JOHNNY BERLIN PART 2: NOTES FROM THE DUMPSTER, picks up where JOHNNY BERLIN left off, right after Johnny's tour of duty as a porter aboard a luxury train ended. In PART 2, we find Johnny lying in a hotel room bed, talking about how he gambled away almost all of the money he had saved for his trip while working on the train, and thus ended up destitute in Phnom Penh where he had visions of leaping off of a bridge into the Mekong River. Filled with profundity, existential crises and anecdotes like the one above, JOHNNY BERLIN PART 2 is the continuing story of an oddball’s mid-life crisis and his attempts to overcome his dark obsessions in his own humorous, and often enlightening, fashion. The film follows Johnny, alone, as he travels from Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia where he searches in vain for the graves of his uncles, Benjamin Franklin Simpson and Thomas Jefferson Simpson, to New York City where he goes on a failed job hunt. Along the way, he talks about his grandfather’s lost novel, “Autobiography of a Failure,” muses about finding himself after reading a New Yorker article by Tom Robbins on Buddhism, and ends up in a dumpster on the street filled with used books reminiscing about his homeless older brother whom he lost contact with years ago.

Forms: Documentary
Genres: Comedy, Independent