Self-Made Man, Self-Made Anger: Biker Fox in Biker Fox

Self-made dealer of vintage auto parts, biking crank, health nut, and all-round angry dude: If you didn’t know otherwise, Biker Fox (given name: Frank P. DeLarzelere III) would seem like he’d come straight from a “Tim and Eric” sketch. But he’s real, and—aside from an opening-credits sequence blue-screened to ’80s music-video hell, complete with a tacky zoom into Fox’s spandex-clad crotch—this is no condescending comedy. Instead, director Jeremy Lamberton takes an unflinching look at a small-town guy who thinks of himself as an inspirational speaker, but whose overwhelming rage and weirdness (used as an aggressive weapon) are deeply frightening. Much of the film is comprised of Biker Fox just being Biker Fox: screaming at random, hectoring prospective customers, feeding wild raccoons no matter how many times he’s bitten, etc. The footage is mostly raw, though the few clearly staged HD bits are flawlessly framed. The energy is in Lamberton’s unwavering engagement with the question of what it means to be a genuine outsider in a place as inhospitable to weirdos as Tulsa, Oklahoma.