“My mom thinks I’m cool!”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: since 1992 Indianapolis has held its own celebration of cinema with the Heartland International Film Festival, a multi-day, multi-theater marathon every October of documentaries, shorts, narrative features, and animated works made across multiple continents from myriad points of the human experience, usually with an emphasis on uplift and positivity. Ever since the “International” modifier was added in recent years, their acquisition team steadily escalated their game as they’ve recruited higher-profile projects into their lineups. Last year’s big names included future Oscar nominees The Whale and The Banshees of Inisherin; past years featured films that I later ended up catching during their scheduled theatrical runs, such as Room and Lion.

For years my wife Anne and I have talked about getting into the spirit of the festivities. We attended our first Heartland showing in 2011 (a tale I’ve yet to share here on MCC), attended Heartland’s sneak preview nights in 2015 and in 2016, and attended merely one of last year’s showings…which turned out to be a film that’d already been on Hulu for months. We’ve always been afraid of overcommitting during our usually busy Octobers, but we knew we could do better than that.

This year we will do better. The festival’s 32nd edition will run October 5-15. I’ve committed to at least five different Heartland showings — one of them virtual in-home, while the others will screen at four different theaters throughout central Indiana. Anne volunteered to accompany me to two of them; my son is on board for one; still another will be a solo outing to a theater 35 miles from home that I’d never heard of, let alone knew existed. Lord willing and if my family will let me, I’m hoping to write about each experience as quickly as I can throughout the week, hopefully in shorter entries than my usual overlong amateur film essays with anti-casual word counts. We’ll see how that goes.

Our first HIFF entrant was screened at home, apropos of its subject and how we’ve known of her talents for decades. But we never knew her story till now.

You might remember voice actress Pamela Hayden from such cartoons and works as Turbo Teen, Lloyd in Space, and the Christian radio show Adventures in Odyssey if you’re kinda weird. Ordinary Americans know her best as the voice of Milhouse Van Houten from The Simpsons. She’s provided the distinctively whiny voice of Bart Simpson’s best friend ever since his debut in a 1988 Butterfingers commercial, while Matt Groening’s creations were still a recurring feature on The Tracey Ullman Show. From time to time she also chimes in as raspy bullies Dolph and Jimbo Jones, fragile whiner Rod Flanders, Lisa’s mostly forgotten pal Janey, Malibu Stacy, Chief Wiggum’s wife Sarah, and dozens of one-offs. Life’s been good to her over the show’s 34-year run, but it wasn’t always.

Hayden is the subject of Buddy Farmer’s documentary Jailhouse to Milhouse, which began as a 2016 Kickstarter campaign and has made its world premiere at Heartland seven years later. Through multiple on-camera interviews Hayden’s life story is traced back to childhood, with memories of a fierce rebellious streak and what may have been depression that went undiagnosed till much later in life. As she’s fond of saying, “Unexpressed hurt turns into anger.” Whatever the cause may have been, at age 15 — after numerous incidents with authority figures — her parents pulled her out of ordinary school and enrolled her in what they thought was a boarding school…but was more akin to reform school, not too far removed from the squalid pits seen in various exploitation flicks of the era. When they didn’t tame her, at one point she was transferred to still another, even worse facility, like Dante escorting her down to a newly christened circle of Hell.

Other interviewees include her two older sisters (who don’t seem to share her issues), a teacher who wishes he’d done better by her at the “boarding school”, a friend named Jody who’s collaborating with her on a stage musical called Down on the Pharm, and — possibly most cherished of all — a fellow juvenile delinquent named Ed, whom she met on her first day on the evil campus and the only survivor she’s kept in touch with to this day. Farmer also chronicles her journey into quasi-educational darkness through a combination of limited home movies, several dramatic reenactments (less cheesy than, say, Reform School Girl), excerpts from a separate podcast interview with a third party, and vintage stock footage of the neon-swarmed streets of yesteryear Los Angeles. As she recounts her challenges and the instability of her teenage institutionalized years, at no point do we get the sense that those alternative facilities “broke” her in any way.

After she was given a diploma from a high school that she never stepped foot inside (she’s still unclear how that happened), she moved to Hollywood, yadda yadda yadda, everything’s coming up Milhouse! In between recording sessions of new episodes, we also follow her through a speaking gig for the Boys and Girls Club of Carson, CA, where she tells her story to a room full of young-ladies-to-be, some of whose childhoods may resemble her own. They seem bored at first until she breaks the ice with a precision-detonated comedy F-bomb from the podium. Her 1950s would-be correctional overlords might’ve gasped and broken out the nightsticks; for these girls, it’s their first hint that maybe, just maybe, Hayden is an adult who’s truly been where they have. Some light eye-misting may ensue by the end.

Any viewers who check out this doc hoping for some Simpsons tell-all tidbits that might make for super awesome clickbait fodder will come away sans juicy ledes. Farmer keeps the focus squarely on Hayden herself as we take a tour of her everyday life, listen to her candid anecdotes, and tag along to a very special catch-up session with her old schoolmate/cellmate Ed, which offers an emotional denouement of sorts in the final act. As Ed notes, Hayden proved far more resilient and successful than any dismissive adults had thought possible of her. The similarities between herself and Milhouse aren’t lost on her; as she’s fond of noting, “He keeps getting knocked down, but he gets back up.” In a world where we can all sometimes feel like underestimated supporting characters in someone else’s main story, she’s a reminder that sometimes those characters can really surprise you.

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Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: This category rarely applies to documentaries. Virtually none of her Simpsons coworkers appear on camera (barring a few engineers in the recording studio), though the Special Thanks section in the end credits nods toward fellow Simpsons vet Tress MacNeille and longtime showrunner Al Jean.

How about those end credits? To answer the burning question that MCC is always happy to verify: yes, there is indeed a scene at the end of the Jailhouse to Milhouse end credits: Hayden looks into the camera and yells in Milhouse’s voice, “CUT! THAT’S A WRAP! GET OUTTA HERE!”

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Other chapters in this very special miniseries:

• The Promised Land
• Fancy Dance
• Monster
• A Disturbance in the Force
• Avenue of the Giants