Barry Gifford, who has been hailed as “William Faulkner by way of B-movie film noir,” authored more than 40 books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and the bulk of Roy’s World concerns growing up in the 1950s when the post-war boom was reshaping the American landscape and demographics. As Gifford’s words roll off the soundtrack, director Rob Christopher stitches together a river of images—still photographs, animation, newsreels, and industrials—to compliment Gifford’s prose. Winters never looked this cold, newspapers never looked this culpable, and Mayor Daley’s cronies never felt so real. Now streaming on Hoopla.

A version of the above blurb first appeared in the Boulder Weekly Vol. 28, No. 50, “The art of the real.”