The Dark Side of Film Festivals

Last week I blathered on about How Cool Film Festivals Are. Don’t get me wrong--I’ve had a lot of fun at film festivals over the years. In the spirit of full disclosure, you should know that they have a seamy underbelly. And it's not a cool, film noir kind of underbelly.

Expensive, and getting more so every year

The prices of festival passes get more outrageous every year. When I started going to the Telluride Film Festival in the early 2000s, a regular pass was something on the order of $580. This year that same pass is $780—an increase of 35%.

Telluride used to sell a Late Show Pass, good for the last film of the day at two different theaters, every night of the festival, for 20 bucks. This was a generous deal for people without the regular pass.

This year that same pass is $60.

Q&As aren’t really

Major film festivals often offer Q&A sessions with a film’s stars and/or filmmakers after the screening. A decade ago this was often a true Q&A session, opened up to anyone in the audience.

This still happens, but it’s growing rarer, especially with big stars and directors. Now it’s more likely that a moderator will ask the Bigwig du jour questions, and the audience will sit passively through the tightly-scripted, boring, ass-kissing exercise. No tough, possibly embarrassing questions from real people! That might spoil the mood, or more likely, make the Bigwig sad. And a sad star might pass on the festival the next year.

A few years ago at Telluride, Errol Morris was on hand after his premiere of Tabloid. He opened it up for audience questions, and some dude in the balcony kept asking pointed, vaguely insulting questions. Morris grew increasingly irritated. I don’t remember his final reply, but it was pretty close to “go fuck yourself."

It’s nice when people go off-message. Sometimes they actually reveal something about themselves.

Even with a pass, you’re going to be standing in line. A lot.

You’ve saved your pennies all year for a real pass, instead of standing in the venue cash line like a prole. Congratulations!

Sadly, you’ll still be standing in line. Maybe it will be better than the ticket-buyer line, perhaps even with an awning! (For me, being a pale Celt, the awning is to keep the cancer-inducing sun at bay, rather than the harmless rain off.)

But you’ll still be standing in line for a good 30-45 minutes before each movie. Not like the true bourgeois, who ponied up thousands of dollars for their industry passes. These blessed individuals, much like Guests of the Festival (whose passes are the festival equivalent of a Black American Express card) can swan into a venue right at starting time, and be escorted in before anyone else. Or, if they arrive fashionably early, their tented (and possibly heated) line will be just outside the door.

It’s a very special experience to have a festival staffer explain to you, holder of a pass costing in excess of seven hundred dollars, that yes, you were indeed standing in line for 45 minutes, but a horde of Patron and Sponsor passholders dropped in at the last moment, and well—sorry, pal.

That $50 just bought you a digital projection, bucko!

Given that $25 is not an unreasonable ticket price for a major film festival these days, you’d like to take comfort in knowing that you’re going to see that movie on glorious 35mm.

But, maybe not. Maybe the festival will show a digital projection instead. They didn’t actually tell you on the program in what format the movie would be projected, did they?

I can understand the economics of it—film cans are heavy, costly to ship—and they get lost in the mail. Film is just an expensive medium all around. Festivals are always trying to save money—and they can save tons by projecting digitally.

Except that they probably won’t tell you they’re doing that. It would make them look bad—they tout themselves as Film Festivals, don’t they? They’re just hoping that you won’t make a stink about it. And next year, they’ll cut back on the number of actual films being shown even more. It won’t be long until digital projection is just the New Normal at festivals.

But the cost of your pass won’t go down.

Don Coscarelli Still Kicking

 

  Horror fans of all ages are no doubt familiar with 1979's Phantasm, a dreamlike, stylish sci-fi/horror film written and directed by the then 25-year-old Don Coscarelli. Coscarelli realized that a key component of fear is the unknown, and the mysterious graverobber known only as The Tall Man, with his cadaverous features and deadly, knife-sporting orbs, will haunt the dreams of even the most jaded moviegoer for years after watching the movie.

See what I mean? Oh God, I'm never getting to sleep tonight.

  Sadly, after a high water point of 1982's Marc Singer/Tanya Roberts feature, Beastmaster (from a budgetary standpoint anyway), Coscarelli mostly wrote and directed a number of sequels to Phantasm through the 90's, never garnering the respect many horror fans felt he deserved.

