The Straight Story is the slowest of road movies, its elderly protagonist crawling 240 miles from Iowa to Wisconsin at just five miles per hour. Screenwriters John Roach and Mary Sweeney based their script closely on a true story, that of 73-year-old Alvin Straight, who made his journey riding a lawnmower upon hearing that his estranged brother had suffered a stroke.
After leaving my headphones elsewhere, I plugged my wired earphones into my laptop and sat cross-legged on my bed. It felt like the universe wanted me to rewind time, back to when 2014 Forest Hills Drive first dropped, a teen in my room, listening to tinny rap through cheap speakers, imagining myself on some apartment rooftop in New York. The Fall Off took me straight back there, safe and familiar, as J.
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