01.29.07
Posted in Uncategorized, Sundance Film Festival at 2:37 pm by Athena
As you walk the streets at Sundance, people scan your face to see if you’re famous. They give you the once over sometimes the twice over before their eyes register with absolute disinterest that you are a NOBODY.
Once, when I was there, I was striding up the sidewalk and looked up in time to see a paparazzo make eye contact with me, yank his camera to his face, adjust the lens and for a moment – to my utter embarrassment I felt, important. I even smiled. His arms lowered and he flashed me a look that was utter disgust, “oh” he mumbled “She’s no one.”
My smile faded and I was left with this sudden understanding. I walked faster to get away from the waves of disappointment that wafted off him even as he scanned the crowd for someone famous.
Celebrity is so subjective. Why have we converged on Park City for Sundance in droves? Sure, a third of the people live and work here. Another portion are here for the movies and the skiing, but let’s be honest – most of the people who converge on this frozen bump in the woods are looking for Celebrities.
Am I an exception to the rule – Hell no! But it certainly brings to light an interesting facet of my character. I’ve met “famous” people. I was even invited to a movie star’s trailer when I was 14 (by a lecherous old fart). I was star struck once, by my favorite author, Jacqueline Carey and until then I never thought I was capable of such unintelligent drivel as what babbled out of my mouth when I stood in front of her.
As I hurried away from the photographer I suddenly understood I was not so much hurt by his response to my being a nobody, but by my own response to him because I thought of myself as a nobody. I had allowed my own sense of worth, importance and my value to be judged in my own mind by the worth I imbue in people we call celebrities. And my response that I’d felt important for that blink was a fairly decent indicator that I secretly must need someone else to tell me I’m worth something. Not just anyone, but the scum who hunts people down with a camera, the guy who surprises people on the toilet with his camera, the guy who gets paid to steal the privacy of others and make his living being in the face of people who just want to be left alone – for that instant – I let HIM define my value, and I was horrified by it.
I need to think about this response some more – but it brought to light an interesting portrait of myself that I’m not happy with and I would like to fix.
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01.25.07
Posted in Sundance Film Festival at 1:21 pm by Athena
Well I’m back in Hyrum. I caught a cold that kicked my ass and piled on top of the Sundance atmosphere, which I discovered, is not really my scene – I scurried back to D’s house to hunker down and get better.
Been reading and snotting and sleeping a lot. But I’m guessing a few of you want to know more about Sundance. I did stand in line one night for three hours to get in to a movie called ‘Waitress’. I was already feeling the sickness so I was pretty unresponsive to the crowd around me feeling that I could fall onto the pavement and take a 100 year nap and just let people step over my body to get to Nathan Fillion.
I adored the movie actually. Not my favorite appearance by Capt Tightpants, but he was still adorable. In fact of all the movies I hoped to score tickets to, Waitress and Slipstream were the two I made the trip to Park City for. So I’m glad I got to see it.
Last summer I saw the movie title listed on IMDB and started looking forward to it being released, however, in Sept or Oct I stumbled across an article about the Director, Adrienne Shelly having been murdered in New York. I foolishly didn’t make the connection until I told Pha about the two movies I wanted to watch and she reminded me about the director.
I’d been so obsessed with seeing Nathan that I hadn’t even connected the two dots. When I finally sat in one of the last seats available in the very front row, a grumpy old man sat next to me and proceeded to ask a hundred questions. He had a very negative attitude and everything I replied to he seemed to have a problem with.
Grumpy- “where you from?”
Me- “Portland.”
Grumpy – “You come all this way to see this movie cuz the director got herself killed?”
Me – “Uhm, no. Actually, I drove all this way to see Waitress because Nathan Fillion is in it?”
Grumpy – “You drove? From Portland….” He gave me a sidelong look. “for an actor?”
Me – “I like to support the work of people I think can do good things with the industry.”
Grumpy snorted and rolled his eyes. He smelled strongly of vodka and chewed his gum like a toothless horse.
Grumpy –“Point him out. I don’t know this guy.”
So as the movie started, Grumpy pulled out a bag of potato chips and chewed like a cow, while runching his food bag so loud people started giving ME dirty looks.
Nathan Fillion entered the scene and I leaned over to say, “That’s him.”
Grumpy – “THAT guy? You drove all the way here to see that guy?”
He started chuckling before I glared evil daggers of death at him. I heard once that I have an evil eye that can turn men to stone – like Medusa. I tried, oh god, I tried to make him inanimate if only for awhile. But alas, I think I must have lost my touch, because he shuffled, moaned pathetically in the funny parts and groaned aloud when the scenes took on music from the “Flight of the Valkyries”
When the movie ended he fled, and rightly so, I think I wasn’t the only one ready to do bodily harm. The director’s husband and the producer did a Q&A session and I listened with a heavy sadness as the Director’s husband still seemed to have a great deal of pride and love for his wife, Adrienne. I walked out of the theater feeling the ache of flu setting in to my lower back and the groggy funk of a head cold settling into my sinuses. I wandered to a nearby restaurant and ordered a soup, coffee and Crème Brulee, before driving out of the canyon knowing I wouldn’t likely be coming back.
Waitress was shot in 20 days and is one of the more creative ideas for a movie (based on pies) that I’ve seen in a good long while. While I adored the premise, I hated the soundtrack. They told us in the theatre that Fox Searchlight Pictures bought the film and it would likely be released this summer. My only hope is that they work on the soundtrack, which had cheesy moments of overused songs. Other than that I loved it.
Was it worth driving all the way to Sundance to see Nathan Fillion? Of Course. What a stupid question.
As to Grumpy, I can only hope he goes to the “special hell” the hell created by Joss Whedon in Firefly that states it was specifically constructed for “child molesters, and people who talk at the theatre.”
Here’s to wishing.
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