That the style feels so fully-formed feels downright shocking coming from a 26-year-old in his debut feature. In many ways, the semi-autobiographical story Alfred tells in North Hollywood, about a wannabe pro skater played by Ryder McLaughlin and his old school dad played by Vince Vaughn, feels like Mid90s version 2.0 - the coming-of-age tale updated for a younger generation, the dialogue refined and the visuals polished. Mikey Alfred’s mother worked as Evans’ assistant for more than 30 years, and in 2017 Evans told the LA Times “Mikey is the first kid I knew who reminded me of me.”Įvans died in 2018, but Alfred continued his film industry education working with Jonah Hill and A24 on Mid90s, which Alfred co-produced and which featured some of Illegal Civilization’s skaters. Alfred, in addition to being the 26-year-old founder of the skate-crew-turned clothing and skate brand Illegal Civilization, was also partly mentored in the film business by none other than Robert Evans, the legendary and much caricatured old school producer and studio exec of such films as Chinatown, Marathon Man, and The Godfather. That North Hollywood‘s characters walk, talk, and act like the Gen Z skate crew that they are, while Alfred shoots them like a hot rod movie from the sixties, is by design. Instead, Alfred’s film looks grand, with vivid colors, dynamic compositions, and a commitment to “classic Americana.” Trends change, but “make a movie that looks good” is one value that remains fairly consistent. Where so many attempts to make younger, hipper, more contemporary content take the form of scruffy, DIY-looking, “found” footage, North Hollywood, which actually is pretty close to DIY, is the opposite. Mikey Alfred’s debut feature, North Hollywood, is weirdly suited for the streaming era attention span, and not because it seems small.
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