The Politics of a Film Festival Drunk
Sometime ago at Eicar, a film school far far away (Paris, France), a friend of ours since the wee years of grade school got accepted and flew away. Excited for him, we promised to visit during the break to hang out and see the beautiful city of Paris that he would now reside in. “Well,” we thought, “since we’re all film makers let’s make a short film while we’re there.” Nothing big. Just a short few minute mini-dv thing with our friends. Well, that short mini-dv film grew out to be a steam boat that was damned to be pulled over a mountain.
Our ambitions got the best of us and the film grew and grew to be near thirty minutes long and to be shot on expensive super16mm. Now came the grip and lighting truck… oh, and location scouting… and casting.
It grew big and then exploded apart when the London metro bombings in July 7th 2007 the same day we happened to start filming a movie in Paris which primarily was set in the metro system. So naturally, out of concerns for national security, the French government upped metro security and revoked all of our permits which prohibited any shooting in the underground subway system.
Understandable… frustrating and depressing… but understandable. It could have been worse; we could have been filming the metro in London. So now what? Stop? Hold off? Wait. We just flew into Paris, we had all our other locations scouted and locked with permits and dates, we had rented all that equipment, got actors and crew, we had no fiscal funds to be able to just cancel the shoot and rescheduled. We had to push on –and by pushing on that meant that the screenwriter (i.e. me) would just have to write around the problem. Yeah, sure, no problem, rewrite every scene that takes place in the subway and put in something else. Easy right? Not when 60% of the film is based in the metro. When the subtext of the story revolves around the idea of a sort of underground purgatory, traveling but not truly arriving anywhere.
I pleaded we steal the shots: guerilla style. But if caught we could face a 10,000 euro fine and 6months in jail, or even get accidentally shot, because, lets face it, someone running around with a 16mm camera on their shoulder does kinda look like a bazooka from a distance.
That was out.
To make a long story short… rewriting the short was a long, lonely and terrible process… I was trapped in a hotel by myself while the crew shot scenes that didn’t revolve around the subway. That is, scenes that only really work because of the previous scenes that take place in a location we are not allowed to set foot in. Basically, it was the left hand not knowing what the right hand was dong. Let’s just say, I was getting phone calls from the director telling me that they need the next scene because they are moving on. That gave me about thirty minutes to quickly give them something I hadn’t written.
Romantic? An artist working in tense focus? Baptism by fire, right? Fuck that. That was writing hell, not because I had to write a lot because I knew deep down whatever I wrote I had to commit to. Communication on the frontlines with the crew, the spontaneity of what was available there location was unanswerable to me. Once again, the right not knowing what the left hand was doing. Paper is cheaper than film, you can always rewrite it.
I even recall one day they all insisted I hang out on set and “Write.” I ended up running out of battery power on my laptop and that had to pull a giant-like-refrigerator out of the grip truck (took 4 people to get it off the tailgate) to plug my laptop in. This huge load machine shooting out fumes of black diesel exhaust all to power a little PC. That is a lot of juice running to an appliance on my lap.
In the end, the editing process was another major rewriting process. A lot of stuff fell on the cutting room floor (some stuff that I am glad won’t be missed), and we managed to fool a film festival into accepting our now weepy melodrama as an international short film.
Our first film festival. Fairly descent.
I will not name the town or films less one of them rises up and strikes me down with a Hollywood.
So we arrive after a very long drive. Delirious and excited we make out way to the free hotel. Nice cozy, considering we are cramming 4 ragged filmmakers into a room without the hotel staff knowing. If you see a true independent film maker, feed them, they look homeless and dirty because they are. Apparently, we looked pretty shabby in our appearance to the rest of the town, audience members, and other film makers. We were the youngest ones by near half a decade, the average age ranged from film makers was 29-50, and the audiences were twice that. We stood out. It was very apparent that this town was a habitat for the silver crowned hairs and they didn’t care for rambunctious filmmakers because we had to pay for our beer.
There’s one thing a fellow filmmakers likes to do with other fellow filmmakers is get drunk, watch movies, and share the glory and horror stories of their own movie making experiences to one another because they are the only one’s who can understand. It’s a masochistic club really. An extreme bi-polar roller coaster, like gambling; the extreme enlightening intoxicating highs and the soul shattering self doubting doleful downs. David Lynch, the genius director behind Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, says that he finds it difficult to watch movies because he always too worried for the director. If he’s worried imagine how worried the film maker must be on the screening? About enough to need several nips of courage to get through the anxiety; and that is exactly what I did. All the time.
