I got to chat with director Tony Tost and star Paul Walter Hauser about Americana, the new Western/heist/comedy opening this week from Lionsgate Films. The interviews and my review of this thoroughly enjoyable genre-mashing romp, featured below. Americana also stars Halsey (yeaaah, “Without Me,” “Closer,” “Boy With Luv,” that Halsey!), Sydney Sweeney, Zahn McClarnon, Eric Dane, and Simon Rex. 

It was great to talk to Tost and Hauser (whom nerds may recognize as the Mole Man in Fantastic Four) in a movie-geek way about the iconic American films of the 1970s-’80s whose cinematic influence can be inhaled from every frame of Americana, if you’re into that sort of thing. 

In the vein of Fargo and Pulp Fiction, Americana presents as a crime comedy of errors, with amateur outlaws bumbling their way through a caper leading to a tragic end that’s also sort of hilarious. If you’re a fan of Rian Johnson’s murder mystery series Poker Face, you may see a similar wry, irreverent aesthetic. (Writer-director Tost serves as showrunner on Poker Face’s second season.) The dark comedy aspects of the film play in an interesting space, because there is a lot of vicious violence as well as sex crimes as well as weird cultural appropriating going on, for which your personal mileage may vary, but I found the bleak themes well-balanced with the bittersweet observational jokes about human failings. 

Set largely in rural South Dakota, the caper revolves around various parties trying to steal a Lakota “ghost shirt,” a cultural artifact with both great sacred value and hefty monetary value for a shady “memorabilia” dealer played by Simon Rex. The attempts to heist the shirt go wrong with varying degrees of bloody incompetence as we meet, and try not to get too attached to, the ensemble of eccentric characters. 

Mandy (played by Halsey with intensely haunted snark) is trying to escape the trailer where she lives with an abusive boyfriend played by Eric Dane. Mandy’s kid brother Cal has the adolescent delusion that he’s the reincarnation of Sitting Bull, the legendary Lakota chief. Mandy is in a bad situation and does some bad things to try to get out of it, but her fierce bond to her little brother, articulated in Halsey’s nuanced performance, helps her shine as the (arguable) moral center of a story that’s mainly about people making stupendously wrong choices.

I’ll admit Cal’s “I am Sitting Bull” mantra gets a little aggravating (in the exact way that any kid’s obsessive fan phase can test the nerves) but it gets more palatable when actual Native American characters enter the story to try to sort out the shenanigans. Zahn McClarnon (Marvel nerds may know him as Echo’s dad) plays Ghost Eye, who indulges Cal’s nonsense to the extent that it aids the effort to recover the ghost shirt. McClarnon’s elder cool grows more poignant as the Americana problem builds to its frightening, cinematically-familiar conclusion.

Sydney Sweeney plays Penny Jo, the waitress at the local diner with big dreams of singing in Nashville. Penny speaks with a mild stutter, which makes her singer aspirations all the more affecting. There’s a scene between Penny and her embittered mother that Sweeney plays with piercing raw sadness and clarity. It was also in this heartwrecking scene that I had an “Oh, wait–’ viewing moment, as in, oh wait this is a little bit like those scenes in Carrie (1976) and oh wait, Sydney Sweeney is Spiritually Sort-of channeling Sissy Spacek all over this indie movie, that’s awesome. 

And then, graciously validated by the director Tost (see interview above), who confirmed that Sweeney is doing Spacek a little bit, as per Americana’s interswirling with flavors from American cinema of the “New Hollywood” period: the main reference point here being Spacek as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980). Again, if you like the film-nerd easter-egg hunt aspect of Poker Face, you’ll probably much appreciate Sweeney’s acting here (not an impersonation, I think in musical terms we’d call it an interpolation). It doesn’t hurt that Sweeney looks a little bit like younger Spacek, and as Penny’s desert mishaps escalate, one also thinks of 1973’s Badlands. 

Penny is paired with Hauser’s character Lefty, an Afghanistan war veteran who wants only to marry the love of his life, if only he could find someone who was that. As mentioned by Tost, the movie touchstone here is 1983’s Tender Mercies, foreknowledge of which is completely optional for enjoying Americana, but it’s there. Lefty’s compulsive practicing of a futile proposal speech is unabashedly tender, providing some of the most deftly-written and -acted moments in the film.

Turner Classic Movie-buffiness aside, Americana is a modern story, with a special resonance for our times. Mainly in the sense that across our great land, things are not going well, yet people are trying to work it out. A simplified reading, to be sure, but in the climactic siege-gunfight, the echoes of American movie history and real history come spilling out in a way that reminds the viewer of the brutality with which the West was won, all stemming from humble folks, helpless before their big dreams of money, love, stardom, etc. But, as in Fargo, it’s also pretty funny how it all plays out. The sense of humor is satirical/sardonic and may not be for everyone, in fact I’m fairly confident Americana will have some people going “What the actual–?” but it certainly won’t be for any lack of effort by the filmmakers.

Americana opens in select theaters on August 15.