Community Event
Film Screening: A Simple Machine
... of 45 spots remaining
Join Cascade for the Seattle premiere of A Simple Machine, a coming-of-age film about debt, freedom, and a bike. This special screening includes an intimate panel discussion with filmmaker Mark Alan Hoffman and author Evan P. Schneider, whose book was adapted into the award-winning movie. Copies of the book will be available for purchase, with an author signing after the film.
Doors open at 7 p.m. with concessions available. Seating is very limited!
Film Overview
Nick Allander is a creative soul – a thoughtful, but indecisive young man with a marketing job, a serious relationship, and a problem – he’s drowning in debt. In a last-ditch attempt to regain his freedom, he abandons his career, sheds all unnecessary possessions, and goes off-grid devoting himself to fixing up an old bike.
A Simple Machine is a coming of age story about self-reliance, the ingenuity of simple tech, and the conflict between individual freedom and consumer culture. It was shot in Portland, Oregon by the award-winning cinematographer Kevin Fletcher and scored by Mark Orton (The Holdovers, and Nebraska). It stars Richard Blackmon in a breakout lead role.
This event is part of our Ride in the Rain series. For a full calendar of events, see the Ride in the Rain webpage.
A Simple Machine, Like the Lever book description: Nicholas Allander, thirty-one, carless and careerless, is trying to pay off debt, impress his girlfriend, keep his job, cast off his introversion, and accept the world’s imperfections without abandoning his heart. He considers growing his beard, taking up alcoholism, abandoning scrounging, and owning an automobile. All the while he clings to his bicycle, a simple machine whose purpose and workings he grasps. Written in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, this subtle, charming novel about the attempt to maintain one’s humanity in the face of constant affronts to it is as timely now as when first released.
- “I’m tempted to say all kinds of irresponsible things about Evan P. Schneider’s first novel: that it’s the Catcher in the Rye of our time.” –Dennis James Sweeney, HTML Giant
- "Self-consciously and without angst or sarcasm…a quiet, elegantly dispassionate story.” –Virginia Thayer, Portland Mercury
- “Nails the essence of being a cyclist, of being young—the yearning, the attempted grace, the gray confusion.” –Jonathan Waldman, Colorado Book Award-winning author of Rust: The Longest War
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