Baltimorons (2025) with Scott and Drew

This week on Story Punk, we head into the streets of Baltimore for Jay Duplass’s Baltimorons (2025), a tender, funny, and unexpectedly moving Christmas Eve odyssey about sobriety, loneliness, and the strange ways people find each other when they need it most.

The film follows Cliff Cashin, a newly sober sketch comedian whose emergency dental disaster turns into an all-night Baltimore adventure with his older dentist, Didi. What starts as awkward necessity gradually becomes something warmer, deeper, and far more complicated than either of them expected.

In this episode, we talk about:
• how vulnerability becomes the doorway to real connection
• the anxiety of sobriety, especially for creative people who fear they won’t be “themselves” without alcohol
• why the movie works so well as both a romantic comedy and a recovery story
• the authenticity that comes from Michael Strassner drawing on his own life
• the chemistry between Michael Strassner and Liz Larsen, and why both performances feel so lived-in and real
• the movie’s deeply Baltimore texture, from Ravens jokes and rowhouse energy to local landmarks and Christmas Eve melancholy

We also dig into the film’s mix of sweetness and sadness, its indie spirit, and why Baltimorons feels small in scale but rich in emotion.

If you like character-driven films, offbeat romance, intimate indie movies, or stories about broken people trying to make it through one difficult night, this episode is for you.