Arch4r’s Agenda. Screenplay. Draft 49. Part 2
INT. MA FISCHER’S – DAY
Our scene opens on blackness. This is a sophisticated metaphor.
We pull back to see that we’ve been looking at a close-up of a cup of black coffee. A pale hand with ragged, dirty nails reaches for the mug. We pull back and see ARCHER, the managing editor at Milwaukee Magazine, sitting in a booth at Ma Fischer’s diner.
The last we saw him, he had just written Week 1 of Archer’s Agenda for the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival. He takes a long sip of the coffee, sets it down, and then looks out the window as rain falls on Farwell Avenue. It looks exactly that one video of Matthew McConaughey in that café, except if Matthew McConaughey had undergone some horrific plastic surgery.
A fist suddenly slams against the tabletop. Archer yelps like a small puppy, and then is clearly embarrassed by the noise he just made so he clears his throat real masculine-like. He looks up to see a bearded man looming over the table. This is CHRIS, Milwaukee Magazine’s executive editor, Archer’s boss.
CHRIS
Wake up and smell the coffee, buddy boy.
ARCHER
What?
CHRIS
It’s like, I mean, like, well, you know…
Chris ends the sentence that should never have begun and swings into the booth next to Archer.
CHRIS
We got a problem, A-Sizzle. You can’t just not show up to work without telling anyone. Everyone’s looking for you, and here you are drinking coffee and staring out the window at a diner.
ARCHER
How’d you find me?
CHRIS
Followed the smell.
ARCHER
Well, I’m actually working very hard at the moment.
The waiter brings an overflowing Meat Lovers’ skillet and a side of chocolate chip pancakes to the table. Chris raises his eyebrows at Archer.
ARCHER
What? You want me undernourished?
CHRIS
Archer, listen. No more joking around. Your first week of Archer’s Agenda stunk. All right? It was no good. You can’t start a roundup of films with a 500-some-word self-referential intro written like a screenplay. The self-indulgence is out of control. Don’t you see that it undercuts the entire article?
Archer is eating a pancake.
CHRIS
You need to rein it in. Get serious. If you need inspiration, just consult the many award-winning features I’ve both edited and written.
ARCHER
Why is everyone always plugging their stories in the middle of mine?
CHRIS
Why are you always making us characters in yours, you weirdo?
ARCHER
Chris, please, listen to me. I’m just a little guy.
CHRIS
You are damn near 30 years old.
Archer opens his mouth to retort, and then instead leaps from the booth. He trips over a table leg and lands flat on his face.
CHRIS
What are you doing?
ARCHER
You’ll never stop my self-indulgent intros!
CHRIS
I can very easily stop them, Archer.
ARCHER
Freedom!
EXT. FARWELL AVENUE – DAY, RAINING
Archer sprints from the diner out into the rain. His scuffed sneakers pound the pavement as he runs toward the Oriental Theatre. Through the doors, he ducks past the folks who work there and tries not to look too nuts as he flashes the press pass that hangs around his neck.
INT. ORIENTAL THEATER – DAY
He takes a seat in the lobby across from the concessions stand, waiting for the next feature to start. He pulls a laptop out of the back of his jeans. He doesn’t have much time. Soon enough Chris will change the WordPress password and Archer won’t be able to post a completely unnecessary and ridiculous 650-word intro to the second week of his agenda. He starts frantically typing.
Hello, folks. I’m back again for the second week of Archer’s Agenda 2026, the fourth annual edition of this column in which I choose the movies at the Milwaukee Film Festival that I’m most excited to see each week.
Well, we’re in the thick of it now. After Thursday night’s opening screening of Ueck, we dove headfirst into the overwhelming sea of Film Fest flicks. Amidst the plethora of screenings, here are the ones I’m most pumped about during Week 2:
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1. The General
MONDAY, APRIL 20 AT 6 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
The first entry on this week’s list is a journey back in time, as is Milwaukee Film Festival tradition. Every year, the fest screens a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Anvil Orchestra. This year, the movie in question is The General, which I will admit I was unaware was anything other than a Shaq-endorsed insurance company up until now. (Yes, I am dutifully ashamed of my lack of Buster Keaton knowledge.) How often do you get the chance to see a 100-year-old silent comedy in a bonafide movie palace with a live orchestra playing?
2. The Fisherman
MONDAY, APRIL 20 AT 9:30 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
SATURDAY, APRIL 25 AT 6 P.M. | DOWNER THEATRE
This movie has a “talking fish with a bougie attitude.” Consequently, I will be watching this movie. The Ghanaian comedy follows Atta Oko, a fisherman who dreams of owning his own boat. The movie also promises to showcase the culture of Ghana on the big screen.
