{"id":25372,"date":"2025-10-29T00:28:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T00:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/25372\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T00:28:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T00:28:02","slug":"sell-out-the-austin-chronicle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/25372\/","title":{"rendered":"Sell Out \u2022 The Austin Chronicle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nobody self-castigates like an artist, lashing out at the world for not appreciating their genius and themselves for being worthless, talentless pretenders. Sibling filmmakers Josh and Nick Ashy Holden turned their bleary, sardonic eye to Austin\u2019s barely-making-it actor community in AFF 2016 selection The Golden Rut<\/a>. Now they return to the festival to sensitively savage the challenges of being a professional writer in A-Town with Sell Out, the story of an author falling off the ethical straight-and-narrow.<\/p>\n

Benny Dink (brother Nick, pulling double duty) isn\u2019t looking to sell out. After all, he\u2019s a big deal crime novelist, working on his next book about the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election \u2013 the year when outright racist David Duke won the Republican Party nomination. It\u2019s pretty likely that some of his relatives voted for the Klansman, which is one of many reasons why Benny hightailed it to Austin for his career, and why he\u2019s not so happy to return to the Pelican State for the third wedding of his sister, Amelia (Stephanie Hunt). However, it\u2019s a great way to avoid the reality that his relationship is collapsing, his career is stalling, and the only way he\u2019ll make any money is ghostwriting a book for the kind of tech bro that\u2019s taken over West Lake Hills.<\/p>\n

Sell Out (which premieres on Plex Oct. 30 after its premiere at AFF) is somewhat formless, but that\u2019s arguably the point. Benny doesn\u2019t know what he wants or what to do next. As he meanders from Austin to Lafayette, his lack of direction is given a degree of structure through the coteries of characters he meets, each adding a different comedic shade to the story, from the lackadaisical oddness of Benny\u2019s tarpon-hunting stoner dad (Bill Wise) to his old high school friend turned populist right-wing politician Charlie Monk (Temple Baker) and a brief, charming appearance by Andrew Bujalski as Benny\u2019s proctologist.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a gentle lyricalness to Sell Out, rooted in the idea that it\u2019s easy to claim that you\u2019ll hang on to your principles but the bills make a convincing argument about moral flexibility. Even while Benny can be tad insufferable in his self-justifications, he never becomes an annoyance deserving his comeuppance. However, just because Sell Out isn\u2019t pointed, that doesn\u2019t mean it doesn\u2019t have a point. Just as sibling Josh gave texture to Scottie, the actor backing away from the edge of success in The Golden Rut, Nick gives Benny a messy complexity as he mouths off about staying true to the real you (whoever that is). The film is also quietly about the rambling path to creativity, with the final decision about what Benny\u2019s next book will be really a question about how artists live with themselves.<\/p>\n

The obvious tiny budget, and the fact that some familiar Austin haunts fill in for Louisiana, aren\u2019t really enough to cast a shadow over the subtle shading. The Ashy Holdens continue to write smart, intriguing, low-key scripts that build up their layers. Indeed, Benny\u2019s internal conflict becomes a bigger conversation about whether Austin has sold out, and what selling out even means. Luckily, and in keeping with the film\u2019s understanding ways, their answers aren\u2019t simple \u201cthings were better in the past, period\u201d nostalgia. Sell Out may ramble in a seemingly directionless fashion, but it\u2019s the digressions and detours that make it interesting.<\/p>\n

Sell Out screens again<\/a> Thursday, Oct. 30, 7pm, at the Galaxy Highland.<\/p>\n

Sell Out<\/p>\n

World Premiere. 92 min. Directed by Josh Ashy Holden and Nick Ashy Holden. Starring Nick Ashy Holden, Stephanie Hunt, Olivia Applegate, Adrianne Palicki, Temple Baker, Andrew Bujalski, Gabriel Luna, Jimmy Gonzalez, Bill Wise.<\/p>\n

A note to readers:\u00a0Bold and uncensored,\u00a0The Austin Chronicle\u00a0has been Austin\u2019s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community\u2019s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nobody self-castigates like an artist, lashing out at the world for not appreciating their genius and themselves for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,15844,134,133,1551,15965,17918,14002],"class_list":["post-25372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-film-festival-2025","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-feature","tag-movie-reviews","tag-nick-ashy-holden","tag-sell-out"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}