Henry Fool

Plot Summary

Acclaimed writer/director Hal Harley's (Amateur, Flirt), Henry Fool is a Faustian black comedy that will leave you screaming with laughter at its wild mix of vulgarity, antic humor and deeply-felt emotion. Intense, nerdy young garbageman Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) sulks through a sexless, humiliating lower-class existence. He shares a house in Queens, NY, with his clinically depressed mother Mary (Maria Porter) and sarcastic, promiscuous sister Fay (Parker Posey). Into their mundane existence comes Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), a freewheeling, depraved faux intellectual and writer who inspires the repressed Simon to come out of his shell by writing a book-length poem. He also begins an affair with Fay, the two making love at the most awkwardly inappropriate moments. At Henry's goading, Simon timidly peddles his manuscript to an unscrupulous publisher, setting in motion an unforeseen chain of events both tragic and hilarious.