  

  In 2002, however, Coscarelli teamed up with beloved cult actor Bruce Campbell for Bubba Ho-Tep, in which a geriatric Elvis (an impersonator actually died in his place) and a black man who believes himself to be JFK(brainwashed and dyed(!)) must face an Egyptian mummy terrorizing their Texas nursing home. 

  A surprisingly touching meditation on aging and loss, containing perhaps Campbell's strongest performance to date (backed up by the wonderful Ossie Davis only a few years before his death) Bubba Ho-Tep was a critical success, and recouped its shoestring budget many times over.

  

  Coscarelli fans spent the next decade waiting for a follow-up. Rumors of a Bubba- Ho-Tep prequel, Bubba Nosferatu, emerged, but the movie never materialized.

  

  Our long wait has finally paid off with John Dies at the End, released in the waning months of 2012. Paul Giamatti not only appears in the movie, but is also the executive producer.

 

 Salon has a terrific interview with Giamatti and Coscarelli, which you can (and should!) read here.

  

  Your humble correspondent will meanwhile ponder whether things would have worked out between him and Tanya Roberts when he was 12, but with the soul of a much older man.

Oh, Tanya, we could have had something special.

 

 

 

A look at a few of the award-winners announced last night at Sundance:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2013/01/27/best-of-the-fest/

Going to a Film Festival? Do it Right!

As I write this, the director of the International Film Series, Pablo Kjolseth, is in Park City, taking in the Sundance Film Festival. He’s getting up early and staying up late, watching movies until his eyes bleed, so that he can bring the best back home to the IFS.

He’s suffering for you.

But what if you’re the kind of hearty, adventurous cinephile that says, “why, I think I could handle going to a high-powered film festival!”

Film Festivals can be fun, or a LOT of fun, depending upon how you play your cards. Here are some tips I’ve picked up from close to a decade attending the Telluride Film Festival, and odd stints at the Austin Film Festival, Sundance, and SXSW.

Know Your Festival

Every festival is run differently. At the Telluride Film Festival, the film lineup is kept a secret until the day the festival starts, so you can’t plan beforehand. The lineup at Sundance is known months in advance, and if you’re buying tickets, you have to map out your schedule a long way out.

Read up on the festival. Do you need a pass? Can you buy tickets at the venue? Where are the venues? How do you get to them from your hotel? The better you know these answers, the easier it will be for you to navigate the festival, and the more fun you’ll have.

Secure Lodging Well in Advance

The big festivals are popular. Don’t be one of the sad people who wake up a month before the festival and think, “oh, yeah, I should book a hotel room!” SXSW hotel rooms, for example, get scarce 4-5 months beforehand. The group I go with to Telluride locks in a house rental 7-8 months before we go. And we try to have a verbal agreement with the owner when we leave that year that yes, we love the place, and please let us rent it again the next year.

Which leads me to…

Go with Other People!

For me, half of the fun of going to a film festival is the actual film-going, and the other half consists of the spur-of-the-moment, often late-night conversations I have with my rental housemates.

It goes something like this: you go back to the hotel room/condo/rental house after your last film of the day, pour yourself a glass of wine or a beer, and reflect upon what you’ve seen that day. Then, one of your housemates comes back. What, they hated Citizen Kane II? Why? Then, housemate #2 returns. She saw films you did not. What did she see today that she liked? Well, that sounds pretty cool, so you revise the films you’re going to see the next day, based on the feedback you’re getting. Housemate #3 returns, dead set on convincing you that…

The next thing you know it’s 3am, and the living room is hosting four separate conversations, equally animated and passionate.

This is going to make getting up the next morning a bit of a challenge. That's why God made hazelnut double cappuccinos. But really, talking about films with your housemates and other festival-goers is what takes the festival experience to the next level.

Rent a House (or a big condo) with Others

The more people you can get to share the lodging expense, the cheaper it will be for you. In addition to the social benefits, having a kitchen will reduce your food costs considerably. Eating out every meal at a festival adds up. Quickly.

