Wild Sound

Patton Oswalt has a blog. A real live frequently-updated personal blog. He’s the guy on the Comedians of Comedy tour with Brian Posehn and Zach Galifianakis (and also a regular on King of Queens). I learned of the blog when watching the film about them at Silverdocs, where in one scene Brian and Patton are poking around a comic book store in Portland, Ore., and Zach (who was not supposed to be in town yet) suddenly walks by. They ask him how he found them, and Zach says “I read Patton’s blog.”

Later today I will have my final Silverdocs wrap-up post, assuming the Internet Gods don’t fuck me over again and eat my post.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 1:41 pm under Silverdocs
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It was a great gift running into my old friend D at Silverdocs. Not only is it wonderful to have a companion for the week when you are expecting to be solo (especially one who says things like “Oh Ceerock, I’ve missed that laugh…”), but also because it turns out he is now well-connected. After we chatted a bit he stood up and said “Are you ready to meet a lot of people?” And he wasn’t kidding. I met many people and did much more socializing than I would have if I’d been on my own. But the way he introduced me was always amusing. He may be well-connected, but he is not at all wired. He is yet another of my friends who doesn’t understand (or care about) blogs. He introduced me to Eugene Hernandez of indieWire, for example, and I said to him “I’m a blogger.” Simultaneously Eugene lit up and said “Really? Which one? I love bloggers!” while D said “Oh don’t be so modest … she also writes for Cineaste.”

A theme that seemed to emerge at the festival, at least in discussions with filmmakers and film subjects, was art vs. commerce. I spoke to South African filmmaker Khalo Matabane (Story of a Beautiful Country), who told me he had just shot a TV commercial and felt ashamed at how easy it was, how little he had to care for it, and how much money he got for it. I said that many artists use these kinds of commercial projects to subsidize the art that they really care about, and brought in the example of John Cassavetes, the “father” of indie film, who pioneered that business model by taking crappy but well-paying acting jobs in Hollywood to finance his wholly self-made films. But Khalo would not be consoled. “It stamps my soul,” he said.

The next day, on the aforementioned comedy panel (which, in in addition to Brian Posehn and Zach the great, included Paul Provenza, Gilbert Godfried, Judy Gold, and Fred Willard), the discussion turned to the commercial success the comedians have had in sitcoms and other TV shows. Posehn (who was on Just Shoot Me and who is possibly the most well-adjusted comedian I have ever seen) saw no problem with the kind of schizo art/commercial approach to work. “You do stand-up to save your soul, and you take other gigs to pay the bills.”

And I previously mentioned Penelope Spheeris’ struggles with her commercial success. She even said in her keynote address that she hates money and doesn’t understand why anyone would want it, it’s only given her more headaches than she had when she was poor. She at times preached the “do exactly what you want and don’t think about money,” gospel, and at other times sounded like a Hollywood pro telling the filmmakers in the audience not to ever start a film before having the money and plan in place for distribution. But even though she seemed pained about her commercial success, the millions it gave her have now positioned her to make exactly the film she wants. Soul-stamp or no.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 4:08 am under Just Movies,Silverdocs
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Here’s the list of winners at Silverdocs. I am very pleased that Darwin’s Nightmare won the jury prize–it’s a compelling and very upsetting film about the Nile Perch fishing industry and the way it exploits Africans. Though it made me glad to see that at least America isn’t the only asshole country in the world. Europe can be just as bad. More on this film in a bit.
Short Film Honorable Mention
GOD SLEEPS IN RWANDA directed by Kimberlee Acquaro, Stacy Sherman
FLAG DAY directed by Kristy Higby

Short Film Award
POSITIVELY NAKED directed by Arlene Donnelly Nelson, David Nelson

Honorable Mentions, Feature
ROMANTICO directed by Mark Becker
HOME directed by Jeffrey Togman

Sterling Award
DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE directed by Hubert Sauper

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 11:22 am under Just Movies,Silverdocs
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I’m just back from the Netflix party at Silverdocs, where I got to shake the hand of my man Zach. Here he is on the panel after the film. Blurry. Netflix provided some financial backing for Comedians of Comedy, so apparently they are getting into the filmmaking game these days. They also sponsored the party for the comedians, which took place at the Silver Spring Moose Lodge, which had authentic Moose members sitting around the bar intimidating all us youngsters. We were also greeted at the door by tattooed men who demanded we sign in to their guest book before entering. And while four of us were sitting around a table, a large man in a cowboy hat walked over to us and reached across the table–far across it–and put his cigarette out on the plate of the guy sitting next to me. Actually he put the cigarette out on a half-eaten pork rib on his plate. Right on the rib. He had finished eating, but that was definitely a marking-my-territory move. He had to reach over the whole table to get to the plate. Then he walked away, leaving the half-extinguished butt blowing smoke into my face.

