All I've Got & Then Some

Winner of the Best Narrative Feature, Florida Film Festival 2024

Life’s very difficult and full of surprises…To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged – well, one can’t do all these things at once, worse luck, because they’re so contradictory. It’s then that proportion comes in – to live by proportion. Don’t begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.

— E.M. Forster, “Howards End”

The Narrative Feature jury at the Florida Film Festival, made up of yours truly, Betsey Brown and Bill Guentzler, had some serious decisions to make in our deliberations since the ten films in competition were so strong, but after seeing All I’ve Got & Then Some, co-directed by Tehben Dean and Rasheed Stephens, it was pretty clear to all of us what we needed to do.

There is no agreed-upon criteria for judging festival films, but for me, in a first feature I want to see your heart, I want to see what matters to you, I want you to let me in to your world. A lot of first films attempt a genre exercise, or are a (pale) imitation of, say, Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie. Sometimes it’s obvious the director is just using the film as a “reel” to attract financial backing for the next project. All I’ve Got & Then Some has that “something else” I look for in a first feature.

We were really inspired by the film’s heart and soul, as well as the guerrilla-style filming, the sheer willpower the team had to make something, the collective “let’s just get out there and get this done”. The end result, so satisfying and confident, suggests that Dean and Stephens, who co-directed, went into it with such a clear idea of what they wanted to make, it’s as though the project itself led them to the next step. They shot it in seven days, after a prep period of just three days. Friends in real life, Dean and Stephens called their people in, quickly gathered a team, and charged out into the Los Angeles sun to make what was in their heads. They already had their source material: Stephens’ own story of his early years in Los Angeles pursuing stand-up comedy while living out of his car.

All I’ve Got & Then Some is a hybrid, part-documentary, part-narrative. Moving from Atlanta to Los Angeles was such an impulsive decision that halfway through his drive across the country Rasheed realized, “Wait a minute … I don’t have any money … how am I going to do this?” He had done no research on Los Angeles living and assumed the rents would be similar to those of Atlanta. He was mistaken. He ended up living in his car for a couple of years, going to comedy open-mics, working on material, trying to get something going. All I’ve Got & Then Some is a presentation of real events, “acted out” by Stephens playing himself, interspersed with sequences where Stephens talks to the camera, providing background and a retrospective slant to the in-real-time action of the other sections. It’s an intimate approach. We don’t feel like we are watching self-conscious “re-enactments”, but we never forget this is a real story, lived by a real guy. There he is, performing at an open mic in someone’s backyard with five people in attendance (all of whom are also “on the bill”). Then back in his car, onto the next thing.

Pursuing the dream doesn’t look a certain way, even though we all have fantasies in our head about what it will look like. When fantasy doesn’t meet reality, when you realize how hard it will be to get anywhere … well, this is the point where most people give up. It is not “unfair”. It is a reminder of just how badly you need to want it.

Rasheed Stephens had no Plan B.

We meet the people who make up Rasheed’s world.

There’s Rose (the wonderful Avise Parsons), a sex worker who supports him in what he’s trying to do, and he, in turn, has her back, waiting outside her appointments, making sure she gets out okay. The relationship is handled beautifully by both actors. I lost it during one scene where Rasheed needs to go over some sides before an audition and asks Rose and her roommate to read the other parts. They’re both game. Before beginning, Rose asks Rasheed, “Who am I?” A very important question! Betsey and I kept talking about how much we loved Rose.

Then there’s Doll (the charmingly open Naiya Armour), seen in the opening sequence of the movie, roller-skating down an empty sidewalk, knee-pads on, singing to herself in a beautiful clear voice. Rasheed and Doll keep running into each other. In a twist of fate, she also lives in her car, on the same street where Rasheed parks. There’s a funny moment when he “drops her off” at her car after a date, and then walks back to his own car, just down the block.

