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Corporate espionage thriller. Globe-trotting heist caper. Sweet rom-com. True-crime documentary. The Pez Outlaw is all these things and more.
Steve Glew was working a dead-end factory job when he struck multicoloured, plastic gold. Introduced to the world of Pez dispensers and their collectors at a toy convention, Glew seized the day. Before he knew it, he was flying to Eastern Europe to source impossible-to-find receptacles and bring them back to the US to onsell for a mint. This wasn’t exactly legal, of course, but Pez USA shot themselves in the foot by not correctly filing their customs and trademark forms. So Glew grew his hobby into a wildly lucrative business … until the ‘Pezident’, Pez USA CEO Scott McWhinnie, came for his head.
As bright and vibrant as his money-making candy caddies, Glew emerges as a fascinating subject for this documentary executive-produced by Chris Smith (Tiger King; The Yes Men; Collapse, MIFF 2010). Living with OCD, bipolar disorder and depression, he was a man desperately searching for meaning, joy and dignity – all of which he found upon becoming the self-anointed “Pez Outlaw”. Ingeniously, directors Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel have Glew play himself in re-enactments, letting him tell his story as he sees it: a neo-noir spy drama and action-packed heist fantasy that would do his favourite author, Tom Clancy, proud. His loving wife and children, as well as friends, colleagues and equally eccentric rivals, provide further Wonka-adjacent whimsy to this tale, making it a truly tasty filmic treat.
“There’s something so darn charming about the low-stakes world of The Pez Outlaw … Unlike the chalky sweet Pez candy, it never leaves a bad taste in our mouths.” – /Film
