SoCal Film Fest - notes/recap

Feb 11, 2016 - Thursday, Portland

woke up at 5. took shower and got dressed and walked outside just as my ride (ie my dad) was pulling up. There and back in one day so I just had a backpack with my ipad, a magazine, a hard drive containing the movie. Easy breezy through security and to the gate. My eyes fell on mom w/ stroller, 2 kids and all acoutrements and I both knew exactly how she felt and was so glad I wasn't her. Flight landed in Long Beach at 9 ish. Film playing at festival at 12:30 pm. Charged my phone for a bit. bought a sandwich for later and then took cab to Huntington Beach. Cab drive had no idea where I was sending him and I had to enter the address on his phone app. 

view from library desk

50 bucks later at the Huntington Beach Public Library. Saw fest signage which was encouraging to me that I was in correct spot. Had 2 or so hours to kill so I headed into the depths of the library to work on latest screenplay. (note: here "work" means alternately writing, checking social media, texting w/ family, battling the rising burn of nerves that joins me every screening and so forth.) 

went over to the fountain and ate my sandwich, then headed downstairs to the theater, sort of uncertain about what to expect. As I walked down into the lobby a surreal moment arose when I could hear the tech check in the auditorium, the score (by Jessee Jones) of THE BLACK SEA pouring out of the speakers. In addition to being dark and brooding it happened to line up exactly with my mood, matching my own internal soundtrack. 

program

I found festival director Guy Davis and talked shop for a bit, noting the excellent weather, the vagaries of running a festival, and our career paths in the past two decades since we both worked for Barbara Turner and attended AFI as Screenwriting Fellows.  As we talked people began streaming in waves for the screening (note: here "waves" means there were 3 people I knew in the audience and oh, less than 10, I did not. Despite the fact that I have many friends in LA and that some cast/crew are in LA I was reminded that OC is not LA so to speak. Also, a weekday early afternoon screen time at a fest can be kiss of death provided your valued metric is number of eyeballs). Most exciting arrival to me was Fred and Rita Sipes b/c they could at last see their son Matt's work in the film. 

The film began. I hadn't seen it with an audience since Boise Film Fest in September. Since then the film has left (or slowly dissipated away from) my daily conciousness. This allowed me to watch the film from a more objective vantage, noting sucessful moments and less successful ones with equal alacrity. At the same time aspects of the film's narrative ribbon through my own personal history (speaking more so of  my life than the writing/production of the film though that's in there too) so said objectivity quickly was overwhelmed by rising surreal sensations, best described like watching a long-contemplated hall of mirrors in a dream that's been put in a blender and then looked at through the back end of a telescope while really drunk and/or high. You know the feeling. There is a scene toward the end of the film (SPOILER) in an MRI machine and I pondered that in two days I would be tucked inside one myself.

The movie ended and Guy Davis did Q & A. The questions from the crowd were about as robust as the attendees, which is to say sort of minimally engaged. (This kind of thing used to bother me but I always recall seeing Lionel Shriver at Annie Blooms many years ago and no one was there except M and myself and she  was alert and gracious anyway. This repeated a couple yrs later when me and M went to see our friend Cheryl read to at a downtown independent bookstore, now a vitamin warehouse i think - to promote her book.) Afterward I did have someone come up to me and ask if my friends were as terrible as the people in the movie. This was funny but made me a little melancholy as there is much more to the film than the surface read, including the sometimes terrible behavior of the people in it. But whatever. This either reflects on the subjective nature of watching movies or my failing as a director or most probable, some parts of each.

I stayed for the next screening Cesium and a Tokyo Girl, which was kind of awesome in an inscrutable way and caught a ride back to the Long Beach airport w/ my friend Clay, who I met at the Stowe Story Lab retreat in May and who has since relocated to Los Angeles. We talked briefly about the peculiarites of Southern California - one of us drawing on living there over a decade ago and the other of recent weeks - and the pursuit of screeenwriting as an enterprise. I went into the airport. Had burrito and beer. Flew home. Met my ride (ie my mom & dad) and went home.

with Rita & Fred Sipes/heading home

Saturday AM I was tucked inside an MRI contemplating watching the film's MRI scene. and so on.

