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By Michael Janusonis Journal Bulletin Arts writer

One of the highlights of this year's Convergence Film Festival is Art Jones' Going Nomad, a quirky, highly original film about a man who is bored with his humdrum life, his humdrum friends from grammar school and his going-nowhere career , and decides to head for the open road in his boat-like 1970s gold Lincoln Continental.

According to this very funny and very unusual film, it's disconnected people like the film's hero who take to the open roads of Manhattan after dark to live lives of solitude and briefly, freedom.

"Broadway," one character says in awe, "mighty as the Mississippi, mysterious as the Nile and hallowed as the Ganges."

Anything beyond the borders of Manhattan for the hero, who has the unfortunate name of El Cid Rivera is a scary thought. Just looking at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel leading to New Jersey from Manhattan sends shivers down his spine. New Jersey. The unknown. The uncharted land. The characters of Going Nomad are very much connected to their places. In one of the film's funnier scenes, El Cid drags a reluctant friend, who has never been above 14th Street, across that busy inter section.

"We work, we sleep, we eat. And after that we do it all some more," says El Cid (Damian Young), whose first name comes from his mother's infatuation with the 1961 film that starred Charlton Heston as the 11th century Christian leader who freed Spain from Moorish invaders. His name is an embarrassment to El Cid, making him the object of much amusement for the Hispanics who run the local deli because, although he is of Spanish background, he can't speak Spanish.

Bouncing back and forth between a series of dead-end jobs-bill collector, restaurant grill man, tour guide on a bus that never gets within l7 blocks of Rockefeller Center because "traffic is a nightmare over there"-El Cid fears he's never going to become the epic hero his late mother had envisioned.

"It's too late. There's no one to triumph over at this hour," he says in desperation to his mother, who occasionally turns up as a voice in his head (Graciela Lecube) to taunt him about his lack of progress.
His pals, all of whom are in their fourth year of friendship, offer sup port, but not much comfort.

Tully (Gregory Wolfe) is financing his business education as a pro wrestler. Chuckles (Mason Pettit) is a slumlord. Eddie (Tom Oppenheim) finds his greatest sexual satisfaction in washing his elaborate pompadour hairdo.

Rev (Jamie C. Ward) got his nick name because he once studied for the priesthood, but dropped out be cause he liked girls too much. Now he works as a toll-taker at an en trance to Manhattan where he feels that he is the guardian of the gate, denying admission to those he deems unworthy.

They're loners and losers, secure in each other's friendship and the fact that they're living in New York City and couldn't imagine that life is worth anything anywhere else. Fans of Seinfeld and Friends will know where they're coming from.
It's not just of the places beyond New York City that El Cid is afraid. He's terrified of Geraldine Fusco, the local cop on the beat, who has held a long-simmering grudge against El Cid ever since the fourth grade when he punched her in the face. Now, more than a quarter-century later, he runs the other way when he sees her on the street. The film's running gag - literally - has her chasing after him down city streets.

These eccentric misfits are presented with affection and a great deal of character background by writer-director Jones (who once lived in Providence), which makes Going Nomad rich and fully developed. They're very real in their human foibles and yet they're the kind of folks one wouldn't ordinarily meet, at least not all at once.
Jones' dialogue, played with a great deal of subtle sincerity by an unknown cast who shouldn't remain unknown, is quirky and offbeat. At one point, El Cid decides to become a leader of the disenfranchised rather than a follower and, framed beautifully by the bridge supports of an overhead highway, he tells a friend to "take my word to my people " if he should die. Unfortunately, when asked who his "people" are, El Cid says, "I don't know, and my people don't know who they are either."

A series of bad breaks leads El Cid to think about going nomad, joining the dozens of men and women in a sort of fraternity of loners who get satisfaction by driving around the empty streets of Manhattan late at night in their big, well kept old-model cars. Their subculture is presented so hauntingly and mysteriously -- and so poetically when they talk of "blazing trails and making waves and leaving behind a changed city in our wake" -- that it looks like an attractive alternative lifestyle.

It's presented in mystical and magical terms, and also as lots of fun. When El Cid, played in a delightfully hapless way by Young, realizes that he's losing his girl friend, Jones shoots his reactions in two ways-in the numbness of reality where he can't speak; and in the pain of his inner feelings, where he whimpers and screams and just about turns himself inside out with grief.
Like most of Going Nomad, it's wonderful.

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Review by Joseph Sirota

Director Art Jones packs Going Nomad with humor, smartness, and poignant glimpses of Everyman’s unrequited aspirations.

The film explores a group of long-time Manhattan friends. Each has dreams, philosophies and excuses, and attends their clique’s nightly ritual meeting - same bar, same seats, same beers. They talk about the lives they want, rather than really living them. Their only triumph is driving big, old cars (Lincolns, etc.) through Manhattan in the wee hours when the usually crowded streets are theirs to rule.

El Cid Rivera (Damian Young, leading a strong cast) lost his parents early, but 30 years later is still haunted by mom’s expectations, symbolized by his larger-than-life given name. Will El Cid overcome peer pressure, fears and the comfort of routine, to really live life fully? The answer is a bit long in coming, but Jones certainly gets us rooting for El Cid.

