L.A. IS A town where films are coming out at the same rate McDonald's makes fast food in mass production. About 800 pitches about vampires happen a year. There are fifty versions of guy-gets-girl, each done with a new twist. This is a town with a variety of outlooks on the same old topics, with as many vibrant ideas as there are artists.
This weekend, I attended the 2010 Method Festival in Agoura Hills, California as a plus one to director Brett Carlson of Take My Wife. I was thrilled to attend and was given a V.I.P. pass, which allowed me instant access to all of the afterparties and any film I could ever dream of viewing. Seeing as this is one of the top tier festivals, I went out and bought myself a new cocktail dress and spent hours sprucing, hoping to meet the next Woody Allen looking for a Mia Farrow partner-in-crime.
I arrived in Agoura Hills to the Good Night Inn, where the directors for the festival were housed. This place is less than glamorous. It looks very much like place you see at the beginning of bad slasher films where you just know someone is going to die. Brett takes me from the 'Good Night' to the theater where the films would be screening: it's a completely normal theater, selling gross popcorn. A slew of grandmas outside ask me why I'm so dressed up, and I tell them I'm going to the film festival. "Oh, you're fasting?" "Nope," I say, "I'm going to the Film Festival. FILM. FEST-I-VAL."
Half of the films I saw were less than stellar. They looked like a bunch of NYU kids got together that hadn't actually been going to all of their classes and tried to make some low-budget films. The other half were brilliant and cutting edge, combining different forms of media and clearly products of the new, more technologically saavy generation. Overall, I feel I slept a good two out of four screening hours daydreaming.
Brett and I attended two afterparties. The first was at a Steakhouse called Flemings, and we were the youngest people there by thirty years. The second was at a club called Ch. 8, which looked a bit like a brothel in Chinatown. There were only about five people from the festival there: three out of work actors, Brett, and myself. These parties were less than glamorous. I've had more glamourous nights at Brennan's famous turtle races.
I know that festivals like Sundance and South by Southwest do these parties and do them right. When I asked Brett why the parties were such duds, he said that surprisingly, Los Angeles festival parties are the worst parties. People feel more like they're just going to catch a quick film in blue jeans and then head out to some posh little bar on Hollywood Blvd. like they do every other weekend. It seems odd to me that the city that makes these new films doesn't seem to celebrate them to the degree that places like Boston does. In this beautiful city that combines the natural magic of the beach and the creation of so many different art forms, it saddens me that people fail to take a moment to really celebrate new filmmakers that get this town running. It makes me feel that the L.A. film industry gets so wrapped up in creating a marketable product and getting distribution for things that will sell, that it neglects to acknowledge the underdog to the right capacity. There is definitely a class separation from the people making/financing the movies, the writers and directors of big sellers like Avatar and Clash of the Titans, and the writers and directors of the indie/ultra low-budget. At film festivals outside of Los Angeles, all of these categories are forced to blend together and represent Hollywood as a whole, but in Hollywood itself, these distinctions become more apparent and others seem less likely to go out and support something outside of their direct line of vision or personal income.
This weekend, I attended the 2010 Method Festival in Agoura Hills, California as a plus one to director Brett Carlson of Take My Wife. I was thrilled to attend and was given a V.I.P. pass, which allowed me instant access to all of the afterparties and any film I could ever dream of viewing. Seeing as this is one of the top tier festivals, I went out and bought myself a new cocktail dress and spent hours sprucing, hoping to meet the next Woody Allen looking for a Mia Farrow partner-in-crime.
I arrived in Agoura Hills to the Good Night Inn, where the directors for the festival were housed. This place is less than glamorous. It looks very much like place you see at the beginning of bad slasher films where you just know someone is going to die. Brett takes me from the 'Good Night' to the theater where the films would be screening: it's a completely normal theater, selling gross popcorn. A slew of grandmas outside ask me why I'm so dressed up, and I tell them I'm going to the film festival. "Oh, you're fasting?" "Nope," I say, "I'm going to the Film Festival. FILM. FEST-I-VAL."
Half of the films I saw were less than stellar. They looked like a bunch of NYU kids got together that hadn't actually been going to all of their classes and tried to make some low-budget films. The other half were brilliant and cutting edge, combining different forms of media and clearly products of the new, more technologically saavy generation. Overall, I feel I slept a good two out of four screening hours daydreaming.
Brett and I attended two afterparties. The first was at a Steakhouse called Flemings, and we were the youngest people there by thirty years. The second was at a club called Ch. 8, which looked a bit like a brothel in Chinatown. There were only about five people from the festival there: three out of work actors, Brett, and myself. These parties were less than glamorous. I've had more glamourous nights at Brennan's famous turtle races.
I know that festivals like Sundance and South by Southwest do these parties and do them right. When I asked Brett why the parties were such duds, he said that surprisingly, Los Angeles festival parties are the worst parties. People feel more like they're just going to catch a quick film in blue jeans and then head out to some posh little bar on Hollywood Blvd. like they do every other weekend. It seems odd to me that the city that makes these new films doesn't seem to celebrate them to the degree that places like Boston does. In this beautiful city that combines the natural magic of the beach and the creation of so many different art forms, it saddens me that people fail to take a moment to really celebrate new filmmakers that get this town running. It makes me feel that the L.A. film industry gets so wrapped up in creating a marketable product and getting distribution for things that will sell, that it neglects to acknowledge the underdog to the right capacity. There is definitely a class separation from the people making/financing the movies, the writers and directors of big sellers like Avatar and Clash of the Titans, and the writers and directors of the indie/ultra low-budget. At film festivals outside of Los Angeles, all of these categories are forced to blend together and represent Hollywood as a whole, but in Hollywood itself, these distinctions become more apparent and others seem less likely to go out and support something outside of their direct line of vision or personal income.
-- Thea Green
(photo credit: the shopping sherpa, flickr creative commons)
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