Brooklyn Drive-In: Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

In the shadows of the bright lights of Las Vegas, it's last call for a beloved dive bar known as the Roaring 20s. That’s the premise, at least; the reality is as unreal as the world the regulars are escaping from. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is a mosaic of disparate lives, teetering between dignity and debauchery, reckoning with the past as they face an uncertain future, and singing as their ship goes down.

Filmmaking duo Bill and Turner Ross (Western, 2015 Sundance Film Festival) return with an elegiac portrait of a tiny world fading away but still warm and beating with the comfort of community. Their beguiling approach to nonfiction storytelling makes for a foggy memory of experience lost in empty shot glasses and puffs of smoke.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets was the recipient of the 2018 Rooftop Films and Red Hook Post Sound Mix Grant. Courtesy of Utopia.