Day: January 16, 2009

I lasted ten minutes with Lymelife earlier this afternoon. I was talking to MCN’s Kim Voynar about her damaged left foot, the lights came down, the movie played a bit and I was starting to think about escaping less than five minutes later. I knew I had to five minutes after that. I know from ten-minute bailouts. I don’t make a habit of them — maybe five or six times in my life — but I now if films aren’t going to work for me very quickly.

We all know what it’s like to feel intrigued and curious and be unsure what a film is doing or where it’s going during the first 10 or 20 minutes. This wasn’t like that. The energy was wrong, the vibe was off, the fatigue factor had manifested within minutes and it just wasn’t happening.

This was “I’m not going to sit through a leafy suburban movie with Keiran Culkin playing Alec Baldwin‘s son.” This was “I’m not going to watch the weathered-looking, saggy-faced Timothy Hutton — it takes decades of partying to get a face like his — play an emotionally repressed weirdo for the next 90 plus minutes.” This was the “oh, no, I’ve been here before, I know what’s going to happen” indie Sundance blahs/blues.

I might get stuck with it on a plane some day and watch it all through. But maybe not. I just know/knew I couldn’t sit there and get into a movie starring Keiran Culkin, especially one with him wearing a truly dorky looking light-blue mixed with dark-blue winter jacket.

“I didn’t see you at the [today’s] Moon screening,” a distribution guy wrote me just now. “If you weren’t, you missed the first breakout hit of the festival.

“It’s a sensational piece of indie sci-fi with cult potential. Brilliantly conceived. A superb performance by Sam Rockwell — award-worthy in fact.

“The only problem is that there’s a big twist about 45 minutes in that would be criminal to reveal. I hope respectful critics like yourself won’t spoil it! Definitely one to make sure you see.

“I believe Sony Classics has the rights for the US, England and Australia, although I don’t know if

that’s public knowledge yet. If it isn’t you didn’t get it from me.”

It can very get awfully tiring…depressing, really, to watch groups of credentialed, shaggy-haired, snow-booted Sundance journalists and filmmakers who are sitting near you in the lounge smiling and gleefully laughing with each other, one joke after another, chit-chat, chuckle-chuck, hah-hah, grins and mirth…no end to it, constantly, hour after hour. It’s cool for the first hour or so, but after the two-hour mark I could just scream.

A little part of me — okay, one that I don’t admire and probably shouldn’t acknowledge — wants to go up to one of these groups, bend over and say in a very quiet voice, “I’m sorry, guys, it’s obviously none of my business…but did you know that the stuff you say in conversation doesn’t always have to be funny? I mean, you don’t have to laugh uproariously all the time? You can just sit there and chill down and be heavy-cat Zen types. You could even be silent for a bit and read about the jet that splashed into the Hudson yesterday. Oh, I’m sorry — not funny enough, right?

“I’m mentioning this, no offense, because your constant smiling and chuckling and laughing are driving me up the wall.”

I moved this morning from the shitty condo with the cold-air seeping through the living room window and no wifi and the total-agony mattress from Jakarta to a really sublime two-floor condo on Upper Norfolk (i.e., about 150 feet above Main Street) with great wifi, a comfy bed, a flat-screen TV, a nice kitchen, two full bathrooms, and a snow-covered outdoor porch with a great view.

Twi-story condo on Upper Norfolk — Friday, 1.16, 10:25 am.

After moving my stuff to the new pad I took a cheap cab (only $5 bills — driver gave me a break) to the Yarrow hotel — the only place in town with decent free wifi — for a little work, and then walked across the frigid, snow-blown parking lo to the Holiday Cinemas to line up for the press screening of John Dower‘s Thriller in Manilla, a very decent doc about the long rivalry and bitter feud between Muhammud Ali and Joe Frazier that climaxed in their legendary1975 heavyweight championship bout in the Philiopines. (More on this later.)

But all this morning and some of the afternoon have been taken up by AT&T wi-fi air card issues. I had to download a new AT&T Communication Manager and load new drivers, etc. Then I had to call the AT& T tech guys again when something called “error 680” came up. Then I went over to the Park City Marriott to do some more writing only to discover that the free wi-fi is overloaded by too many people trying to use, the result being that the service stops after 10 minutes of use (or less). And the AT&T air card still isn’t working. It’s been hell, nothing but hell.

Anyway who wants a free ticket to the 6 pm public screening of The Missing Person, get in touch. I decided to catch the 5:15 pm showing of Taking Chance at the Racquet Club instead. Oh, and tomorrow night’s 9 pm screening of When You’re Strange — I’m not going to that one either. I’m sitting in a 2nd floor lounge/lobby in the Park City Marriott adjacent to the press office until 4:30 pm, or just write.

Press office comp ducatsthat I requested in writing yesterday. The people running the press ticket hand-outs have been fairly efficient about it.