Director Jesse Zigelstein and actors Jonas Chernick and Romi Shraiter expected to attend
It’s said that a well-balanced life rests, like a stool, on three legs: home, love, and work. If any one of these is insecure, life wobbles; and if all three are broken…well, everything comes crashing to the floor. Jesse Zigelstein’s bittersweet comedy explores what happens to a smart but struggling middle-aged writer when all three legs of his stool collapse simultaneously. Our sensitive, borderline nebbish antihero is Toronto novelist Joel (Jonas Chernick, deftly balancing his character’s self-deprecating scholarly charm with his maddening self-absorption). We quickly learn that his marriage has fallen apart, he’s in a sorry bachelor pad, and he’s facing long-term career malaise as an adjunct college instructor. Despite apparent success adapting to his new single status—no-strings-attached booty calls with a pretty colleague, the attention (or is it pity?) of friends and family—Joel is on the fast track to a midlife crisis. Only his straight-talking mother (Mimi Kuzyk, a scene-stealer) seems to have an answer. The rest of us get to discover: can Joel’s flair for analyzing literary characters help him fix his own life? —Peter Stein