Late this afternoon the San Francisco Film Society held a memorial gathering at a brewery bar on Park Avenue for the late, legendary Bingham Ray, who died earlier today following a stroke. I arrived only during the last half-hour, but the sad faces were all familiar– Ray’s former October Films partner Jeff Lipsky, various Indiewire staffers; IFC Films’ Jonathan Sehring and Ryan Werner; producer Christine Vachon; former MGM honcho Chris McGurk, Sony Pictures Classics co-chief Tom Bernard, and several journalists, ex-pals and acquaintances.

The memorial was reportedly “originally planned by Ray as a party for the San Francisco Film Society, which he had just joined as executive director in the fall,” according to a Wrap report by Joshua Weinstein. Ray had recently become the exec director of the San Francisco Film Festival, and had in fact planned this afternoon’s gathering as a celebration of the festival.

Indiewire critic Eric Kohn told me a couple of hours ago that sometime during a panel discussion last summer that Kohn attended Ray declared that “I’m going to do this” — film distribution and generally being a film devotee — “until I drop, whether it’s 60 minutes from now or whenever.” In this sense Ray went out like a champ. He died with his proverbial boots on, in the middle of the hurly-burly at a Sundance Film Festival.

The following is from the opening pages of a draft of “Down & Dirty Pictures,” a screenplay adaptation of Peter Biskind‘s book by Joshua James Craig and Dean Craig. The story is by Ken Bowser & Joshua James. I’m posting this excerpt because the late Bingham Ray appears as a character with some (for me) amusing dialogue. Here it is:

TITLE CARD ON BLACK:

“To fight the empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox: Whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies.” — Philip K. Dick, “Exegesis.”

FADE IN: EXT. MOVIE THEATER – DAY

The marquee reads: “DOWN & DIRTY PICTURES”. A truck pulls up. HANDS deposit two 35mm FILM CANS outside the door. The theater door opens. Two NEW HANDS pick up the cans.

INT. MOVIE THEATER – CONTINUOUS CLOSE:

Hands carry the FILM CANS into a projection room. Hands extract a reel of film and thread it through the gates of the projector. A hand flips switch and LIGHT splashes an image across a darkened theater onto the screen.

EXT. HOLLYWOOD HILLS – NIGHT

A CAR speeds through the winding roads.

INT. CAR (MOVING) – CONTINUOUS

BINGHAM RAY, forties, drives fast around the curves.

Caption: March 24, 1999.

Fuck the Academy Awards…FUCK ‘EM!

Bingham takes a swig and, his eyes off the road, LOSES CONTROL of the car. Enormous CRUNCH of metal as car meets tree.

INT. AMBULANCE (MOVING) – LATER

Bingham opens his eyes, covered in cuts and bruises, and flat on his back on a gurney in an ambulance.

Didn’t see that tree jump out in front of ya, I take it?

The PARAMEDIC, thirties, checks Bingham’s vital signs.

Who won?

I’m pretty sure the tree won this one. Here, lean your head back.

No, not that. Who won Best Picture?

The AMBULANCE DRIVER chimes in.

Shakespeare In Love.

You have to forgive my partner. He’s crazy about movies.

So was mine. Fuck! FUCKING HARVEY! That’s it, I’m fucking done!

Paramedic adjusts the gurney and neck brace on Bingham.

Easy. What’d you do before you were done?

October Films.

October? Never heard of ’em.

You’ve heard of Miramax?

(over his shoulder)

Pulp Fiction! And Good Will Hunting! And Sling Blade and The English Patient…

They also produced and directed Playing For Keeps, but no one remembers that.

Clerks! Fucking Clerks kicks ass!

Okay Jimmy, we got it. Yeah, Miramax. October was like Miramax?

Bingham notices an OBJECT hanging from the rear view mirror.

Kinda like Miramax. Just not as successful.

The OBJECT is a miniature version of the SCREAM mask.

The film on the screen freezes on the scene in the ambulance. Bingham, now older, sits in theatre seat, shaking his head.

You should be ashamed of yourself, that’s so fucking Hollywood.

Caption: BINGHAM RAY, cofounder, October Films.

So what we just saw didn’t happen?

We never see the DIRECTOR, safely behind the camera.

It did, but not like THAT. It was in the morning, not at night, I was drinking but within legal limits, and it happened over a year after that. I mean, I was fucked up, I did hit a tree, but there were much more tragic things …

INT. DOROTHY PAVILION – NIGHT

HARRISON FORD stands at a podium.

And the Academy Award for Best Picture goes to . . .

Oh, no. No, you can’t.

INT. SCREENING ROOM – DAY

JEFF LIPSKY, dressed in purple and without a hair on his body, shifts in his seat.

