Next week BAM will present All the Real Americans: The World of David Gordon Green, an awesome retrospective that will present not only all of Green’s features, but also films selected by the director himself that he considers influences on his work (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Picture Show, etc.). The series will end with a highly anticipated sneak preview of Green’s latest, the Judd Apatow–produced action-comedy Pineapple Express on July 24. (You can read an interview we did with Green back in March here.) In honor of this retro, we figured we’d present Physical Pinball, one of the terrific shorts Green did while a student at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Set in the southern junkyard milieu familiar to anyone who’s seen the director’s feature debut, George Washington, it’s a coming-of-age story about a young tomboy who realizes she’s turning into a woman, and about how she and her fast-talking auto-mechanic father try to deal with it. Displaying all the warmth, humor, and improvisatory poetry of Green’s best work, it makes quite clear that its creator was headed for some sort of greatness. —Bilge Ebiri

Physical Pinball: Part Two