“We talk about juice as far as EGBs — energy-giving behavior. So high-fives, celebrating other people’s touchdowns, encouraging people when something bad happens. There’s a lot that goes into that.”

The movement of intimately scaled, often improvised, low-budget dramas and comedies that pull their actors from the lives and milieux of filmmakers who build stories around their personal experiences has become the energy-giving core of the American cinema.

Job resources are “motivational, energy-giving aspect of your work.”

As Ranjaniemi notes, champion ultrarunners are special creatures: To be one, your body needs to strike the right balance between using up the energy-giving glucose and clearing itself of glucose’s byproduct, lactate.

But despite their satisfying if somewhat predictable existence in a sleepy suburban Southern California town, June and Oscar find themselves dealing with improbable tragedies, energy-giving fountains and a mysterious briefcase-wielding weirdo.