I just got back from seeing a movie called Red Hook Summer directed by Spike Lee. The film is showing in Park City, UT at this year's Sundance Film Festival. While I am not a fan of Spike Lee films in general and had low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised. However, despite a good film, I left with a bad taste in my mouth. What irked me wasn't on screen and was completely unanticipated; it was the attitudes of people who participate in the industry of independent film themselves.
I love movies but I am not a huge fan of festivals. The crowds annoy me, the entitlement that people have with regard to attending exclusive screenings or exclusive after-parties or ultra-exclusive after-after-parties make me ill. As a result, I'm in a bind because that's where you have go to see some great new stuff that may never make it even to DVD. While on the bus this morning I was listening to all sorts of independent film-goers in expensive faux winter-wear discussing their relationships to certain studios, actors, and directors in a way that reeked of superiority. While I think this festival was conceived as a way for regular people and interested industry folk to come together and enjoy cutting-edge film, it seems to have transformed into an opportunity to inflate one's ego and/or to see and be seen. For example, while I don't know Snookie's tastes in film, I have a feeling she's not here to take in the next generation of filmmakers when she was spotted stumbling out of a Park City bar last night. Similarly, I think Lil Jon dragging a snowboard on Main Street in Park City is unlikely to be a sign of his burning desire to snowboard while a world famous film festival just happened to be going on. Even more irritating is that I have a feeling that both of these people likely had countless unused tickets to films that many non-celebrity people had to wait overnight in the cold and cross their fingers to get.
However, despite the bureaucracy of ticket-acquisition inherent to film festivals, I was able to get a ticket to one of the more talked-about films of the festival as noted above due to my friends getting up ultra-early and standing in line. In the theater my frustration with the film industry went to a whole new level because while I thought my irritation was only with hangers-on and wanna-be hangers-on, I found myself squarely annoyed by someone who I respect as an artist: Spike Lee. When questioned during the Question-and-Answer portion of Red Hook Summer the man took a tone that was so irritable that if my eyes could roll any further into my skull I would look undead. When asked reasonable questions about writing choices, the NYU Professor gave off a hostility that I found not only confusing and off-putting in light of him being an artist but also an educator. After discussing the issue with friends in attendance, apparently Herr Professor had been harangued for perceived weaknesses in the film during last night's premiere and perhaps was still sore this morning. While I can imagine that experience to be tough to swallow for a novice, I thought that such a veteran cinematic provacateur would have the thick skin to take it with grace. Either way, his responses clearly intimidated the audience into essentially lobbing softball compliments clumsily molded into question-form in order to make him feel better and also to tell their friends that they talked to a famous director.
Despite these frustrations, catching this film was really fun. I think this festival, at least while you are in a theater and everyone is quiet and celluloid is rolling, does great things to bring marginalized art to the public. If we could tone down the celebrity egoism, get the hip film wannabes to chill, and the diva directors to take it down a notch, this festival might achieve what I imagine was its initial intention: providing a venue to present new art to people who like edgy material all set in a beautiful location.
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