Be Open to New Experiences

One of the ways that the Telluride Film Festival has ruined me is their open, flexible scheduling. They don’t require you to buy your tickets in advance, and in fact, don’t tell you the lineup until you get there. I usually make a daily plan of films I want to see, but I heavily modify it after talking with my housemates and people I meet in line. That new Joan of Arc musical? People aren’t jazzed about it. Okay, scratch that. But that incredibly depressing-sounding documentary on Nebraskan sugar beet farmers? It’s an amazing, life-affirming tour de force! Okay, put that on the list.

Last year at Sundance I read the description for Beasts of the Southern Wild and said to myself, “meh”. But it became clear after a day or two that people were going bonkers over it.

Taking a risk on a film can introduce you to a new genre, a new star or director, that will pay a lifetime of enjoyment dividends.

Or, you may suffer for two hours. But then, it’s on to the next cinematic adventure!

Until your health is so wrecked from lack of sleep, morning coffee, and late-night booze, that you are forced to return to civilization.

Bonus! Here is Pablo Kjolseth at the 2006 Telluride Film Festival, whipping up pizza:

The Heartless, Vile Andy Griffith You Always Wanted to See

That is to say, his character "Lonesome Rhodes" is in 1957's A Face in the Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan.

Neglected by audiences and somewhat panned by critics upon its release, it has steadily gained stature over the years, and rightly so. I can’t say I’m totally up on all of Andy Griffith’s movie roles, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was his high water mark as an actor.

Over the course of the movie, Griffith’s character, Rhodes, is rescued from a small-town Arkansas jail by an impossibly young and fresh-faced Patricia Neal, whose character Marcia Jeffries is scouting talent for her “A Face in the Crowd” program on her uncle’s radio station. Horse trading cooperation for an early release, Griffith spews forth a folksy country-boy banter and strums a song on his ‘ol gih-tar. Rhodes (who doesn’t know, or just doesn’t want to reveal, his first name) is dubbed “Lonesome” on the spot by Jeffries.

The folks love him, and a star (and also a monster) is born.

It turns out Lonesome Rhodes’ hayseed shtick is enormously popular, and he finds he can make audiences do just about anything. He derails the local sheriff’s political ambitions for mayor. He gets the good folks of Memphis to contribute their quarters to a black woman who needs a new home. He gets his ever-growing audience to start buying a worthless energy pill (this was before worthless energy drinks, and good-as-gold Viagra) called Vitajex.

People take notice. Powerful people. And then Rhodes starts setting his own course.

Without blowing the whole movie for you, let’s just say that Rhodes isn’t too interested in the common good. He’s interested in A#1, and how to get his favorite person to the top, with the population of America hanging on his every word, ready to do his bidding. A lot of people get hurt in the process, and every time Griffith flings some emotional dung in Patricia Neal’s face, your heart breaks along with hers.

 

Although Kazan is a bit ham-fisted and on the nose in certain scenes, it’s still a powerful movie today, and would have been astonishing when it was released in the late 50s. At a time when TV was starting to pick up steam, Kazan clearly saw the power of the medium, and how that power could be twisted to vile ends.

It's a damned fine movie. Go rent it. You’ll never see Sheriff Taylor the same way again.

Plus! This is Lee Remick's first movie.

Zero Dark Questions (no spoilers to alert)

"I've always trusted that what I think is funny they will laugh at, what I think is moving will move them, what feels ... interesting [to me], they will find interesting. I don't find anything interesting about a gun. A gun is there to threaten or kill. ... A gun is rarely used in film in a way that feels like ... life."                               Dustin Hoffman

“Zero Dark Thirty” just opened up in Boulder last weekend.  I went to a matinee screening which was packed with young college-aged men.  The protagonist, played by Jessica Chastain, was named Maya, which is Sanskrit for illusion.  Chastain also stars in Malick’s “The Tree of Life” opposite Brad Pitt and from looking at her imdb profile, she’s done a lot of television.  She had a minor role in “The Help” as Celia Foote, the perky wife who hires Minny to show her how to cook real Fried Chicken. 

Kathyrn Bigelow, the director, likes to direct big action flicks.  Have you seen “Point Break” with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves?  The plot revolves around surfing and busting into banks and stealing money, I’m simplifying it of course.  She also directed “Strange Days” one of the few films I’ve ever walked out of, dragging my boyfriend at the time with me.  I saw “The Hurt Locker” which won best picture in 2011, about a man obsessed with detonating bombs, again I’m simplifying the story for the sake of getting to my point.  Bigelow likes action.  She likes to keep the guns and the bombs in the frame and the threat they represent as a constant presence.

