In the Drink

A bartender and a longtime customer struggle to keep their beloved dive bar from perishing in a modern world. A young hipster strolls in representing the potential downfall. To keep the dogs at bay the two older men regale the youngster with three stories of tragic, darkly humorous and mythological proportions and have an added story as told by a gardener who walks in to get himself high as hell. The stories are wild, imaginative and just awkward enough to send the young man back into his world of Starbucks and Facebook. Writer-director Richard Sears weaves these tales together like a great collection of Los Angeles short stories by Raymond Carver or Charles Bukowski (in fact, one of the stories is an adaptation of Bukowski's short story "An Evil Town").