The Happiest Man in the World (2007)

Alec Wilkinson, a New Yorker vet and author of 1993's true-crime gem A Violent Act, unspools the strange life of David Pearlman, a.k.a. Poppa Neutrino in The Happiest Man in the World. An eccentric drifter in his 70s with a white beard and two teeth (''one on each jaw''), Neutrino criss-crosses the country like a dizzy bedouin, hatching half-baked schemes like a defense-proof football play that may be as revolutionary as the forward pass and a plan to cross the Pacific on a wooden raft. Wilkinson sits back nonjudgmentally, which is noble and all. Unfortunately, his dry approach fails to bring to life the daffy old coot promised at the outset. B