IFS is not screening “Zero Dark Thirty” so this blog piece is purely my attempt to share some observations about the movie and its director from the perspective of a woman who makes films, watches films and thinks a lot, maybe too much.  I should be clear, I love action movies.  One of my favorite action films is “The Fifth Element” with Bruce Willis and directed by Luc Besson. It is true that the "The Fifth Element" is on the comical and goofy side of the genre but it’s packed with science fiction, romance, CGI effects, wacky characters and heroic figures.  The story still contains the classic save-the-world-from-the-evil-empire only with a lot of zany detours and ridiculous and implausible exposition.  But isn’t that what every James Bond movie is about? Or any dark and serious action flick? In “Zero Dark Thirty” our hero is a heroine named “illusion” and she saves the world from Osama Bin Laden (OBL) the evil Al Qaeda dictator who paid for 9/11 and is behind the successful US campaign to have every passenger disrobe before boarding a plane. Only it’s for real.  This is based on truth, it’s not a ‘Skyfall” or a hobbit or a Bruce Willis "Die Hard" movie. 

So what was I seeing and experiencing while I watched this film?  First I wanted to know if Maya was real and turns out she is but maybe her name is “Jen” and she is definitely still undercover. This is a real person recruited into the CIA from either high school or college to fight terrorism.  Very interesting.  And how did it feel to watch a film from the perspective of a female heroine who was putting the pieces together of a grand scale murder mystery investigation? Chastain does a wonderful job of letting her face do all the work.  She did that in “The Tree of Life” also…I don’t remember one full sentence coming out of her mouth; it was whispers, happy yelps, fearful screams, gentle seductive smiles, angry or sad tears but very few actual sentences.  To a lesser extent, she does that here too.  She eats a lot of junk food and she thinks, sleuths, deduces, and finally is overwhelmed by her own results. My overall impression is of someone who does literally nothing else but detective work; she has no friends, is smart enough not to take on a lover, and ingests a copious amount of information. 

So, I ask myself again, what am I watching?  The film is set up like an episodic television show and is poorly crafted to some extent. The torture scenes depicted in the film (waterboarding) have been heavily debated all over the blogosphere, the press and on TV so there’s no need for me to discuss that.  We are being carried on Chastain’s brows; they will tell us if we’re up or down, angry or sad, terrified or confident and so on. So, based on assumption, through Chastain we find Bigelow.  What is Bigelow doing with this movie?  Why did she choose the gaze of a female?  Knowing that it’s based on a real person lubricates the decision, but I think Bigelow might have created the persona of Maya anyway. Maya is tough, insubordinate, and confident and possesses providence. She has no existence outside of the mission.  She is a one-pointed animal.

To be a female action director in Hollywood, to be the first woman to win best picture, to be married to James Cameron for three years, to be able to direct pictures that are gritty, hard and threatening, to raise the money to make these films, to deal with the criticism that comes with them, to make a film that depicts extensive torture, to steadily build a life of wanting to be in that life you have to be an animal.  You have to be conniving, tough, insubordinate, and confident and possess providence.  There is no way out of it.  If you don’t have those qualities you don’t make movies and you certainly don’t make Hollywood movies. I would pose that we are watching Kathryn Bigelow as Jessica Chastain as Maya. Because, as a movie, as piece of art, as a reenactment of the OBL takedown, this is not much of a movie.  But as an anatomical dissection of what it takes to be a woman who makes Hollywood action movies, it’s beyond accurate.  You have to know that Bigelow identifies with Maya, embodies her, breathes the same air and screams at the same a#@holes every day that Maya does.  Maya does a beautiful job of telling people off and the satisfaction of it is palpable because Bigelow knows how to depict it beautifully.