I was so nervous I didn’t want to look at people in the eye because I was afraid they saw my film. That is another thing. At film festivals when you first meet people they never look you in the eye first, it’s always at your belly where your film festival pass dangles with your name and what film you worked on. At fist you become self-conscious about your belly or wonder if your fly is down, it is confusing. But that’s how people gauge if they want to waste their time talking to you. Most of the time I would turn mine around so no one knew what film I was with. When my pass was facing the right way some nice elderly person would come up and tell me they liked my film, I would get all self-conscious and assume they were just being nice because they couldn’t wait for me to leave the martini bar.
When you meet other filmmakers and you are lucky to talk to somebodies movie you liked it is a charming experience. But when you have to make polite chit-chat with someone whose film sucked, it is an ice-pick in the forehead. “Tell, what you thought, be honest,” they would say playfully. No matter what you do NEVER TELL THEM THE HONEST TRUTH! It will piss them off inside and automatically your own movie will be sabotage. You can get someone to vote positive for your film just by getting them to like you. If they don’t like you the odds of pleasing an embittered critical filmmaker with your film is very unlikely. The whole point of a film festival is to be seen and network and hope to God that the next person who says they liked your film will be an agent or a producer looking for young blood to sign or (if there attractive) bang. That is very hard if you just start pissing people off left and right.
Which is what I made a point not to do… until probably towards the end.
I have a very distinct problem… I wear hats, have long scraggily blond hair, and I wear thick black glasses. I am a characterization of a film maker. And when you wear a black derby hat for a few days it becomes a beacon of “oh, it’s that guy.” The movie was called… we’ll call it, “Ripple Ef-uck.” We got tickets earlier because it had some great and unique independent actors in it… one just recently won an oscar. So we sat in front row (which was our habit because we would always get there late from the bar), the movie began and then ten minutes in I had a funny feeling inside my stomach… “wait a second, this is an awful movie,” I tried to hold the feeling back, it was early I was feeling experimental, and sympathetic for the director, I held my attention. Another ten minutes passed and I noticed that my crew left and walked out. We are talking about a packed house and the director was there watching. Now it was just me and my Derby hat silhouette. “I won’t walk out,” This man is an independent film maker and needs our support. Ten minutes after that I had it and walked out.
The hour that followed after the screening I got the dirtiest looks from faces that looked all to familiar. The ones that were in the theater picked me and shook there quiet heads. I had crossed a taboo line. It was interpreted as an insult. Me and my damn hat. I was too noticeable.
The problem with film festivals is you have ot buy your tickets in advanced. There are about over 30 feature films playing and nearly double that in short film programs. How are you suppose to know which ones are winners and which ones are losers? I reread the description of our own film and want to throw up. Somebody else put their own summary and missed the whole story and on top of that the still photo that they put up next to the plot summary is a production photo of people laying down dolly track. Now who wouldn’t want to watch that?
No one knows what film to watch in the beginning. They are all nearly unknowns. They guess based off the program and by the time they meet a filmmaker they find “interesting” or “charming” and want to check out their movie it is either sold our or not playing anymore. It can be hit or miss going into a festival blindly off the program. And that is all independent movies really are, hit and misses. They have blood sweat and tears in them but the audience doesn’t cares how it is made. They don’t want to know that they smoke and mirrors left you cut, bleeding, and blind. You are hear to entertain whether it be a train wreck or an angelic chorus. We all know that with independent film festivals there are inevitably going to be some farts but some might not stink as much as others. Was it a cinema made with fast-food film making intentions or an 8 course meal of movie sensational in it’s craft.
With that in mind our movie was more like a grape. It had the intention of being sweet and good for the blood but it got left out in the sun and turned into a raisin. Are we that house that hands out raisins to children for Halloween? Maybe. But I would rather hand out raisins to young film makers letting them know that the owner died trying to bring them wine.
As for that horrible feature which shall be forever be known to me as “Ripple Ef-uck” it won best feature at the award ceremony. We left right then and there without bother to hear the winners of the short film festival. We didn’t care. We knew we were never meant to win anything but I am glad to know that our film doesn’t deserve to be on the same stage as the winner.
Would I make another short and place it in a festival? Of course, but this time a comedy, so when they see me wandering down that red carpet with a martini in my hand they can at least know what I’m laughing at.
