Crew:
Directed by Matthew Harrison
Produced by Jonathan Starch
Screenplay by Christopher Grimm and Matthew Harrison
Photographed by Howard Krupa
Music by Daniel Brenner and John Horn

Synopsis: Jason Andrews (Last Exit to Brooklyn) is Simon, a downwardly mobile urban white-guy who hustles a living selling bootleg music on the streets of New York City's Lower East Side.

Simon lives in a tenement walk-up in the LES where everyone calls him "whitey.. Ludlow Street chick Cyd (Kimberly Flynn, Revolution), who has a real job, visits Simon for sex weekday mornings. Simon's bootleg-wannabe sidekick Fuller (Kevin Corrigan, Slums of Beverly Hills) has innocent romantic fantasies about Cyd.

Enter Cynthia Sley (Bush Tetras) of 1-900 BOXX (an all-girl militant punk band) who, having learned that Simon is selling her music, pays a violent visit with her thugs. They beat up Simon and smash his gear. Further complicating Simon's life, a girl from his past Marty (Eddie Daniels, Bad Lieutenant), shows up with her suitcase to announce that Simon1s mom has passed away.

Simon borrows money from Mr. Bunch (Mark Alfred, Amongst Friends), his fat middle-aged mentor so that Simon and Fuller can tape a 1-900 BOXX gig. The band comes after them, beats Fuller, and hounds Simon out of the city with Marty in tow.

Simon and Marty hightail it to Queens on the subway, ending in Far Rockaway where Marty confesses her love to Simon and they spend a romantic night under the boardwalk at 105th St.

But there is no escape for Simon; he is drawn inexorably back to the neighborhood where he pays his debt to Mr. Bunch, and is freed from his past in an electrifying downtown NYC reckoning with fate.

Festivals and Awards:
JURY PRIZE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
Munich Film Festival Special Prize
First Prize Feature Florida Film Festival

Quotes:
"A Lower East Side Breathless" Jay Carr, Boston Globe
"A knockout punch." Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
"A gritty, funny urban street romp." John Anderson, New York Newsday
"Downright exhilarating!" Larry Worth, New York Post
"Strong, confident, thoughtful script, all-pro cast; devastating." Ken Eisner, Variety

Reviews:
LA Times Friday December 15, 1995
by Kevin Thomas
RHYTHM THIEF a Survival Tale With Raw Drive and Energy
Wedged among a thicket of year-end prestige pictures, Matthew Harrison's RHYTHM THIEF is a triumph of economy in all senses that pops up to deliver a knockout punch. Harrison yanks us right down to the mean streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side where Simon (Jason Andrews) and almost everyone he comes in contact with is living the most marginal of existences. Simon survives by selling bootleg music cassettes on the streets. He's a compact, virile young man, self-possessed and self-reliant. He's also a man of his word, tough and resilient and he exudes an inner strength, a cool self-discipline that makes him a magnet for the desperate and the outright demented. He's always fending off a hyper kid (Kevin Corrigan) who wants to be his pal and his partner. A woman (Kimberly Flynn) drops by his stark dingy tenement apartment for "sex and nothing else", but gets hysterical when he flatly insists she live up to these terms which, he reminds her, are you own. Simon clearly has decided that survival depends upon abiding by his own code and maintaining a detachment from others. He is really only open, if you can call it that, with a philosophical older neighborhood man (Mark Alfred) who appreciates his intelligence and integrity and wishes Simon would do more with his life. Out of the blue a waiflike young woman Marty (Eddie Daniels) from his past turns up to tell him that his mother, who had been a mental patient, has died. Simon reflexively rebuffs Marty, a dreamy type who loves to write on walls (and on her arms too), but she persists. A series of events propel Simon and Marty to Far Rockaway Beach where he at last feels able to reveal his vulnerability and capacity for tenderness. In telling Simon's story, Harrison has been aided by an exceedingly vital and fluid cameraman, Howard Krupa, who shot in black and white. In expressing Simon's concern that his life means nothing, Harrison reveals a style that is at once as rigorously minimalist as Simon himself yet exudes the raw drive and energy of the film's extraordinarily intense and captivating score by Danny Brenner, Hugh O'Donovan, John L. Horn and Kevin Okerlund. Andrews is an actor of admirable reserves and concentration, and he's supported by actors as capable as he is. Often funny in its sense of absurdity and finally wrenching, RHYTHM THIEF - which reportedly cost only $11,000 to make - exudes a sense of life being lived on the edge.