I skipped the closing night film, which was a documentary about James Dean that I’m sure we’ll be seeing on A&E or some such channel eventually. But I went to the after-party for it, (separate from the Netflix party) which took place at Discovery Headquarters and had all kinds of caviar and cheeses and other fancy stuff I didn’t recognize. No tattooed pissing contests here. This has been a fantastic festival and I’ve met a lot of great people, one of whom is a blogger. I’ll be returning to Boston with many new contacts and some great memories and a lot of films to write about. More to come…

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 3:36 am under Just Movies,Silverdocs
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Filed by cynthia rockwell at 3:17 am under Just Movies,Silverdocs
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I have a thing for funny guys. I always have. So I just watched a film that for me is like porn: The Comedians of Comedy. I am now in love with Zach Galifianakis, who is a fucking genius, and the kind of guy I know I should stay away from but which still unfortunately draws me like moth to fire, flies to honey, insert cliche here. He is at this moment sitting a few yards away from me on a comedy panel along with Brian Posehn and Patton Oswalt, whom I also now have crushes on. But Zach, oh Zach, he’s got the crazy charismatic magic. He does a bit dressed as a white-wigged 18th century dandy who has lines like “Is this thing on? What is this thing?” or “Am I the only one who’s sick of Ben Franklin? Electricity? WHAT THE FUCK IS HE TALKING ABOUT?” I have pictures too, but they’ll have to wait until I can get home and upload them.

The film is no brilliant concert film–in fact I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t get into the darker side of comedy and of comedians. Zach a few times mentions that he thinks he has a mental disorder, that they all do, but the film doesn’t seem interested in getting any deeper than that. I don’t know if it’s because these are just very happy and well-adjusted comedians (there’s no such thing) or that the filmmaker just didn’t want to go there. Probably the latter. But as a showcase for some fantastic and really creative comedians, it’s definitely worth seeing.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 9:17 pm under Just Movies,Silverdocs
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That’s the line going around the block…

More soon…

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 2:41 pm under Just Movies
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So much going on and so little time to blog. I’ve seen many films and
will see many more, and am still eagerly anticipating seeing Herzog the
Man tomorrow and his film Grizzly Man.
They added an extra screening of the film and both are sold out. But
the biggest news for me is that I ran into someone I know, someone very
special and someone I haven’t seen in 4 years, and got the biggest
longest bear hug I’ve ever had in my life. How random to run into him
here, though not so random since we do similar things. This is the last
place I’d expected to see anyone I know, but there his name was on one
of the conference panels. Meeting old friends again is a wonderful
thing. Right now I am hanging out in the Cinema Lounge in between
screenings–I’ve just seen the great You’re Gonna Miss Me and am off in a few minutes to catch Abel Raises Cain.
More on those in a bit. The Lounge has been outfitted as a disco for
tonight’s party festivities. I’ll say this–AFI puts on a fancy
festival. I’ve been well-fed and taken care of here. More film
discussion soon …

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 10:36 pm under Just Movies
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Greetings from the Silverdocs Cinema Lounge, with free food and free wi-fi and free tepid air conditioning. Opening Night festivities were pretty Big Time, with a red carpet and flashing lights and heavy police presence and everything. Half of the experience here for me is the experience of a “revitalized” Silver Spring–the town had for a long time been very neglected and run down was a bit of a cultural wasteland and social ghost town, but once AFI moved here from downtown D.C., along with The Discovery Channel, the city has a whole new face. I’m not convinced of the revitalization, though that may just be because I knew the old Silver Spring for so long. But to me the “new” Silver Spring seems to be a facade. There are many artificially constructed social spaces, and the city looks like one big mall now–Borders and every big restaurant chain in the world are all here in a 2-block radius, all with clean new brick and glass storefronts and cobbled-brick pathways. Maybe it’s just too new to feel city-ish, I don’t know. Maybe age is what makes a city. It needs dirt. Especially when I know of the dirt that is lying just beneath (or just 2 blocks away from) the polished new facade. To quote some Cassavetes film I can’t quite recall: “It’s like a good smell trying to cover up a bad smell.” And I think the main problem is that corporations aren’t what makes a city cool. It’s always the migration of artists that gives birth to a new “cool” area. If you start off with corporations you get the soulless sanitized city that Silver Spring now is. I think I will write to Doug Duncan and tell him to give rent breaks to artists if he wants to make his “revitalization” authentic. A bunch of yuppies sitting around a fountain outside Macaroni Grille does not a city make.

