(Written by Intern, Alecia Wilk)
Now! More! Yes! would be nothing without its subject selection. Thankfully, TW Hansen is a supernova with terrible spending habits, and Max Hey made the righteous decision to follow him around with a camera. Out of barebones videography comes an unrivaled character study, outshining the stars of any biopic.
TW Hansen, also known as Tim, is a renaissance man with junkyard sensibilities. Delivering material so honest it is hard to believe; the first encounter feels like stumbling across a soon-to-be-viral gem of early YouTube. The style is rudimentary because Tim cannot be directed. To capture him in all of his wayward glory, it quickly becomes clear that filming is but a bare means. He works in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a used car salesman, a landlord, and a music video director. These streams of income are all illicitly interrelated—which he explains in baldfaced confessions about spending $30,000 of his boss’s money on rental residences and drunk-buying an ambulance. Watching the turmoil he produces for his business partners is reminiscent of the struggle not to laugh when the teacher finally, and perhaps deservedly, comes down on the class clown. Carrying on in life with a tone something like Nathan For You, Tim’s reality unfolds in beats stranger than fiction.
Along with blunders, Hey documents countless kernels of his creative genius. Every second is entertaining and earnest, as interviews from his parents, colleagues, and friends only corroborate his incomprehensibility. Though, he should not be taken as a joke. Containing multitudes, he reaches a comedic frequency that his irony-poisoned contemporaries cannot dream of imitating. Hansen says himself “a measure of obliviousness is good for the psyche,” and manages to accrue dignity in exemplifying so. His eclectic lifestyle is born from passion, and an intrinsic drive to make his dreams compatible with his day job. Working as a film car coordinator, he one-man’s a service that is an entire industry in other parts of the country. This DIY spirit works like alchemy, and his presence makes Milwaukee look like a city where ideas become realities. At his lowest, over a mostly empty beer, he pours out “I’m a fucking walking warning; I am an object-lesson in what not to do with your dreams.” On the contrary, it would be elating to live a life steered wrong on his advice.
Tim architects his own demise with as much finesse as he does his eventual deliverance. Running on aphorisms and blind ambition, the only throughline to cling to is the rehabilitation of his drunkenly-purchased ambulance truck. Now! More! Yes! traverses aimlessly, as it must, to make a worthy example of what it is like to walk the path of a trailblazer.
Could a used car salesman sell you a diamond in the rough? Find out when Now! More! Yes! premieres Saturday, March 8th at 2025’s SXSW Film & TV Festival.
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