You can’t begin the movie there, that’s the end, not the beginning.

Caption: Jeff Lipsky, cofounder, October Films.

Some people would argue that Shakespeare was the end and the beginning.

Very funny. You don’t fuckin’ get it, do you? This was a battle, this was a fucking war to the death.

A war between . . .

Film and movies.

Art and populism.

Cinema and…

Multiplexes.

Our battlefields were film festivals. Like Toronto.

Cannes.

Sundance.

You really want to show what happened, you’ve got to go back to the beginning. Up that damn hill to Sundance.

Bingham Ray, one of the coolest, smartest and most passionate fellows to work in indie-level distribution and one of the absolute stars of Peter Biskind‘s Down & Dirty Pictures, has died of a stroke suffered over the weekend in Park City, according to the Sundance Institute announcement and a Variety link that came through on my iPhone. He was a man of honor, and one of the funniest guys (with one of the darkest senses of humor) I’ve ever known in this racket. My heartfelt condolences to his friends, colleagues and especially his family.

Someone should organize an impromptu memorial service of some kind at the Eccles or the Egyptian. Really. Everyone who knew and loved him needs to take part in a huge joyous celebration while everyone’s still here…stories, laughter, booze. Bingham was a Sundance guy through and through. It was in his bloodstream, and this is where it should happen. Tomorrow, the next day…the sooner the better.

Ray was catching films at Sundance as the director (or whatever the precise title was) of the San Francisco Film Festival.

This isn’t anything special — just a clip of Spike Lee and the cast of Red Hook Summer during the post-screening q & a at the Eccles. And a welcome realization that someone besides myself is walking around Park City with a black cowboy hat.

I’ve just spent about 75 minutes tapping out my final Oscar nomination predictions in anticipation of tomorrow morning’s announcements, and then it wouldn’t save so I refreshed the profoundly weak and unreliable wifi signal at the Park Regency and somehow the whole post was wiped out. Great! I don’t care all that much anyway. Partly because my favorites haven’t been faring as well as they should, and partly because one of the shallowest and most gimmicky Best Picture contenders in the history of the motion picture industry is likely to win.

Sasha Stone and I will voice Oscar Poker reactions after the announcement. Here’s a prediction piece by Nerve.com’s Jett Wells.

Upside: Another effervescent, perfectly calibrated, spot-on Judy Greer performance. Positive Indicators: Ed Helms, Susan Sarandon. Downside: Spending half of the film thinking about Jason Segel‘s weight issues.

Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, Jeff Who Lives At Home is out March 16th via Paramount Vantage.

I’ve liked all Duplass ventures so far so here’s hoping. But it was a bad idea to tell/allow Segel to load up on the Hostess cupcakes and Ben and Jerry’s before filming. The man is a walking billboard for fat-titude. He doesn’t need to underline this by actually packing it on for a role. We all know/believe/trust that he’ll be overweight sooner or later (and that he’ll be an Orson Welles sea lion by the time he hits 40 if not sooner — he’s only 32 now) so all we need to do is be with him and right away we’re thinking what the Duplass brothers want us to think.

A New York friend wrote to ask what Sundance 2012 films have really been worth seeing, “for real.” I replied as follows:

Heidi Anderson at last night’s after-party for The Raid, held at Gray Goose space on Main Street.

My big “miss” so far is Beasts of the Southern Wild, which everyone tells me is masterful. Fox Searchlight has acquired it. Seeing it Wednesday or Thursday.

Josh Radnor‘s Liberal Arts is a step up in somewhat (but not quite) the same way Annie Hall was a step up for Woody Allen. Almost. Mature, at times melancholy, dialogue and character-driven, not overtly “comedic” (and thank God for that). I really didn’t care for Radnor’s happythankyoumoreplease, so I went expecting not too much and was pleasantly surprised. A huge hit with the Eccles audience I saw it with.

I was entirely caught up in and enjoyed the hell out of Nicholas Jarecki‘s Arbitrage, which to me is a solid Sidney Lumet New York potboiler. Familiar, yes, and not “great” but tough and real and very nicely done. Richard Gere‘s best performance in a long time. Tim Roth is amusing as a Colombo-type detective

I absolutely admired and was throughly engrossed by Amy Berg and Peter Jackson‘s West of Memphis.

Spike Lee‘s Red Hook Summer, which I saw last night, is a real “Spike Lee film”…and it’s good to have him back. Colorful, vibrant, spiritual, values-minded, community-based with an impassioned God-current score by Bruce Hornsby. Spike plays the same “Mookie” pizza guy he was in Do The Right Thing.

The Queen of Versailles, a doc about absurd financial waste and clueless conspicuous consumption, was/is nicely done and entirely absorbing (if appalling).

