How It Is with Phooie (2007)

A personal look at the director's father, Phil "Phooie" Steinberg, a 35-year veteran of the music industry who's life-long obsessions include music and the movies, and very little else. Chronicling Phooie's personal life and his relationship with the music industry - an affair that began as a radio station DJ in the 1960s and evolved into owning an independent record shop that specialized in Classic Rock - the film explores Phooie's quirky sensibilities: his compulsive record collecting, his lifelong obsession with 16mm film prints and his love of cinema. As the mass-corporatization of the music industry threatens Phooie's once predictable world, the question remains: will the world change Phooie? Told from the personal perspective of a son, Steinberg finds parallels to his own role of father in the life of his precocious five-year-old daughter Ella, and along the way traffics in his personal musical mania; specifically a fixation with one elusive psychedelic French funk LP.