All You Can Eat: Discussing Buffet Infinity With Director Simon Glassman

Still from Buffet Infinity. Photo courtesy of the Calgary Underground Film Festival.

Buffet Infinity is a 99-minute-long horror-comedy set in the fictional town of Westridge County, yet it feels like only a few minutes pass between the lights going down and the credits running. 

Simon Glassman, the writer, director and editor, weaves nostalgia, offbeat humour, and eerie silences together to create a film that plucks the viewer out of their own life and into that of a Westridge County citizen channel-surfing late at night.

Buffet Infinity’s unconventional story revolves around feuding businesses; the local favourite, family-run Jenny’s Sandwich Shop and the new and impossibly cheap and expansive, titular Buffet Infinity. This overarching rivalry takes viewers across scenes in Westridge County, where we encounter oddball characters like lawyer Mostley Roisin, pawnshop owner Ahmed and his buddy Brandon, and the occasional cult leader trying to warn of an imposing threat.

Glassman takes themes like identity, family values, consumerism and nostalgia through a blender and sprinkles them all throughout the film's untraditional narrative structure. Thankfully, it works itself together due to an overarching vision and determination.

“I was brutal with the editing,” said Glassman. Scenes shift abruptly, often cutting off moments of resolution or before a classic punchline. The pacing creates a fragmented viewing experience that assists the broader concepts being played with throughout Buffet Infinity.

Another big assist that pulls the film together is the charm added from working with a largely inexperienced cast, although Glassman described it as one of the biggest challenges throughout production.

“A lot of them (the actors) had never even been on a set before,” he said, but the actors' uncertainty and nerves ham up their characters, specifically for Ahmed Ahmed, playing the character of Ahmed, a pawnshop owner turned amateur rapper. 

The unpredictability of Buffet Infinity extends from the script to the character's own uncertainty of what is going on around them. This allows the film to emphasize the authenticity of the commercials, building Westridge County.

Buffet Infinity is built up from Glassman’s love of film and television, which is evident from the attention to costume details and the colour grade that brings viewers back to the early aughts endless reel of wacky commercials.

While viewers can catch on to the nostalgia as soon as the commercials start running, they are certainly not feeling the same emotions that run through Glassman. His father worked in television for the CBC for 40 years and Glassman sees his own childhood through these programs.

“I used to watch TV and sit and wonder what parts of it my dad was working on,” said Glassman, “Watching television was this totally other mystery for me than my peers.”

Glassman described growing up not being entirely sure if his dad was working on the show and commercials he was seeing, but knowing that he had played a part in a larger piece of it all. Channel surfing for him was more like adding clues to the mystery of what is dad doing now? rather than absent-minded clicking like his friends.

Television was both familiar and unknowable to Glassman, and he was able to impart that feeling to audiences with Buffet Infinity. This sense of incomplete understanding is reflected in Buffet Infinity, where scenes often feel incomplete or open to interpretation. 

“You get to have your cake and eat it too,” he said. 

The balance struck between chaos and structure is exacted in Buffet Infinity’s conclusion, where audiences get the chance to create more or less resolution than Glassman provides before the credits roll. 

With its Calgary premiere around the corner at the Calgary Underground Film Fest, Buffet Infinity is in the fast lane to becoming a celebrated Canadian film. Dripping with nostalgia and laugh-out-loud moments, Buffet Infinity toes the lines between the untraditional and the familiar. Perfect for fans of the V/H/S franchise and Videodrome, with humour that could be pulled straight out of Rick and Morty’s acclaimed ‘Interdimensional Cable’ episodes, Glassman has crafted a sinister tale that will charm audiences across the runtime.

Buffet Infinity will have its Calgary premiere on Saturday, April 25th at the Calgary Underground Film Festival. Tickets are available at www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org.