Rasheed has a manager, an eccentric show-biz type, who works out of a vintage clothing store, taking calls among the racks of clothing. These details feel very real. He has his first “paid gig” coming up. He keeps telling everyone this, including his dad (there’s a real Facetime call with his real dad). Rasheed works as a Lyft driver, meeting different people as he transports them around. Rasheed, playing himself, is an open positive person, telling people what he’s up to, no self-deprecation about it. It’s interesting to watch because it’s something we don’t often see in these narratives about someone maybe down-and-out pursuing a crazy dream. Dreamers are often portrayed as delusional, or struggling against grim reality, meeting up with the incomprehension or judgment of others. Here, reality is indeed “grim” but Rasheed’s experience of it is not necessarily grim. Positivity draws positivity to it. One of the most important things about having a dream is getting other people to believe in it.

How do you do that? All I’ve Got & Then Some suggests it’s simple. Be open to others, share yourself, don’t be embarrassed about having a dream. One Lyft encounter is an example. He picks up two rowdy girls on their way to a party, and when they learn he’s a comedian, because of course he tells them, they insist he come to the party and do a little standup for the people there. One might think this would be “cringe”, as they say. But All I’ve Got & Then Some, refreshingly, is not about “cringe”. This is not Dustin Guy Defa’s Bad Fever (also about a hopeful stand-up comic, and it’s a film I love) or the recent Baby Reindeer, where the person pursuing comedy doesn’t seem to have the aptitude for it, or is pursuing it for neurotic reasons. In All I’ve Got & Then Some, a stranger joins a backyard party, and finds a friendly welcoming space. It just as well could go this way as any other.

There’s this annoying tendency in the last, say, 20 years, to present material in a serious (or self-serious) manner. Directors think they won’t be seen as an artiste if they don’t pile on the gloom. We see this in the choice of material (it’s all dystopia or bust), we see it in the color-grading. It’s like there’s dirt on the camera. Even James Bond has to be serious and gloomy and weighted down! James Bond! Gloomy? What? But lightening UP doesn’t mean you are lightWEIGHT.

All I’ve Got & Then Some is deep with a profound payoff, but the mood is light and open, shot with an active flexible camera, so that the whole thing almost shimmers with possibility. The man is living in his car and being snuck into the gym by a friend so he can shower and work out. Times are tough! But Rasheed says, every day, to everyone, “Best day of my life.” It’s his mantra. This isn’t toxic positivity. This is a lifeline. Sometimes when he says it, you can tell he’s grasping at straws to even believe it. But the words must be said. Without them he’d be lost.

Post screening, left to right: festival moderator, Naiya Armour, Tehben Dean, Rasheed Stephens

Tehben Dean has directed music videos and commercials, and he shot and edited All I’ve Got & Then Some. The editing alone is a standout, as it draws together all these different strands and characters and places into an engaging whole: the comedy clubs, the backyard open mics, the car scenes, the night scenes (Los Angeles looking halfway deserted and surreal), peopled with all the “extras”, many of whom hail from the underground comedy scene in Los Angeles. The film was shot on a shoestring, but it feels very BIG. All I’ve Got & Then Some is episodic but the overall effect is cumulative. This is never more apparent than in the final scene when Rasheed finally gets onstage for that “paid gig” we keep hearing about.

Everything comes together. Every scene we’ve seen, every character we’ve met, everything we’ve learned about Rasheed - his history, his present, his anxieties, his willingness to share himself with others - be it Rose or Doll or the people in the back seat of his car - his feelings about his mom not having a headstone - everything - it’s all there in the final scene, and it was intensely cathartic. I did not expect it. I was suddenly in tears, and thinking, “Where the hell did this come from?”

All I’ve Got & Then Some worked by stealth. I was so entertained, so taken in, so involved … I didn’t realize the depths it was stirring.

As I was writing this, which I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of weeks, I thought of one of my favorite quotes from E.M. Forster’s Howards End, placed at the top. I feel like Forster expressed it better than I could, what I feel about All I’ve Got & Then Some, and what the film made me feel. So many filmmakers “begin with proportion”. They impose limits, they play it safe, they fall back on formula. Tehben Dean and Rasheed Stephens did not “begin with proportion”. They weren’t careful or safe in imagining what they wanted to do, they put no limits on the “how”, they didn’t curtail anything. Instead, they started immediately and they didn’t second guess their impulses. They traveled light and worked deep.

All I’ve Got & Then Some gives me hope.

Follow along with All I’ve Got & Then Some’s festival journey on Instagram.