Punching the Clown — directed by Greg Viens and written by Viens and Henry Phillips, the star of the movie — will open at the Quad Cinema in New York City on Friday, October 22. The winner of several awards at various film festivals, this brilliant satire of the lower end of the music business is funny, witty, and intelligent. So many filmmakers today seem to equate humor with stupidity, but not the people behind Punching the Clown. Subtlety trumps the broad stroke here, which makes the resulting laughter more satisfying. I hope this film is a success at the box office, as that would reinforce the message that there is a growing audience for smart independent films.

Henry Phillips plays himself as an itinerant singer-songwriter who has played one too many disappointing gigs out in the heartland.

His forte is the edgy, bawdy, irreverent, and (he hopes) funny acoustic ballad, and unwittingly performing such material before a truck stop audience of “Miniature Golfers for God” brings him to reevaluate the direction his career has been taking. So he decides to move to L.A., crash on his brother’s couch (of course the brother is a struggling actor), and find himself an agent: a middle-aged scrapper played superbly by Ellen Ratner, who describes Henry as “James Taylor on smack.” When Henry points out to her that James Taylor really was on smack, she doesn’t seem to understand his point. Moments like this are part of the fun.

I loved watching this movie. All the satire is spot on. In my younger days, I tried my hand at doing the singer-songwriter thing, and many of the scenes in this film are so familiar that they hurt. Ellen’s frenetic pace and non-stop faux optimism are priceless. The milieu of the coffeehouse “Espresso Yourself” reminded me of every open-mic hootenanny joint I’d played, where most of the audience were other “artists” waiting to perform. During Henry’s one demo recording session, the owner of the small record label won’t even let Henry finish a verse before demanding something snappier.

In a radio interview taking place at three a.m. — what time could have been more appropriate? — Henry makes it clear that he is no Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, or (for the sake of extra hyperbole) Albert Einstein, and that is what endears him to us. He is us. We can relate to every frustration and every fledgling hope, especially since Henry is not getting any younger and has been the victim of a terrible misunderstanding in the local press.

If this movie is shown in a theater anywhere near you, please go out and support it. We need films like Punching the Clown to keep cinema vibrant and interesting. There’s too much of the same old same old out there. What Viens and Phillips offer is the equivalent of the great little paperback novel you sometimes find on a back shelf when browsing in your local independent bookstore, if indeed such a place still exists in your neighborhood. It’s not War and Peace or Moby-Dick, but that’s all right. Sometimes all you need is a little dusty gem to keep you going.