Wicked Witch Overdoses on Films at the 14th Hamptons International Film Festival. How to Snag a Press Pass. Publishing Contrarian Stalks Alec Baldwin!
I hadn’t even intended to go to any of the movies being shown at the 14th Hamptons International Film Festival. Like a lot of the people who own homes out here, when the Friday night cars stream into town and the Jitney and Luxury Liner buses disgorge the weekenders from the city, we head for deep water. (Oh, wait, I forgot, I had just gotten out here myself on Thursday from the city. That’s right, I was disgorged too, just a bit earlier than the others!) Eleven thousand additional people were expected in East Hampton for the festival! Dive, Dive!
My neighbor, Katy, had miraculously cadged two free tickets to the film 1:1 from a friend who had been doing volunteer work at the festival. Katy invited me, and after last week’s posting with its subsequent vitriolic, finger pointing, name calling (You’re a racist! No, you’re a racist!), email slug-fest around the blogosphere, I needed to sit in a dark theater and regain my sanity. So Katy and I fought for a parking space in town, and joined cinephiles who had trekked in from all over the United States and maybe even the world. The very honest Katy bought a gigantic, butter-soaked bag of popcorn while the opportunistic Wicked Witch dropped down on all fours and sneaked past the overpriced concession with her large diet-coke and stash of oatmeal cookies purchased down the street.
1:1 started and within minutes I had caught the film festival bug—and caught it bad. I knew I would try to snag a press pass in the morning. And, yes, I hoped that some of these films originated as literary fiction or nonfiction books or memoirs so that I could tie the movies I saw to my publishing blog and keep one step ahead of the “tend to your knitting” crowd. (You know who you are!)
How to Grift a Press Pass to an international film festival: Up at dawn I knew the challenge would be to convince someone (it would turn out to be the very handsome D’Arcy Drollinger from Springer Associates in New York City) that I was, indeed, worthy of a press pass. How was I going to pull this off, simple blogger that I am? Here’s how I did it:
My clever disguise! I tossed my up-to-my-armpits, loose fitting jeans in a corner and struggled into my one pair of Levi 529 low-slung jeans, a skimpy sweater that would reveal my navel if I raised my arms or half my bottom if I bent over to tie a shoelace, pulled on a pair of colorful striped socks (felt a draft!), laced up my black sneakers, donned my red leather jacket and reached for my natty, slightly western and weathered looking Orvis fly fishing hat. A quick fore and aft assessment in the mirror told me, yes, I was ready to join the film-noir crowd!
Postings that mention film! I clicked through The Publishing Contrarian frantically looking for postings or any mention of film within a posting and, voila!, found three:
Random House Films and Focus Films Snuggle Up
Barriers Broken for Advertising in Books
Attitude & Eye Contact! I found out the press were being housed, if not fed, at The Huntting Inn (yes, two “tt’s”) on the edge of town. I elbowed my way to a long table manned by the aforementioned D’Arcy. (Is he related to THAT D’Arcy of Pride & Prejudice fame?) I showed him my clippings and smiled my biggest smile. Hat in hand (not literally) I said I was sorry I was late applying for a pass. In fact, I said, I was interested in movies that no one seemed to want to see. D’Arcy smiled back, looked at and took my clippings, asked me a few questions and gave me, yes!, a press pass to hang around my neck. Oh, the rewards of blogging into the night!! Oh, happy day!!!
Feeling very self-important with my big badge (”PRESS”) hanging around my neck, I swaggered over to the multiplex theater up the street. I stood in line behind a tiny, chipper woman wearing a bright yellow hat with a big mesh bird bobbing besottedly on the top. (Sighting of first crank!) Not to be outdone in the crank category, I made a mental note to festoon my Orvis hat with fabulous artificial flies, like a Royal Wulff!
Let the movies begin!
