Review: No permits, no stars, no playing it safe in 'Ten Will,' an audacious indie odyssey through L.A.

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred Memorable movies are still being made on the streets of Los Angeles — although Max DeFalco’s rakish indie “Ten Will” isn’t going to get on any tourist’s map to the stars.Filmed without permits for approximately the cost of a used car, it’s a cringe comedy about a newly released convict, Tennessee Williams (Mikul Robins), frantically trying to get across town to the East L.A.

Sheriff’s Department so he can register as a sex offender.On the hero scale, Ten, as he calls himself, rates a zero.Whiny and obnoxious, he’s the Larry David of lechers.

We want him to accomplish his quest only because a dangerous guy like him shouldn’t slip through society’s cracks.But DeFalco is drawn to the sidewalk dwellers, street preachers and parking-lot boozers who also lurk down there and help (or hinder) Ten, usually at a loud volume.

The filmmaker delights in making the discomfitingly watchable Ten suffer.For one sequence, he sends Robins in character onto Alvarado Boulevard to try to earn cash by forcibly washing strangers’ windshields — during a rain shower.This is DeFalco’s debut feature after making several skits about weirdos with warped goals.

A 20-something cemetery employee, he shot “Ten Will” in 13 days on the weekends, scouting locations during his commute from MacArthur Park to Inglewood.Both he and his film could share the same subtitle he used for his first short: “A glimpse into the penetrating insightful examination of the delusions of a bottom-dwelling dreamer.”DeFalco is all about the hustle.

Apropos for a story about people on the margins, his settings are liminal: a highway shoulder, a charred underpass, a real-life fast food drive-through.(Cinematographer Brandon D.

Hill sneaks his footage from a nearby parked car.) Traffic intrudes.Helicopters thrum.

Tension build...