Meanwhile, as for the Opening Night film, it was an entertaining one, but it is exemplary of what is wrong with the current craze about documentary film. The film was Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, which takes a social/historical look at the rise of Midnight Movies, from El Topo to Rocky Horror. It’s a subject that I’m certainly sympathetic to, but as a film it is more like journalism or an educational film than art. It’s an entertaining but straightforward film, like so many documentaries today. The subject matter is what makes the film, not the filmmaking itself. I enjoyed the film, but I’m hoping to find at least a few exceptions to this trend in the festival this week. I’m hoping there are some emerging Fred Wisemans or Ricky Leacocks out there who are making documentaries with some vision. I’ll let you know if I find any.

Speaking of vision, I just heard Penelope Spheeris deliver the keynote address, and her story is like a careful-what-you-wish-for tale of the downside of commercial success. She is now a millionaire after directing Wayne’s World and a few other corny comedies, but her long pre-Wayne’s World history was all about independent vision and punk rock. She made The Decline of Western Civilization and many of the first music videos, but through her unfortunate friendship with Lorne Michaels was asked to make Wayne’s World. And after that, she was unable to ever do anything again but silly comedies. She got millions of dollars for each one, but it was the only work she could get. She told the story of her recent redemption, though–she went to Burning Man and someone slipped her some sort of drug and after a night of paranoid fits, she woke up and decided to change her life. She decided to go back to documentary film, and turned down corny film after corny film–George of the Jungle, Legally Blonde, Dr.Doolittle. Of course now she’s a millionaire and better able to make exactly the film she wants, so I guess success ain’t all that bad. She was very cool though–a scatterbrained old hippy with lots of funny stories to tell.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 1:01 pm under Just Movies,Silverdocs
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Just back from Opening Night of Silverdocs, and finally have restored web access after an unfortunate incident with Logan’s free wi-fi network. Will blog more later about the night’s festivities. But a note about the weather: having a film festival in June in Maryland is not a good idea. It’s so hot here today that they closed D.C. public schools for the day. It’s over 100, with humidity so thick it’s more like you’re wading than walking. This is what I grew up with–completely air-conditioned summers and homeless people dying of heat stroke on the streets of D.C. This is why I have always hated summer. What’s to like? Only when I moved to Boston did I learn that summers didn’t have to be that way. Until this past week in Boston, that is.

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In the film Overnight, which is a documentary about the well-deserved downfall of first-time filmmaker and raging narcissist Troy Duffy, there is a scene that takes place in a Boston University film class. This was a class taught by Ray Carney and attended by yours truly. Duffy is speaking to our class about his film, Boondock Saints, which he finally got made but his studio buried it and no distributors wanted to buy it. So he was bitter. And already had a working-class Boston chip on his shoulder, and a grudge against what he probably percieved was a bunch of privileged film students with opportunities he never had.

There is a shot in this scene where Duffy points to and insults a member of the class. The reaction shot after he lobs this insult is of a young male student. This is incorrect. The person he was actually insulting was *me*. But they had only one camera in the room and it was on Duffy, so I guess in the editing room they had to choose someone to be the recipient of the insult, and they chose this kid Elon. But don’t be fooled. It was me. There are no shots of me in the scene though. In one you can see my hair, but none of my face.

But beyond my own connection, it’s an interesting film. Partly for the schadenfreude, I suppose, but mostly because of the fact that the filmmakers started out as Duffy’s friends, making a happy movie about his good luck in getting a film deal, and eventually, as he begins to alienate everyone around him, the film takes a turn and we see the friends/filmmakers’ opinion of the man (and the tone of the film) change, in real time, as Duffy’s belligerence gets worse and worse. By the end of the film it’s clear the filmmakers are no longer Duffy’s friends. And I would hate to have been in the room with Duffy when he saw this film, assuming he saw it.