The Wicked Witch of Publishing as Film Commentator
1:1 – (Director Annette K. Oleson) Well, let me state right away that this is not “1 colon 1.” It is “the ratio of 1 to 1.” A little something people seemed to forget, including me. (Too embarrassing! “I’d like a ticket to One Colon One, please!”) It’s the tale of a hospitalized, possibly brain damaged Danish boy, his sister (beautiful), her Palestinian boyfriend (a good guy), his brother (a scary dude), their families (decent and loving), racial conflict, misinformation and lack of information all taking place in a city that was designed, literally (and this is made a big deal of in the first moments of the film), to be an ideal habitat. It’s a little startling to realize that the 16-year-old Mie is blithely having sex with her boyfriend in the back bedroom and right under the knowing nose of her mother, but, hey, I’m from Connecticut. (How modern! How Danish?) Overall Score: 6.5 out of 10.
Family Law or Derecho de Familia. (Director Daniel Burman) The director, who also wrote the screenplay, has been referred to as the Latin cousin of Woody Allen. I hate Woody Allen. In order to capture the love interest, our hero, Ariel, signs up to take Pilates from a pretty instructor. (Did you know Joseph Pilate [1880-1967] was interned in Lancaster, England as an “enemy alien”? That’s where he found the time to develop his fitness method. Who knew? Not I.) You’d have to PAY ME to hang from those contraptions that Ariel hung from like a bat in order to seduce his instructor. Family Law is about the relationship between a grandfather, father, and son. Ariel and his wife have sex, clothed, on Pilates gym equipment—in case you want to know. Overall Score: 5.75.
Avenue Montaigne or Fauteuils D’Orchestre. (Director Daniele Thompson) Brancusi’s The Kiss (that sculpture where two heads are blended seamlessly into a kiss) plays a part in the theme of this movie. Everyone has relationship problems. Some have career problems. A young girl newly arrived in Paris crosses and re-crosses paths with a classical pianist, a mogul, a soap-opera star, and the son of the mogul. The darling heroine, Jessica, rips her clothes off (without even getting a free dinner) and has sex in the rich mogul’s bedroom, but with the rich mogul’s rich son. Overall Score: 6.5 (Score 10 for Jessica’s rich-husband snagging abilities!)
Coven, The Empty Day, The Hungry Heart, Smile, Davy & Stu, Kibera Kid, La Primavera, Practice. (8 films, 8 directors, 13-minutes to 19-minutes long). 2006 Undergraduate Student Film Winners. Hey, these films felt very professional and were very different. I sat through them all. And I loved Smile. I’d call it a clever cartoon based on the Smiley face with a body, but in film argot I’d have to say Smile utilized motion capture and live action techniques. (How’m I doing!) How long has it been since you saw a short film before the main feature? (Been to the drive-in lately? The what?) I laughed out loud at the yellow rubbery character in Smile. Bring back movie shorts. Bring back Daffy Duck, I say! There was some sex in one film, but not in the Smiley cartoon, thank goodness. A few breasts revealed. Score: 10!!!
The Killer Within. (Director Macky Alston). Help! A 72-year old, highly regarded University of Arizona professor and family man reveals a shocking secret. No, no, it is not that he is gay. We get to watch the expressions of his friends, colleagues, students and daughters as he admits to what he did when he was 22 years old. At first you feel deep sympathy for this man who has led an exemplary for 50 years and probably been haunted by what he did. Later, you don’t. You feel growing horror. His wife’s teary excuse for marrying him and having a child with him, “But he’s so good to me,” is stunning. Robert “Bob” Bechtel, the man with a secret, has been writing his memoir since 1993 and hopes to finish it this year. (Knitting here!) This riveting documentary film was supported by The Discovery Channel and may turn up as part of the series that included Grizzly Man, the story of bear activist Timothy Treadwell. Don’t miss this one. No sex. Period. I’d vomit if there were. Score: 10.
Summer of ‘04 or Sommer ‘04 An Der Schlei. (Director Stefan Krohmer) Rough winds, choppy waters, sailing, sailing, sailing, and a freak accident, throw a family (and a precocious 12-year-old girl with budding breasts) into emotional turmoil that is complicated by sexual yearning and a younger Jeff Bridge’s look-a-like. (Whoa. Be still my heart. Oh, that’s right. I don’t want to betray Alec Baldwin, my new friend from Novel Night.)
