all this?”

Screwball opens this week on VOD, iTunes, and most streaming platforms.

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