Kwik Stop (2001) finally streaming

If you’ve hung around here a while (as in, the last 15, 20 years) then you will know about Kwik Stop and my friend Michael Gilio. Michael and I go way back, and our brief romance somehow miraculously morphed into a lifelong friendship. It doesn’t always happen that way. Our relationship was so entertaining to me, and it was entertaining as it was happening. And it was captured on a local cable access show. How often can you say THAT? So. Many years ago, Michael wrote, directed, and starred in a movie called Kwik Stop, which he actually had been kinda sorta writing, or at least thinking about, when I first met him. I remember him talking to me about it. It was so cool, 5 or so years later or whatever, to see him actually DO it. The film won a couple of awards, but never got distribution, despite powerful critical acclaim, including Roger Ebert. I wrote about all of this in my piece in the “My Favorite Roger” series over on Ebert, where each writer writes about their favorite Roger review. I wrote about Roger’s review of Kwik Stop.

This is NOT all about me but how weird is it that back in 2002, Roger Ebert reached his hand out to Michael to support his film, writing a review of it, and then screening it at the second annual Ebertfest (then called the Overlooked Film Festival) – and then … 15 years later – Roger Ebert would reach out to ME, about MY writing and then a couple years after that MY short film would screen at Ebertfest? Like … isn’t that a little bit wild? The coincidence of it? Michael and I were two KIDS together, full of dreams and plans and then … there we are. Oh, and Michael just wrote the Dungeons and Dragons movie, a real passion project for him, and it was so cool to see him get so many flowers for that. He’s awesome.

Kwik Stop was out on DVD back in the day (i.e. 15 years ago), and of course I had a copy, but it has not been available for streaming in … ever? I’m not sure. Whatever the timeline, it’s enough to say this beautiful haunting film has been “unavailable” for years. And it’s back now. Streaming wherever you get your movies. Streaming on AppleTV, Amazon, GooglePlay, Vudu, Microsoft/Xbox, FreeVee, coming soon on Roku, Xumo, and other AVOD channels! Please see it! It’s so good!

Michael put together a trailer. It’s beautiful.