Disneyland

spent a few days in Disneyland last week, staying at the Disney Hotel and going to the park on a two-day pass. difficult to summarize the sensations it provoked. I'd been to Disneyworld 2 times as a kid and to Disneyland many times as a man in my early 20s. Here, as a parent this time, I felt the strange and luminous intersection of past/present, child/parent. I felt some parts of myself surrender seeing it all through new sets of eyes. I felt the ephemeral hum that marketing sometimes calls happiness or magic. Let's instead call it a light, shining forward and backward, illuminating all the good parts (okay, mostly the good parts. there are still lines, there are still un-wonderful people), the best parts. Floating in the pool with my son, looking at the blue sky; riding Splash Mountain with him, a split-second decision; the caves on Tom Sawyer Island, etc were tiny unlockings, tiny steel doors rising in mostly rocky corridors.

This is not exactly a newsflash, but the Disney operation really has their act together, sustaining the illusion on myriad fronts, buy-in from all parties big and little. I did not want to leave. I ached as the bus pulled away and took us.

in the cave, photo by MM

I left wanting to cling to those small moments, protect them and keep them close and readily accessible. There is something instructive and uniformly true inside them but I am unable to fully articulate it at present. But I can feel it.

Boise Film Fest - notes/recap

After my screening ended Saturday AM (which you can read about on the previous post here if you are so inclined) I had the whole day stretched before me with nothing to do but see other films, which if you know me at all is the closest I get to unbridled happiness. Walked up to the Boise Creative Center and saw a short called AND COUNTING and a feature called DEAD RIVER. Dead River was real unique, very deliberate in pace and confident in using long swaths of dialogue to propel the story forward and still managaing to be tense and poignant in parts. I really dug it.



Next film was across town. I followed my sputtering GPS which gave me the general idea and found myself at a place called Cathedral of the Rockies, which I presumed was the cool reverent name for a movie theater but was in fact, a house of worship. Walked in and sat down in the pews, an unfamilar exercise for me, and watched a short film called TO LIVE DELIBERATELY and a feature documentary titled QUEENS OF THE ROLEO about the dead sport of log rolling and how it relates to the women of Lewiston, ID. Learnt during the Q&A that the filmmaker Dave James is of Bend, Oregon extraction.



next up was back to the hotel for nap and sandwiches. met some other filmmakers at mixer and talked shop. Always my favorite part of festivals, aside from watching movies, is meeting other filmmakers and hearing how much their stories cohere or diverge from my own. Afterwards I got in uber and went back to Boise Creative Center to see the shot-in-Portland DEET N BAX SAVE THE WORLD, by the director Diablo Dean, which was memorable for a lot of graphic content and unmotivated nudity and weed. (Also for seeing some Portland talent and locations!) Not exactly the sort of film I seek out or am drawn too but I chose to recall that I was out of the house and unencumbered with kids and that helped me relax and enjoy myself a tiny bit more. (Ready access to beer/s probably would have helped too.) Sometimes I find my own film snobbishness gets in the way. This movie can likely find a robust life in the midnight/cult end of the pool.



Afterward we all headed to a bar called Reef in downtown Boise and I sat with Dave, the log-rolling documentarian, as he won prize for best documentary. Best narrative film went to the Portland-based HOMESKILLET by Phiamma Ellis, which I was eager to see but didn't b/c it screened at the same time as THE BLACK SEA. Between me and Dave Jones and Phiamma and Diablo Dean, Oregon was well represented at the fest.

All conversations effectively ended when a band got onstage so I headed back to the room.
The next morning I was about to eat at the Mariott Breakfast Bar when a fire alarm evacuated the whole hotel. After the all-clear, I headed back up to Ming Studios for a short film series. first up GREENLAND, which was awesome. perfectly pitched.



Then a short doc called CODE OAKLAND which had me weeping inside a few minutes and caused a swell of optimism in me. In it someone says "We live in the world we create" which resonated deeply with me and and has stayed near me since.



Afterward was a feature called RESURRECTING MCGINN(S) also at Ming Studios. I wasn't able to see the whole thing due to a technical snag that caused the film to not play properly. But I did get to see the first 20 min or so and found it compelling and unique.



Since there was a screening nearby at the Idaho Ballet, I walked two blocks over and got there just in time for GHOST OF A CHANCE which has as its claim to fame being an all-IDAHO enterprise, including a couple of staffers I met at the festival who were acting in movie. While clearly hampered by budget limitations there were some really effectively eerie parts and I found it enjoyable. I had to catch a ride to the airport before the screening ended though, so I had to duck out and didn't get to see the film in its entirety, not to mention a couple others that I had to miss.