As someone who has worked in the Hollywood machine for some years, been behind the assistant desks of Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher, and other monsters, I recognize a true heroine when I see one.  This film is a battle cry it is not a film.  It is a beating on the chest and taking up of weapons.  Ok KB, I get it. Are you done proclaiming?  Because I’d like to see what you’ve really got.  Can Bigelow be the heroine and save the Hollywood filmmaking machine from certain destruction?  I don’t think we have to know or that it’s all that interesting.  What would be interesting is if she pulled a Marc Forster and did a “Finding Neverland”. Forster went from doing a hard and dark film called “Monsters Ball” to the literary and poignant true story of J.M. Barrie that was elegant, had a gorgeous script and was well crafted and performed.   I’m not saying she shouldn’t do an action film, which she obviously wants to do, I’m saying she could tone it down, soften it up, change the story from a battle cry to a peaceful cry and show us another side of her skill set and talent. Can she soften up and remove the threat of a weapon or two?  Can she craft something beautiful, precise and elegant that is moving and touching and not bloody and murderous? 

It is possible that Hollywood has gotten to her and it’s too late, but I hope not.   KB, step outside the box, step outside the 18 to 25 year-old male audience sweet spot, step into a film about life without a weapon, I dare you.

Agent Provocateur: Vulnerability with Judson Webb

Judson Webb on right

Recently I sat down with ex-Boulderite actor, producer and director Judson Webb who’s now living in Falun, Sweden to talk about his part in the Boulder produced award-winning film “Somewhere West”, his experiences with the Boulder theater scene, and his new theater company, Everything Theater Company, www.everythingtheatrecompany.com (for the remainder of this article abbreviated to ETC).

To prep me for our conversation Judson sent me his manifesto for ETC entitled “An Operational Manifesto for Training Makers of Enlightened Theater”.  I was immediately interested.  It’s a two-page document that deftly covers the vision of ETC, which Judson runs with his wife Kjesti. Between the two of them, they have over 20 years of experience and offer services for corporate training, theater for adults and children and produce original theater and film.  Here is an excerpt from the first paragraph:

With a rebellious sense of humor we reject the idea that artists of any kind must be overly neurotic, addicted or dysfunctional in order to create. We believe that theatre artists should seek to become beacons of joyfully awakened, high-functioning expressiveness as it is their job to be clear conduits for communicating the mysteries of being human. To accomplish this we see the cultivation and practice of deep self-awareness as central to the training of theatre artists. We define spirituality as “our relationship to the unknown”. We strive for unabashed hilarity, technical mastery, innovation and vulnerability on our path towards an enlightened theatre.

Sounds pretty great, doesn’t it? Judson was heavily involved in the film “Somewhere West”, directed by David Marek, who holds an MFA in Film Production from the University of Colorado.  The film has won numerous awards on the festival circuit and has become a testament for independent first-time feature filmmakers. 

Trailer for "Somewhere West"

During our interview I wanted to know about Judson’s manifesto and in particular his ability to create environments for “…hilarity, technical mastery, innovation and vulnerability…” Judson very clearly said that collaboration was key but really there were two main ingredients.  He explains, “"Somewhere West", that was 30 days in an RV about half of those days were grueling. We had nine people doing 20 people’s work. We were driving from location to location. We covered about 5,000 miles in those 30 days. We were shooting in all conditions.  We were ducking permits and doing it guerrilla style and re-writing the script with no chance to re-shoot so we had to get it as right as possible in the moment.”

“What we came out with wasn’t perfect by any stretch. Had we had more time and more money we could have made it better but still what we came out with was Herculean. In its own way it’s done very well. If we had all hated each other it would have been over before it began! So it’s about family, community, relationships and having fun.”

Judson then went on, “And the other piece is that everyone likes the task at hand.  Everyone needs to be passionate about filmmaking or whatever the art form is and you can see that. I keep thinking to myself “What is the right formula for creating a well working crew or a good collaboration?” and those good collaborations, they happen almost accidentally. I didn’t know I was going to meet Dave Marek in 1998 at Whole Foods making pizzas!  And I certainly didn’t know that 11 years later we’d be shooting a feature film driving all over the country. But I did know that I liked Dave a lot.” 

Judson and the entire crew of “Somewhere West” had a lot of help from CU Boulder.  “CU is awesome.  The guys over at The Kage, Clint Culley in particular, were always super-supportive.  They were supportive of “Somewhere West”.  I know that Phil Solomon was a real inspiration for Dave. CU has always been supportive.  “Somewhere West” is Dave’s graduate thesis.  It wouldn’t have been there at all without the CU Film Department.”