To my partial surprise and/or partial embarrasment, I choked up a couple of times as I watched Ethel, the HBO-Rory Kennedy doc.

The two hipster movies that I was supposed/expected to like if (in the view of Glenn Kenny) I want to hold on my to edge credentials, Simon Killer (endorsed by Karina Longworth!) and Ry Russo-Young‘s Nobody Walks, did not cut it all in my book. In fact, knowing that these two are dweeb-hipster faves makes me feel almost elated that I’m not a fan of either.

The other stinkers are too numerous to list. I’m not a fan of The Raid but all the cool kidz (Rocchi, McWeeny, etc.) are telling me I’m blind to feel this way. I’ve been told to avoid Stephen Frears‘ Lay The Favorite. I could go on and on and on.

I don’t follow (i.e., give that much of a shit about) acquisition stories but here’s a Movieline summary from yesterday.

I’m blowing off this morning’s 9 am screening of the Paul Simon doc, Under African Skies in favor of a press screening tomorrow at 3 pm.

Today is an Eccles marathon — The Surrogate at 12:30, LUV at 3:30, 2 Days in New York at 6:30 pm and Bachelorette at 10 pm.

I’ve only been seeing films here for 3 and 1/2 days so far. Today is day #4 — four and 1/2 more to go including today. I leave on Friday, 1.27, in the late afternoon.

Ry Russo-Young‘s Nobody Walks just finished screening at the Eccles, and my sense during the q & a was that relatively few audience members got much from it. Ray Pride has called it “a tactile, tensile, bittersweet bruise…a terrific Teorema riff”…naah. I couldn’t see how it meant much. Cute little girl with a pixie haircut fucks this guy and then this guy and that guy…uhhm, wow…okay, uhm, yeah.

Olivia Thirlby plays Martine, a 23 year-old Manhattan artist who comes to Los Angeles to get some technical help on the sound design of a black-and-white art film about insects (or partially about insects). She’s not only getting this help from sound guy Peter (John Krasinski) but also staying at his home along with his therapist wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) and their two kids.

And then (this is straight from the hilarious press notes) “like a bolt of lightning, her arrival sparks a surge of energy that awakens suppressed impulses in everyone and forces them to confront their own fears and desires.” Fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck, fuck, fuck, etc.

I didn’t “hate” it but I never felt aroused or intrigued or anything like that. I just sat there and watched and waited and ho-hummed.

Okay, I responded to the sex scenes. Somewhat. But they were just sex scenes. There was nothing going on underneath other than “uhhm, you’re, like, kinda hot…wow…I’m kinda feeling…uhmm…uhmm…wanna fuck?” and then wham.

Nobody Walks “is a rather fluttery, aimless, meandering domestic drama about unruly, haphazard erotic attraction,” I tweeted just after it ended.

The best performances are from DeWitt and Justin Kirk as an amorous patient. I can’t say I found Thirlby’s performance all that interesting and/or attractive. Her mallspeak accent — “Umm…I…umm, yeah…do you, like, wanna…? Ummm” — was a bit of a problem. I was also put off by her boyish, oddly half-sexual and yet desexualized 1964 Paul McCartney soup-bowl haircut.

And I was persistently annoyed by Fall On Your Sword‘s overbearing soundtrack. Their music is all fluttery, oodly-doodly, boopity-boop, xylophone hipster-band shit.

Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire, the most enjoyable action thriller I’ve seen in a long time and the first film ever to convince audiences that a female action star (i.e., Gina Carano) is really and truly capable of kicking all variety of male ass, hasn’t exactly set the box-office aflame…but it’s done moderately well.

Haywire‘s weekend tally is around $9 million in 2439 situations, which averages out to $3690 per screen. Relativity is saying in a staement that the $9 million is “just slightly above both internal and industry expectations.” The statement also says that “the film’s production budget is $23 million, but after foreign sales, tax rebates from shooting on location, and ancillary deals, risk is mitigated by a $1.5 million net investment.”

Why are Joe and Jane Popcorn not showing up in greater numbers? The trailers are hot and the reviews have been 85% enthusiastic. Is it because they don’t know Carano ? Because costars Michael Fassbender, ERwan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas aren’t doing it for them? What’s the problem exactly?

Any reactions from HE regulars?

I’m seeing Ry Russo-Young‘s Nobody Walks at 12 noon at the Eccles. And then, with more than a little trepidation, Josh Radnor‘s Liberal Arts at 3:15 pm, also at the Eccles. Or maybe So Yong Kin‘s For Ellen instead. And then Spike Lee‘s Red Hook Summer at 6:30 pm. Or maybe “the Frears” if I change my mind. And then we’ll see. A voice is telling me to calm down and get a little rest today.