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Review by Monica McIntyre

[Art] Jones' road flick Going Nomad - starring the sublimely gifted comedic actor Damian Young - also celebrates the idea of possibility and the splendor of lightening up.

His film is up for the Starfish.

What does he hope to achieve at the Hamptons? "Just to make a few friends, share a beer with Julie Andrews and land a deal to play 6,000 screens," he says. "I try to keep expectations modest."

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"ONE OF THE TEN BEST FILMS OF 1998"
By Michael Janusonis

7. Bulworth. Warren Beatty's provocative tale revolved around a senator at the end of his rope who finds redemption among the people by daring to tell the truth about the real problems of America.

8. Going Nomad. This offbeat film about a man who gets into his big old car and drives through the empty streets of Manhattan in the wee hours was a delightful surprise at last summer's Convergence Film Festival. Art Jones's film is full of whimsy and surprise. It doesn't have have a distributor yet, but it has been doing well at film festivals around the country. Hopefully we haven't heard the last of it.

9. The Butcher Boy. One of the year's most original films and biggest box-office failures was this shocking look at an Irish bad boy who eventually resorts to murder, all the while getting advice from visions of the Virgin Mary.

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Fri. Sept. 24th, 1999
By Jami Bernard

Poor El Cid Rivera. Saddled with the name of an epic character played in the movies by Charlton Heston, this lanky, balding New Yorker is having trouble living up to his moniker. He's got fire in his belly, but for what? Flipping burgers? The voice of his dead mother comes to him during obsessive late-night drives through the city's empty streets. "Son," she wheedles, "are you being successful?"

"Going Nomad" is an intelligent, poetic and humorous meditation on the big dreams and small endeavors of people who are searching for meaning in their lives. It follows El Cid (Damian Young) and his group of never-changing friends and put-down artists, who toil and drink and bitch and moan. First-time director Art Jones (who also wrote and produced) obviously is home-grown; there is a funny sequence in which one of El Cid's downtown friends is crossing 14th Street for the first time in his life, and he needs help. Interestingly photographed to capture Manhattan in an eerie glow, "Going Nomad" has ideas to spare, although a few too many seams show to make it the all-around pleasure that Jones' next effort will surely be.

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Friday, Sept. 24th, 1999
By Gene Seymour

His name's El Cid Rivera (Damian Young) because his late mother loved both Charlton Heston and the 1961 costume spectacular about the medieval Spanish warrior played by Heston.

But the strange joke - one of many in this movie - is that his madre made sure he never learned a lick of Spanish so as not to speak with an accent.
El Cid constantly hears his mother's ghost asking him if he's succeeding. Well, if you call hanging out with four losers every night in a corner bar and getting fired from every job one gets within days a successful way of life, Cid, as he's called for short, rules the universe.

The one time when Cid feels at ease with himself and the world is when he jumps in his oversized all-American gas guzzler and drives all over Manhattan between midnight and sunrise. He and his fellow "urban nomads" search for the perfect ride the way surfers pursue the perfect wave.

There's something of the all-or-nothing "poetry slam" in writer-director Art Jones' urban-picaresque tale, which is filled to bursting with headlong rhetorical flourishes rarely attempted in American movies. He's also lucky to have indie-movie vet Young playing el Cid with deadpan whimsy that offers a welcome contrast to the overamped emotional atmosphere.

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"FILMMAKER & ASPHALT NOMAD ART JONES AT THE WHEEL"

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday May 24th, 1998 The City Section

'That was a nomad moment,' said Mr. Jones. 'Maybe the spirit of Walt Whitman is aboard tonight.'"

"There is no club for these nomads of the night. Each follows a solitary path. Such explorations are about cutting loose in a city that can be alienating in the crowded daylight. They are about the power of darkness to stir the human imagination. But perhaps above all they are interior journeys, searches for meaning. Mr. Jones recently completed a feature film called "Going Nomad," about a night rider.

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American Independents - Going Nomad
By Nicole Campos

Writer-director Art Jones is the perpetrator of this fanciful New York story, a gleeful cocktail of comedy and poetry. El Cid Rivera (Damian Young) is well into his 30’s and has never left Manhattan Island; neither have his childhood friends, with whom he convenes every day at the same bar, in the same chairs around the same table ("We're like Meet the Press, and you never see them switching seats, do ya?"). Each week brings a new zero-growth employment opportunity, into which El Cid nevertheless dives with unbridled enthusiasm, all the while feeling pressure to succeed from his well-meaning but overbearing mother - who died a number of years before. He finds escape as part of a group who call themselves the Asphalt Nomads - fellow travelers with road-hog cars who cruise Manhattan's emptied streets after midnight, finding solace in control, even if it's only over the wheel of a plush Continental. For at least the first hour, the film bobs and weaves from one (admittedly hilarious) subplot to another. Jones grounds the story, however, in a series of moving monologues from El Cid's fellow Nomads, and skillfully tapers his hero's transforming experiences into an inspiring tale of self-discovery.

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Crain's - "Art Jones' NOMAD makes splash as stand-out NY film and keen indie business model. "	Variety - "Cinema Guild acquires NOMAD for distribution. "