Themes: Nothing Goes Right, Class Differences, Social Climbing
Main Cast: David Krumholtz, Clara Bellar, Paul Calderon, Jon Budinoff, Cliff Gorman
Release Year: 2003
Country: US
Run Time: 78 minutes
Plot
The down-and-dirty side of building management in pre-gentrification Manhattan sets the stage for this dark comedy. It's 1981, and Joe Peltz (David Krumholtz) runs a newsstand in New York City, where he has recently married Annabelle (Clara Bellar), an exotic dancer from France who isn't in love with Joe but asked for his hand so she could get a Green Card. When Annabelle discovers she's pregnant, the couple decides they need a larger apartment, and Joe finds a flat in the East Village that's on the same block where his great-great-grandparents lived when they first came to America. However, the neighborhood is decaying and ridden with crime, and when Joe and Annabelle move into their new apartment, he's immediately drafted onto the building's co-op board, where he has to deal with a variety of eccentrics of various stripes and must often sleep in the lobby armed with a baseball bat to ward off junkies and burglars. But by far his biggest problem is Carlos DeJesus (Paul Calderon), a bully who has been squatting in the building for eight years with his roughneck teenage son, Segundo (Jon Budinoff). Carlos sees no reason why he should start paying rent, and he's made enemies with practically everyone who lives in the building, wasting no time in adding Joe and Annabelle to that list. So when a gasoline fire guts Carlos' apartment, the question is not who wanted him out, but who actually had the nerve to start the blaze. Based on a novel by Joel Rose, Kill the Poor was written for the screen by Daniel Handler, best known as the author of the popular "Lemony Snicket" books. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Damian Young - Delilah; Heather Burns - Scarlet; Otto Sanchez - Negrito; Zak Orth - Butch; Lawrence Gilliard, Jr. - Spike
Credit
Susan Shopmaker - Casting, Jonathan Shoemaker - Co-producer, Marie Abma - Costume Designer, Alan Taylor - Director, Malcolm Jamieson - Editor, John Sloss - Executive Producer, Caroline Kaplan - Executive Producer, Jonathan Sehring - Executive Producer, Michel Delroy - Composer (Music Score), Anna Domino - Composer (Music Score), Rick Butler - Production Designer, Harlan Bosmajian - Cinematographer, John Malkovich - Producer, Lianne Halfon - Producer, Gary Winick - Producer, Ruth Charny - Producer, Alexis Alexanian - Producer, Holly Becker - Producer, Russ Smith - Producer, David Ryan - Sound/Sound Designer, Daniel Handler - Screenwriter, Joel Rose - Book Author
Kill the Poor is director Alan Taylor's screen adaptation of a novel by Joel Rose. The film is set in Manhattan's Alphabet City in the early 1980s, when the neighborhood was a center of illegal drug activity. The film's title comes from the Dead Kennedys song Kill the Poor.
Kill the Poor begins with a fire in the apartment of tough guy Carlos DeJesus and his troublemaking son Segundo. The screenplay then focuses on the other tenants of the rundown building in an attempt to determine who set the blaze.
The other principles are:
Joe Peltz, a young man who ignored his uncle's warnings to bring his wife Annabelle and their young child into the neighborhood where his Jewish grandparents had their start in America;
Spike, an aspiring found-object sculptor;
Delilah, a flamboyant gay man;
Butch, a presumptuous graduate student;
Scarlet, the tenement's resident floozy;
Negrito, a fixture in the neighborhood.
A shared distrust of Carlos and Segundo unites this eclectic group and prompts them to hold "co-op" meetings with one goal: eviction of Carlos and Segundo DeJesus.