Judson Webb

Judson spent a great deal of time refining his acting creds.  He has acted in his native land of Texas and spent some time in Los Angeles before moving to Boulder.  In an unusual twist, Judson realized he was camera shy while he was out in LA.  He explained, "Put me in front of an audience and I feel fine.  But in front of the camera, I always felt really weak.  My work had this self-conscious quality in front of the camera.”  After he’d been in Boulder for a while, he discovered the CU Boulder Film Department and realized it might be the best way to work through his shyness. He explains, “I was on the periphery of that scene mainly through Dave Marek and Adam Benn.  They were together in the BFA film program.”

Judson then explained how his collaboration with David Marek went beyond throwing pizza pies. “We wrote a play together called “Fall: A Post-Apocalyptic Fairy Tale”. This play was performed in Gregory Canyon and the audience had to follow the action of the play around, people in trees - it was a wild event!  It wasn’t a great play but it was fun and it made concrete some of these relationships that continue. Dave wasn’t in CU yet. He decided to go to film school and he jumped in and got turned on by the film program.  I said, “I need to get in front of the camera. I want to loan myself out to you as an actor.” Subsequently I got hooked up into some of the other student projects over there.  That’s what I needed, just a low-pressure way, where no one was looking at me with dollar signs in their eyes saying, “You’re burning my film dude!” 

Speaking of making films and filmmakers, I wondered if Judson had spent any formative time watching movies at IFS.  He emphasized that IFS had always been a central component to the Boulder film scene, “There were films there that I couldn’t see anywhere else. Among the artists in Boulder, there is always this rallying cry for independent film.  You see venues spring up for a second and then they run out of money and die.  That was the great thing about that program. It was a consistent showcase for indie film, first time filmmakers, and foreign films. The people who are curating that program always had an excellent eye for excellent work. For us it was like, there’s always IFS.”

During his tenure in Boulder, Judson was instrumental in cultivating the Boulder theater scene.  He was a founder of the Theatre 13, LTO, and Bohemian Dinner Theatre. He produced, directed and acted in more than 20 productions for Theater 13.  Discussing his experiences he was honest about how difficult the work can be in a small off-off-off-off Broadway environment. “You know the Boulder theater scene, you just have to wear 75 different hats, you may be an actor, but if you’re an actor you’re also gonna be a designer and a lighting tech and a board op and you’re gonna do all of it. So I did pretty much everything you can do there.”

Judson and Kjesti Webb

Eventually, he and his wife Kjesti outgrew the scene and that’s when they started to look around for a good place to raise their daughters and to continue making art. Sweden was the clear answer after looking at many other cities in both the US and Canada.   He went on to explain, “It’s a two hour flight from Stockholm to London, and it’s not a far punch to get to anywhere to do work.  The arts are a lot more supported here.  Those things combined with family connections [Kjesti is Swedish], great free education for our daughters all the way through college, and health care, social benefits out the ear.  Those things were a huge determining factor and this feeling that Boulder wasn’t fitting us anymore. We reached a ceiling there. We did the best work we were going to do in Boulder and we were ready for something different.  Plus I’m a kid from west Texas so the opportunity to move to a foreign country and live a days drive from the Arctic Circle… it’s an adventure for me to be an expat for a while.”

Before bringing our conversation to a close, I wanted to get back to the manifesto. What was key to Judson about making enlightened art? He went on to explain, “I’m most impressed by vulnerability. For me, that‘s the place where all dharmas converge. Vulnerability and open heartedness, you can’t fake ‘em. Something I’ve been chewing on lately is I’ve been reading back over this enlightened theater writings.  Actors are sometimes accused of being fakes.  Of being people who pretend to be other people because they can’t be themselves and I disagree with that intensely. There are certainly many actors who are good at faking it. But I believe that acting is about authenticity, it’s about vulnerability and even one step further it’s about becoming masterful in empathy.”

That seemed like a perfect place to end our delightful conversation about making art in Boulder, learning and teaching a deep and variegated craft like acting and moving out into the world to share it with others, or in Judson’s case, starting ETC and learning to speak Swedish.  Lycka Till (Good Luck) Judson!

The flag of Sweden