The improvised comedy & # 39; Sword of Truth & # 39; is on the cutting edge: NPR

When Cynthia (Jillian Bell) and her partner (Michaela Watkins) arrive in the small town of Alabama to read her grandfather's will, she thinks they're coming into a home. But to pay for his last years, he had taken out a reverse mortgage. Instead, she handed him … an ancient sword.

Disappointed, they go to a pawnbroker in the area to create a story that will seduce the pawnbroker (Marc Maron) so that he separates himself with a lot of money. In the story they tell – taken from the diary of his grandfather, which was clearly disturbed – the distant ancestor of Cynthia, a Confederate army marshal, received the sword when General Union Sheridan the returned to him, during the "Battle of Chickabauga".

The pawnbroker (Marc Maron) points out that there is no trace of such a battle. That's because, he assured them, his grandfather had evidence that he had been buried in history books by "the Deep State" – the ghost government – to hide the truth about the fact that the South had won the American Civil War.

A quick Internet search establishes that Cynthia's grandfather was not the only one to believe it. What follows is the most gruesome tale of hairy sword stories, involving deer ticks, potentially deadly screwdrivers, and an online community of idiots who will pay small fortune for relics they call "evidence items" – Like the sword of Cynthia.

Director Lynn Shelton and screenwriter Mike O & # 39; Brien created a frame for the story, then loosened a cast of superb comics during a two-week shoot, to improvise inside of this frame: among them, Bell, heir to the sword, and – making riffs that would make many scripted comedies – the owner of Maron's grumpy pawnbroker.

Shelton being a filmmaker who always looks for how relationships work, Sword of confidence is not content to be just funny. Maron's pawnbroker has a problem with an ex-girlfriend, who was played by the director, and if you know that in real life, Maron is a recovering addict who has been in good health for 20 years . The way he frames this relationship can only resonate:

"She keeps taking," he says, "until I get emptied, I have nothing left – I do not have a shop, I do not have I do not have a car, it will only be me and her. " And with a basket, and maybe a cat, have you seen those cats that can be with homeless people? You will be like, 'dude, it's sad' and I'm going to be like, 'Yeah, but look at the cat& # 39;

The story often does not go where you expect, and sometimes does not go … a lot of everywhere. But as his distribution of comics brilliant pushed and parries, Sword of confidence improvisation – something very difficult to do with a feature film – appears as an absolute nod.