The structure or arc of the film is somewhat similar to DiG!, though I’d say DiG! is a better film. And the raging personality disorder of Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre is actually much worse (and more creative) than that of Duffy. And it follows that Newcombe is more of an artist as well. Newcombe is a hippy with a personality disorder, Duffy is a Masshole with a personality disorder. But somehow the music world is more supportive of its psychotics, and Newcombe is still making music independently. The film world, though, left Duffy blackballed and unemployable.

At least according to this film. I think a personality like that is, for better or worse, irrepressible, and we will be hearing more of him eventually.

Postscript: A good interview with the directors of Overnight about Duffy and his reaction to the film is here.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 3:26 pm under Just Movies
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“Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.”

Do I have to give back my master’s degree if I say I agree? I hate Godard.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 4:19 am under Just Movies
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Tonight I’m off to Maryland for the AFI Silverdocs festival. The word “excited” is not usually one I use when thinking of Silver Spring, but this trip is actually generating excitement. It’s like I get to re-imagine my home town for a new purpose, and it’s like a whole new place.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 1:49 pm under Just Movies,Silverdocs
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Netflix finally got a copy of Grey Gardens
and some asshole has rented it so I have a “short wait” before they
send it to me. If you are that asshole, send it back, damnit!

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 12:58 pm under Just Movies
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Cinematical picked up on my post about a Netflix/Match.com dating service, and in the comments someone pointed out that it already exists: Matchflick!
And Netflix also has its Friends feature, which I have never actually
utilized so I don’t know anything about it. But I’m guessing it could
be extended to be more Friendster-like.

But someone else at Cinematical pointed out that they prefer not to
hang out with people who have the same movie taste as they do, because
they are usually pretentious snobs. I don’t specifically agree with
this, because I tend to lose respect for people when I hear they like a
movie I loathe, unless they can offer a good defense of their tastes.
But I can understand this guy’s impulse–I tend to not like
movie-obsessives in general, and prefer to hang out with people who
know about stuff I don’t know about. I guess the ideal person for me is
someone who knows how to talk intelligently about film but doesn’t feel
the need to do so all the time.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 12:14 pm under Just Movies
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Now that might be an online dating service I’d use:

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 10:16 am under Just Movies
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Filed by cynthia rockwell at 9:13 pm under Just Movies
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My book suddenly turned epistolary halfway through and my interest has ground to a halt. Plus it’s starting to feel like it’s romanticizing depression and mental illness (oh and the Holocaust too), which irritates me. So I put it down and watched The Dreamlife of Angels. It was even better than I remember it being. And for awhile I was amazed that it was written by a man–it’s about a female friendship and it’s spot-on–but the more I think about it, I’m not so amazed. So many movies about women written by women turn into Beaches or Boys on the Side, but this one is nothing like that. And I think it may be because the writer has the advantage of not being a woman, of seeing women from the outside, in an environment that includes men and everything else. So many films by women assume a certain secret bond between women, which may or may not be real but which men have no access to regardless, and I think that outsider status in some ways helps a person to observe behavior better. Sometimes you’re too close to your own gender. Especially in film, which is a visual medium that necessarily stays on the surface of characters (unless you want some lame voiceover of a character’s throughts), someone with skill at looking from the outside rather than from within might create a better film character. Also, a man may be less concerned with creating “empowered representations of women”, which of course can lead to very problematic representations of women, but I think also might in some cases, such as this one, lead to more real characters. All too often in films about women you sense political agenda at work, and the characters aren’t allowed to just be characters. It can be oppressive. I’m trying to think of films written by women that don’t fall into this trap…the only one I can think of is the truly harrowing Hysterical Blindness. There must be more, but I’m drawing a blank.

This is not to say that all men write women better than women do, of course. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary all over Hollywood (and indie film too). Shitty stereotypes certainly still exist. But a good writer who is a man may have an edge. And likewise, women may have an edge in writing about men. I know that when I showed a male friend a rough draft of the novel I wrote, he said it was very hard to read because he saw himself in the male characters, and that the novel sees through all of the self-protective behaviors that he and most men engage in. Which could not have been a better compliment. But the female characters in the novel–a mess. I’m way too close to them, and it’s a shitty novel for that reason. I had to put it away (a year ago) and will get back to it eventually once I have more distance.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 5:12 pm under Just Movies
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This is a very dull movie except for one thing: Tea Leoni. My god, the
woman shredded this film. I am too sick to put words together
intelligently at the moment, so I will let Cinetrix do it for me: