Andrew Callahan is Gen Z’s favorite gonzo journalist—at least that was the case until he was fired early last year for “sexual misconduct.”
The cancellation came shortly after HBO premiered “This Place Rules,” Callahan’s feature film debut, a documentary about the 2020 presidential election. It gave Callahan a bigger budget to make the same street videos that first made him famous on YouTube, where he still has 2.7 million followers. As we learned from “Hawk Tuah Girl,” street videos are just as popular with Gen Z as previous generations, but they’re more likely to scroll and watch.
Isaac Simpson
But Callahan is no ordinary guy. He delves deeper into “real life” than other YouTubers, reaching out to the kinds of people more careful interviewers avoid and who might seem to have no motivation to go on camera: Antifa foot soldiers, rioters, drug dealers, homeless people.
And yet they talk to Callahan. There’s something about Callahan’s awkward, innocent, pimple-faced teenage demeanor that cuts through walls. He’s the polar opposite of Alex Jones, who is all about sex, ego and agendas — a concave type. Callahan is receptive, listens intently, and doesn’t judge — a convex type.
And his talent for editing. I love Werner Herzog because his documentaries are
The camera always lingers on its subjects a little too long. The interviewees are out of character. Something seems to be going on behind their backs. We see things we shouldn’t see. These little ironies can make the audience laugh out loud, move us deeply, or create a strange synchronicity that makes us feel less alone.
In fact, in the first part of Callahan’s new documentary, “Dear Kelly,”
The film is full of Herzog-esque moments, like a bystander tripping and falling the moment a woke interviewee says something unpleasant, resulting in a completely gonzo sheen.
Callahan has a habit of drinking beer and giving interviews in bathrooms, a habit that continues throughout the film. At one point, he throws a big party at Chico State “for a reason” and gives a number of great interviews in the bathroom while drunk, making him look incredibly drunk and endearing.
At the party, we also witness a fist fight. Andrew seems genuinely excited about it. We, the audience, see his dangerous side. But within 15 cuts of the fight, the two fighters are drunkenly embracing, covered in blood. We see it in Hollywood comedies, but rarely in real life.
“Dear Kelly”
It’s a perfectly edited short feature-length documentary about a man named Kelly J. Patriot, one of those flag-waving, fervent MAGA supporters you often see in protest videos, whose favorite flagpole can hold four flags.
At one moment, Callahan showed us one of Kelly’s heartbreaking home videos from the 1990s, before his life became consumed by obsession, with the camera frozen perfectly on a retro Bud Light can. The audience immediately knew what it meant and erupted in laughter.
In another scene, Callahan interviews Kelly’s children together, her lesbian daughter and her white boy son. The son digresses, “It’s not that I don’t like capitalism, but…” and the daughter cringes and begins to interject, only to quickly shut down. It’s a beautiful sibling moment in 2024 that reflects the most politically polarized generation ever, with men and women drifting apart in unprecedented ways.
I saw this film on its final night of release at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.
38 city premier tourIn the supposedly sold-out crowd of 2,300 Zoomers wearing their Sunday Dodgers hats, I felt like an old man.
My pregnant wife’s belly seemed to be sticking out another foot, attracting stares from the sea of filthy kids, or being willfully ignored. The crowd was similar to the one I’d seen at Tenant of the Trees, a popular cocktail bar in Silver Lake, but I hadn’t seen so many “young people” in one place since. Everyone was dressed like they were in a Macklemore video. Many appeared to be non-binary.
Touring the documentary like a concert was a stroke of genius for Scrollster, a way to maximize audience revenue without the social platforms drinking up the milkshake. Callahan himself introduced the film, and some elements were tailored to be unique to Los Angeles.
At the start of the screening, a QuickTime screen reading “Dear Kelly LA Cut” was dragged from the desktop to the center of the screen. “We just exported the LA Cut 15 minutes ago,” Callaghan said, eliciting cheers from the audience at the handcrafted feel.
At one point the show was interrupted to allow a rapper featured in the documentary, Uncle Bill, to perform live onstage. Other clever “utility” plays included:
Mystery Bundle It was for sale on a website and there was a moderated Q&A session with Callahan after the show, but we weren’t able to attend as we were filling in for a babysitter.
Isaac Simpson
Initial promotion for “Dear Kelly” suggested it would be about Kelly J. Patriot.
Save Callahan’s lifeAnd early on in the film, it seems as though the film is trying to portray Trump supporters sympathetically, or at least nuanced.
The film begins at what appears to be a White Lives Matter rally in Huntington Beach, where Callahan meets Kelly J. Patriot.
