There are a handful of small moments in Ceremony, the debut feature from Max Winkler, that nod at the young auteur’s myriad inspirations—minute grace notes that, as Winkler says, make the film “postmodern in the sense that we wear our references on our sleeve.” The main character, Sam, calls his best friend “old sport,” Gatsby’s favorite term of endearment. A woman is named after the title character of Salinger’s “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor.” For Winkler, the nearly overwhelming weight of our collected cultural history, the continuing influence of past authors, filmmakers, musicians, forms the backbone of not only the style, but the theme itself of the film. “It’s a movie about somebody who believes that he’s the leading man in one of those books but then has to realize that this is the real world,” he says.