3. The Milwaukee Show I
TUESDAY, APRIL 21 AT 6:30 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
This is another Milwaukee Film Festival tradition – a showcase of our city’s filmmaking talent. The nature of this collection of short films has made it something of a roller coaster ride in years past. You’re watching an unnerving, horror-influenced art house flick one minute, a goofy music video the next, and then a heartfelt tribute to motherhood right after that. Whatever you get in this grab bag of local cinema, it’s a good time with an extremely enthusiastic local audience.
4. Beyond the Duplex Planet
TUESDAY, APRIL 21 AT 9:15 P.M. | DOWNER THEATRE
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22 AT 7:30 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
THURSDAY, APRIL 30 AT 1:30 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
Every year, I introduce a movie trailer at the Milwaukee Film Festival Family & Friends Night, and it’s a little bit of a personal nightmare. Not a real serious nightmare like where bugs are crawling out of your skin or your ex is back in town. More of a low-level nightmare, like you have to take a calculus test you haven’t studied for or you showed up to work in a crop top. You see, I have enough trouble talking to just one person. Talking to a bunch of people in a crowd with a literal spotlight on me? God save me.
Well, this is the movie I chose to introduce. Thankfully, my voice only shook violently eight or nine times while I was up there, and I didn’t fall off the stage, so I’d say that’s a win.
The documentary follows David Greenberger, a young artist who in 1979 turned a job at a retirement community into a multi-decade media project. It all started with a zine, The Duplex Planet, in which Greenberger recorded quirky interviews with the community residents, published their illustrations and poetry. And in the years since it expanded into podcasts and albums and much more, all exploring aging and community. Now Greenberger, who has spent his career documenting the lives of the elderly, reflects on becoming elderly himself.
5. Hokum
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22 AT 11 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
SATURDAY, APRIL 25 AT 11:30 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
I’m quite excited about this movie … but I’m also not going to the screening. I watch horror movies all the time, love the genre, but also am just an unmitigated and total wimp. Seeing a horror movie in theaters is just one of my countless phobias – it ranks just below millipedes, oat milk and first dates. So while I won’t be watching this one on the big screen, I fully intend to see it the second it becomes available in a wuss-friendly at-home format that I can freely pause and turn down the volume on. But you, dear reader, need not be a wimp! This horror flick from emerging director Damian McCarthy is garnering quite a bit of hype. The story follows a novelist played by Adam Scott who ventures to a remote inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, leading to various horror happenings that trailers and previews have kept vague, save for the fact that it all looks creepy as heck.
6. The Big Cheese
FRIDAY, APRIL 24 AT 7 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
SUNDAY, APRIL 26 AT 10 A.M. | DOWNER THEATRE
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29 AT 3:45 P.M. | DOWNER THEATRE
Man, I love cheese so much. I don’t even really have a joke here or anything – I’m just in awe of cheese. I’ve actually been writing a fairly big feature for Milwaukee Mag that has given me the chance to eat a lot of it recently, and gosh cheese is such a phenomenal food. (Check out the July issue for that story – it’s going to be good!) Maybe when I was a kid I would have been self-conscious about Wisconsin being mostly known for cheese, but nowadays I’m incredibly proud of it! And this movie is all about cheese pride. It follows a team of American cheesemongers competing in the Mondial du Fromage – a competition in France to determine the greatest “sommeliers of cheese.” Dude, this should be bigger than the Super Bowl.
7. The Last One for the Road
THURSDAY, APRIL 23 AT 4 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
FRIDAY, APRIL 24 AT 1:30 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
SUNDAY, APRIL 26 AT 4:45 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
My family tells stories about my great-grandfather who immigrated here from Italy. When he was in his retirement years, he would pour a glass of wine and sit out in the garden singing Italian songs all day. As his wine glass emptied, his singing grew louder. Frankly, I’m baffled that someone related to me could possibly have enjoyed life that much. Where’s the neuroticism? Where’s the self-consciousness? Where’s the terror? I’ve always wished I could learn more about his carefree ways, and this movie, perhaps, seems like a glimpse into that mindset. The Italian flick follows an architecture student who meets two 50-something drinking buddies (and small-time crooks), leading to a “chaotic road trip through the Venetian plains.”
8. André Is an Idiot
TUESDAY, APRIL 21 AT 4:45 P.M. | DOWNER THEATRE
THURSDAY, APRIL 23 AT 3 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
Frankly, “This documentary is about a guy who didn’t get a colonoscopy” is not the most compelling movie pitch I’ve ever heard. And yet after watching the trailer for this one, it’s one of the movies I’m most excited for at the fest. It follows André, the idiot we’ve been told about, who refers to himself as such because he’s dying of cancer after refusing to get a colonoscopy. Now this sounds like a real heavy, potentially nihilistic kinda movie, but that is not the case. The movie’s all about this irreverent guy’s terminal journey to “die happily and ridiculously without losing his sense of humor.” That’s very much a movie I can get behind.