All told, a pretty great spate and range of films, short and feature and narrative and documentary at this first iteration of the Boise Film Festival. Very much looking forward to future years and seeing how they grow and expand.

report from Boise Film Festival - the black sea screening

Got in late Friday to Boise due to long-delayed plane in Seattle so I missed the opening night screening as well as the meet-greet-alcohol function afterwards. This was a bummer but nothing I could do about it. Ate microwave pad thai from the downstairs snack bar - a grand lapse of judgement but one fueled of limited options and energy - and went to bed.

Woke up. cleaned up, hit the Marriott Breakfast Bar (c) and departed. I had roughly 90 minutes until THE BLACK SEA screened at Ming Studios which was walkable, according to the map. Leaving the hotel parking lot and walking to the main road I discerned yelling and clapping on nearby Capitol Blvd, the main artery in town, a half-marathon/10K/5K in progress. I crossed the Boise River and headed into town and found Ming Studios. Still had time to burn so walked closer in to town and watched the runners.

Arrived back at Ming Studios around 10, w/ 30 minutes before screen time. Just me and 3 staffers inside. I tried to relax and stay present and let all those (by now familiar) pre-screening jitters exist without me paying too much attention to them. Acknowledge and step aside. This was a successful enterprise until I witnessed the tech check - they spot checked the short film playing before me, which looked and sounded fine, and then my film which was stuttering and staggering. Heart thumping I went to talk to them about it. They were aware of it already and a new blu-ray player was being shuttled across town to us. I said worst-case we can stream it from a private link. They concurred and I sat down w/ my interior voice unkindly reminding me to no matter what always bring back up blu-ray and/or hard drive to future film fests and screenings. 

After some time elapsed more people wandered in. We held the screening back a little to let the new blu-ray show up but the dude was delayed by the road race. We decided to trudge forth and the short film (an Austrailian thing about death called The Sheriff) played without consequence. We decided to show my film off dvd not blu-ray and it began to play fine for 5 min but then it stuttered and stopped. Panic. We elected to stream it but the wifi was sluggish and slow and after 20 min or so the browser still had 2/3rds of the movie to load so when we attempted to play it it stuttered and lagged. Dread rising, I considered just cancelling the whole affair then and there when the door creaked open and in walked the dude w/ the new unit. Hooked up and film played fine. I stood at the back of the room and watched the entire thing. Finally relaxed into it. 

As with all prior screenings, the movie felt different to me than previously, conforming to the context and environment of the moment. There was light bleed from the nearby windowed door, occasional screeching traffic from outside but if I was able to widen my perspective away from my immediate arguably selfish (or at least self-serving) vantage. It was all in a word perfect. I thought it all through the screening, all through the awesome Q & A afterward, I thought to myself I am the luckiest man alive. 

silence, gratitude

this past saturday 9/19/15, the per se anniversary of us pulling out of the driveway on SE 14th (see previous post), we are walking in Tryon Creek with our kids, the sunlight mottled on the ground, the faintest smoky whiff of autumn on the edge of everything. I feel momentary overwhelm-ment, a quick involuntary flutter of air-gasping akin to one drowning breaking the surface prior to sinking. Could I be any more fortunate? I thought. Holy shit that was a quick decade I thought.

Everything that resounds and thrums with the amazing vitality and presence of true living is the quiet and mundane and uncelebrated. Markers and rituals are important but nothing trumps a lazy unanticipated moment, hidden significance tucked inside the quiet.

A grove of trees, weather-worn and majestic, silently growing alongside one another.

trip to Boston, ten years gone

10 yrs ago at this writing Margaret and Maxwell (RIP) and myself were headed cross-country in a rented mini-van so we could live in a hotel for 2.5 months while I rec'd proton beam radiation on what remained in my head after two brain surgeries.

September 2005 from Brian Padian on Vimeo.

highlights/lowlights from our Polaroid/thoughts journal are here

Portland Film Fest - notes/recap

tues 9/1 5 pm
went to the filmmakers' lounge for the champagne toast and film fest kickoff. Scott and Jordan were there too. we all raised a glass and headed to Cinema 21 to see Birds of Neptune. There was a bit of a pile-up outside, lots of people arriving at once. I asked a pink-shirted PFF'er what time they'd let people in and the response was "not sure, we're waiting for our head guy to show up". across the street PFF camera crew was getting drone footage. At last we're let in and the theater downstairs is packed so we head up to the balcony. I go down to get a beer and talk w/ A. Mingo for the 15 or so min we waited in long line. Back upstairs just in time for show to start. First was a French short about an apiary, quick and well-made. Then Birds of Neptune. This is a deceptive film in that it begins in a certain register w/ certain familiar signifiers. As it proceeds though the grace of the filmmaking slowly shows itself. Delivery of tragic backstory could be disastrous in the hands of different filmmaker but here - buoyed no doubt by peerless cast and sound design and J. Campbell's images - the information slowly leaches out and becomes a kind of retroactive plasma containing the film in its entirety. That probably doesn't make sense unless you've seen the film. So, see it. It's awesome.

