How Long Is “Not Bad at All”?

The film documents Jessica’s trips between two different contexts: her life in New York city, where she works as a set decorator, and her time spent at her childhood home in Boston, where she takes care of her father, who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. She has been making this commute for 6 years, totaling 600 trips, or – put another way – Jessica has spent 4 months riding the bus back and forth. Challenging standard approaches to documentary filmmaking, Not Bad at All focuses on Jessica’s relationship with her 87-year-old father Aloysius in a way most viewers would categorize as experimental narrative fiction. This formal tension helps Billy and Jessica (as filmmakers/subjects) explore the complexities of family, memory, and those strange in-between spaces that we all navigate.