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In DRIVER 23, Rolf Belgum chronicles the life of Dan Cleveland, a deliveryman and metal guitarist who is driven by relentless desire to become a rockstar.  Shot with painstaking love over 7 years in Minneapolis, DRIVER 23 presents a hilarious and poignant portrait of a man with obsessive compulsive disorder and a dream. It’s an unsung parallel to AMERICAN MOVIE, which also came out in 1999, but is crafted with more compassion for its unhinged protagonist.

Dan Cleveland’s band, Dark Horse, faces the problems of every local rock band: organizing practice, making album art and booking shows. Dan spends his free time gleefully constructing MacGuyver-esque death traps out of plywood,  duct tape and pulley systems to move his equipment and to work out. His wife, a professional clown, calmly cheers him on.

Hailed as “Spinal Tap” meets “Don Quixote,” DRIVER 23 captures the life of Dan Cleveland in an intimate, tender, often hilarious portrait of a mentally ill man determined to make his dreams into reality.

“The disorder is always there, always boiling. There’s always a flame in the pot. And when the pressure builds up enough, there’s a release valve, and you start hearing this squealing from the teapot. Without the medication, I’m always squealing.”
-Dan Cleveland