It’s a truly incredible scene, and epic in scale: Antifa “counter-protesters” swarming the intersection, waiting for an army of white supremacists to march in, but of course, unable to materialize from the media’s fevered imagination, they never show up.
Who showed up? Kelly J. Patriot, brandishing four MAGA flags. Kelly doesn’t even know why he’s there; Callahan has to tell him about the “White Lives Matter” rally. Kelly had just heard there would be an opportunity to protest.
The counter-protesters are happy to give Kelly a thorough beating — 100 to 1. Kelly is bloody but unbowed. You get the impression that’s exactly what he’s here for.
Callahan lets the scene play out matter-of-factly, without any exaggeration. It makes the media look guilty, and Antifa, exactly the kind of fat, foaming-at-the-mouth, recessive-gene weirdos the right wing thinks they are, look like dangerous, sinister bullies. It also makes the cops look bad. In the end, the cops ignore the Antifa horde and arrest Kelly instead for “brandishing a weapon” — a giant flagpole, say — and Kelly looks like a hero.
Callahan also revealed that he felt uncomfortable when producers of This Place Rules pressured him to give a heartfelt speech in support of Biden in the film, and criticized the liberal attitude of the media, as he is seen trying to follow their orders in a very 1984-esque way.
Callahan seems poised to take on the bigotry and frenzy he inspires. Perhaps, beneath their vulgar political theater, these MAGA people have as deep an understanding of America as the liberals who are so wary of them. Maybe they’re onto something.
Isaac Simpson
Unfortunately, the sincerity with which Callahan first portrays Kelly quickly gives way to condescension.
The story hinges on Kelly’s surprising answers to Callahan’s usual open-ended questions: Kelly reveals that what drives him isn’t necessarily political fervor, but hatred for a predatory lender named Bill Joyner who had scammed him. Callahan wisely seizes on this information and pursues it.
Focusing on Joyner as a subject helps Callahan understand Kelly, and also provides the film’s structuring argument that politically obsessed people like Kelly are in fact deprived of Maslow’s needs — home, security, family — by past trauma.
Sure enough, Kelly lost her home and family to Joyner, and now stalks him relentlessly. Kelly’s obsession with attending MAGA street protests is something of an extension of her obsession with Joyner. While Joyner and the evil regimes that MAGA claim to be fighting are not exactly the same in Kelly’s mind, they are certainly related.
Once Callahan and Kelly become so-called friends, Callahan decides to take Kelly’s claims seriously and begin investigating Joyner, and it is here that Callahan’s genius begins to turn to youth.
The duo’s search for Joyner makes for some fun interludes, as they approach their quarry’s home in ghillie suits, but are ultimately unsuccessful. Their inability to find Joyner is a huge narrative problem, at least if Callahan wants to do justice to the character of Kelly.
As a filmmaker, Callahan had three choices at this point: 1) admit there wasn’t enough material for a feature length film and move on to something else, 2) pivot to exposing the absurdity of Kelly’s inability to track down or contact the man who kicked her out of her home, or 3) strengthen the argument that this is all just Kelly dealing with trauma.
Once he chooses number three, the movie falls apart. The quick, funny takes are replaced with long, boring speeches full of therapy jargon, and there’s no reference to Kelly saving Callahan’s life beyond a brief mention of Kelly calling Callahan after the show was canceled.
In fact, it would be more accurate to describe “Dear Kelly” as Callahan’s victimization of an unlikely friend. Callahan makes clear that our country is a place where a mob of angry “protesters” is free to physically attack a man holding a flag, and where police are free to arrest him for viewing the flag as a “weapon.”
and
Kelly’s Are you someone who is experiencing psychotic delusions?
Concluding that “trauma” is Kelly’s problem allows Callahan and his audience to avoid considering unpleasant political solutions: we just need to get the poor guy into therapy.
Callahan’s timidity as a filmmaker unintentionally translates into a sharp portrayal of his generation, which is so-called “post-left” at its core, resisting bullshit and not easily swayed by Big Boomer narratives of oppression, Whig history, and good versus evil. They hate being told what to think or say, and they respect people who tell the blunt truth, no matter who it offends.
They also don’t shy away from traditional displays of masculinity, like public brawls, that would be unthinkable for the average millennial yuppie.
But like “Dear Kelly” itself, this rough exterior hides a soft, gooey interior. All this misbehavior comes with a disclaimer: No matter what we do to you, we remain victims. Yes, we may be ugly, violent, believe the craziest things, and think nothing of stabbing you over the head with a bike lock. That’s just the way it is, because of our trauma.