Afterward, Scott & Jordan and I made our way to the opening night party at Cinewest rentals. I actually talked to people (free dead guy ale aided this enterprise) and got to talk about movies so it was a good time. This being Portland there was also a clown circling.  Funny how at film fest mixers you can intstantly spot the actors versus the directors versus the editors. We mostly line up into pre-ordained little pools.
Birds of Neptune - Official Trailer #1 from Reveriefilms on Vimeo.

thurs 9/3 5 pm
I stayed downtown after work (read: day job) ended. made my way to Powells to kill time and then finally up to Mission Theater to see Morphine: Journey of Dreams. Waiting outside the theater I ran into Nathan W, Inside sitting later and watching the film. Lots of sensations watching this as it was/is not only a document of artistic pursuit but of one that occurred 20 yrs back, meaning it was like stepping into a time machine. Flood of memories came back to me sitting there, right in the middle of college, in Arcata, the person I was then versus now and what the then would think of now and so forth, all in the split-second of the opening bassline of Buena. Point being, difficult to evaluate the movie objectively but that's not a bad thing. Actually it's really the best thing.

Afterward went to Jackknife for the night's afterparty. Scott & Jordan were present, getting ready to shoot Kevin F's movie the very next morning. They ducked out and I talked w/ M. Medaglia for awhile about directing and day jobs and life in Portland. Then I ducked out and waited forever for the 19 to take me home.



fri 9/4 12 pm
Most of this day was occupied emotionally by my own screening, documented in the previous post (here) but I managed to get 3 movies in. The first was Somewhere in the Middle which I selected primarily because the time lined up perfectly with my morning. I had seen the trailer and expected a straight-forward non-ambitious film (note: not that there's anything wrong w/ that) but what the movie actually is - a skillful, perfectly shot and cast narrative that explores relationships between the 4 leads structured in a way that illustrates their own subjectiveness - is fantastic. Really amazing.
SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE Trailer from NY Independent Film Collective on Vimeo.


Next up was Love Me Anyway. My attentions were scattered by previous film as well as the bad review my own film had just received as well as the fact that my film was going to be playing in that exact theater in a few hours. Point being I wasn't in the best place to watch this movie. Ended up liking it quite a bit though. Kind of an easy-breezy style and feel which worked mostly, though at times I could feel improv-ed bits (or at least what felt like improv). Also, PFF program listed it at 65 min but it was at least 15 min longer so I kept checking the time at the end b/c I had another movie to get to. Still, strong performances and images.

Love Me Anyway-Trailer from Robel Films on Vimeo.

Next up was Angel Azul. Very tricky documentary to pull off, at once an amazing portrait of a unique artist as well as the environmental scourge that his art is trying to address. Meaning the film straddles both genres: doc portrait and doc scold (in a nice way i mean). I found it very moving especially the process/installation of the titular statue. Also I was drinking a beer.

Angel Azul Trailer from Angel Azul on Vimeo.

sat 9/5 12 noon
went back and forth at home about this b/c M had been home w/ the kids managing everything while I was at all the previous movies all these previous days but there was an experimental block of shorts at the laurelhurst at noon. I really wanted to see Josh Peterson's Forest Born in part b/c I met him the previous day at the director's coffee chat and it sounded like we had similar narrative interest. There's lots of calculus involved though, including kids' naps, Brian Lindstrom's "Mothering Inside" playing at Laurelhurst at 2 pm", my own movie playing later in the afternoon at 5 pm at Living Room, the fact that my 4 yr old son was being a bit of pain that morning etc etc. Wasn't sure what to do. A tiny window opened up and M let me go. I hopped in the car and made it to Laurelhurst at noon just as lights were dimming. the program was scheduled for 2.5 hours and I wasn't sure where Josh's movie woudl fall in the mix. by happenstance it was first up. I watched it (very rad!) and then the next short (4 min) and took off back home and helped with naps. worked out great. the rest of the day was taken up by kids and my own movie.

"Forest Born" teaser trailer from Joshua Vik Peterson on Vimeo.

overall
not enough time to see everything but extremely impressed by the PFF programming. not always easy-peasy choices for them too make. Things outside mainstream programming. again, very thrilled to have the black sea among them.