Lots of bare butts, a glimpse of you-know-what, and some of the most boring, explicit, graceless, lacking-in-sensuality sex I’ve ever been forced to watch since porno actors had at it while wearing only black dress socks! Please turn off the lights and pull up the covers next time! I’m begging you. Score 6.25.
People take their films seriously at the Hamptons International Film Festival. There was lots of film chat by cinephiles holding forth after the movies and in line while waiting for the Founders ($1000 tickets!) to get the best seats first. I even made some chitchat. “Well, cinematically speaking….” Robert Altman was here, as were Roy Schneider and the peripatetic Alec Baldwin. (He’s EVERYWHERE, but I missed him!) Rosie Perez was on a panel. Ellen Burstyn received the Golden Starfish Award for Career Achievement in Acting. I was just exhausted and movied-out by the time the film festival ended.
Next year, I hope to run into my new friend D’Arcy Drollinger (great name or what?) and show him even more proof (this posting!) that I am deserving of a press pass…or better yet a Patron’s Pass to the 15 th Hamptons International Film Festival!
October 26th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
The film festival sucks. Town is full of jerks who wear their hats backwards, wear sunglasses at night, drive SUVs in Manhattan and call their friend Robert -Robere. They should all move to Yemen.
October 26th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
And think yourself lucky you weren’t with The Curmudgeon while you were there. While you were anywhere in fact.
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™: Bill is the author of A Half Life of One. He lives in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. I loved his book. You can read it online if you can stand the pain. His blog is also excellent. Very personal.
October 26th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
First… I’ll loan you my Tensas Gazette Press Pass next time if you promise me I can watch something like Smile and not have to watch the sex scenes.
What is it with the movie industry these days? Don’t they realize that anticipation literally makes women pant and drives men crazy? I do not know if I could have stood another 30 minutes of Pride and Prejudice (the really good one from A&E, not the 2 hour drivel movie), if D’Arcy and Elizabeth did not kiss! I sometimes think I was born in the wrong century, then I remember air conditioning and I smile… nope, right century all right!
October 26th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
I think I would have gone the quiet sit-on-the-deck route, but my hat’s off to you for a hectic weekend.
After your last post I was kinda surprised this one wasn’t about Mel Gibson or nuts who deny the Holocaust:)
October 26th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
But wait! Any of the films adapted from novels? Ok, I read straight through and I may have missed it. Wel
l except for “The killer within”. (By the way, the movie seems throughly creepy,) However, you mentioned Robert Bechtel didn’t finish his memoir. I guess that doesn’t count. Any-who, if you don’t do it, I’m going to run with writing about artsy films adapted from novels. (wink) It’s kind of cool being a member of the media, when you don’t have a deadline, right?
By the way, you are a class act, Ms. Scanlon. I went back to the heated blog and noticed you posted our book covers. Thank you so much.
I like it here, I think I’ll stick around. (smile)
October 27th, 2006 at 9:14 am
All of which goes to prove that, without Meryl Streep, Woody Allen or a title like “Eine Zeitverschwendung,” your film ain’t goin’ nowhere. I agree on the shorts, though–that’s where you’ll generally find the creativity.
October 29th, 2006 at 6:19 am
I’m exhausted just reading about it: the hype, the pump, the ramp.
You descriptions are - as always - acute.
October 31st, 2006 at 10:32 am
Lynne, That is funny stuff!! I had no idea you were so wickedly active in the Hedgerow. Have a super spooky Halloween!!!
November 7th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Back in the Western Hemisphere after a brief visit to the People’s Socialist Republic of Libya, your feisty Film Festival descriptions were a breath of fresh air. Sex scenes? Relationships? In Benghazi and Tripoli you seldom even see a woman or child on the street. and although satellite dishes are ubiquitous, so is strict censorship. We take our freedom too much for granted.
I particularly enjoyed the Curmudgeon’s comments.