They grow up so fast, don't they? SF IndieFest is old enough to drive this year, but you should still take public transportation to the kickoff film, Hits. Writer/director David Cross' keen sense of misanthropy shines through in this story of a small town whose residents (and a few outside agitators) become dangerously obsessed with getting internet-famous. Also considering the perils of fame is The Cult of JT LeRoy, Marjorie Strum's documentary about the writer whose autobiographical tales of being an abused transgender teenage prostitute made them a cause célèbre, at least until it was all revealed to be a hoax. (Details, details!) Meanwhile, Patrick Ryan's Darkness on the Edge of Town concerns a young woman named Cleo (Emma Eliza Regan) whose older sister is found brutally murdered; happening to be a talented sharpshooter, Cleo takes revenge into her own sights. A film about a very different kind of marksman, For Your Height Only is one of the strangest Fililpino exploitation films of the 1980s, and that's saying a lot: a James Bond spoof starring the 2-foot-9-inch Weng Weng as Agent 00, obviously. And lest you think that sounds like another LeRoy-level hoax, Andrew Levold's documentary The Search for Weng Weng hunts for him in the Philippines, where truth is always stranger than fiction.
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