ASSISTED LIVING

Pot-smoking slacker Todd, a janitor in a nursing home, is a maverick: he takes patients out on unauthorized excursions, spices up their banal activities, and, when bored, calls patients on the phone and pretends to be god, connecting them to their loved ones. The patients don?t seem to mind, but the staff does. Things change when Todd is assigned to look after longtime resident Mrs. Pearlman, who is both sharper than the other patients, but is in the first stages of Alzheimer?s disease. Mrs. Pearlman soon confuses Todd with her long-lost son, and she willingly participates in more delusional episodes, resulting in a relationship that causes surprising transformations for both. Director Elliott Greenebaum began shooting this film when he was 22, and purposely mixed paid actors with real-life staff and patients at the Masonic Homes of Kentucky. The result is a memorable mix of fact and fiction.