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 The Chain Gang: L > R Dody, Cinammon, Lena, Kirby, Eddie, Madigan, Blake
 
 HEDWIG!! |
Friday, January 19th
I'm at Sundance this year with the film CHAIN CAMERA which I wrote the music for.
Three movies today: Chain Camera, The Caveman's Valentine, Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
The Chain Camera premiere screening was sold out and really well received. The music was too quiet at the beginning, but sounded good after we turned it up to 9. Cinammon, one of the subjects of the film, was there, and she is a really cool young woman - smart, funny, perceptive. After the screening we went back to the condo and played dominoes, and Madigan was de-throned from her title of "Queen of the Boneyard" by Kirby's daughter Lena, a 14 year-old dominoes upstart.
The CAVEMAN'S VALENTINE screening was harder to get into than the presidential inauguration. Limos were pulling up and women in fur coats were getting out and walking down the red carpet through a battery of cameras, and there was not a single fur protester in sight. But Madigan and I persevered and finally sank into our seats just as the lights were dimming. The film is a big, beautiful, poetic fever-dream, with wooden dialogue, some stilted performances, tired plot twists, and a heavily-featured wig which rivals Vondie Curtis Hall's in Eve's Bayou for straining credulity. For disclosure's sake I'll mention that the cinematographer, Amy Vincent, is one of my dearest friends in the world; but regardless, it is one of the most beautifully shot and visually innovative films I've seen in ages. Check out Indiewire's review if you want to see one of the most scathing pieces of film criticism I've ever read.
The Caveman's Valentine party had good free food and an open bar, but was crawling with over-dressed pretentious LA schmoozers. Ran into a few people I know, including Thelma Adams, a film critic who just happens to be my ex-wife's cousin. She was very nice to me for some reason - maybe the fawning schmoozerama vibe was contagious. I guess it was, because I said something nice about the film to Kasi Lemmons, Caveman's director, even though I had been underwhelmed. She kissed me.
We all went to the 11:30pm screening of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH. What a great film! I was totally unprepared. It's the best film in years about rock and roll, gender, love and identity. Enthralling, exhilarating, funny, moving, mind expanding. A film which will appeal to insiders and the uninitiated alike, and is destined to become a cult classic for the years to come. I am so rarely moved to groupie-like behaviour, but after the film ended I just had to go and gush to the writer-director-actor John Cameron Mitchell. That is one talented man. You can read the Indiewire review of Hedwig here.
Madigan and I wound up the evening at the Hedwig costume designer's condo, where the Hedwiggers were having a party, and continued gushing over the film til the wee hours. |
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Saturday, January 20th
The best freebie promotional item I've seen so far is... the Chain Camera Camera! It's a Chain Camera-branded disposable camera. The genius publicists came up with that idea. I tricked Winston into giving me three of them. I guess I'll give one to Paul Urmson, who mixed the film.
Madigan and I went to see SCRATCH this afternoon, a doc about DJs and Turntablists. Pretty good, with a lot of great footage of Qbert and Mixmaster Mike spinning discs. But Madigan got upset that there were basically no women DJs featured in the film. Where was Spinderella, for instance?? As the credits rolled, she confronted the director who was standing in the back waiting to do a Q&A.
"Nice film, but WHERE WERE THE WOMEN? SHAME ON YOU!" as she wagged her finger in his face. He sputtered some excuse as we walked out to catch the bus to the next screening.
THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT is a dark, funny, low-tech science fiction thing in a sort of David-Lynch-meets-Monty-Python vein. Too bad it was so slow and pretentious, because it had some great stuff going on. Good music. There was a couple sitting directly behind me who were tittering and chuckling and even guffawing at every moment in the film which could possibly be considered even slightly humorous. Very annoying. I pegged them for publicists, and verified that fact later on.
Dinner with the whole Chain Gang at Villa Rosa, a Mexican restaurant on Main Street. Great soup, fish tacos, and gigantic, weak margaritas. But you can't complain about the quality or size of the drinks when in Utah - they're hard enough to come by as it is.
Tried to go to some Slamdance party where The Roots were supposed to be playing. Couldn't be bothered to stand in line in the freezing cold and took a taxi back to the hotel. Schmoozed with the publicists to try and get tickets to a party tomorrow where Macy Gray is supposed to be playing. Only got non-committal maybes.
Madigan made a snow angel outside our condo.
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The Chain Camera Camera
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 Kirby and Cinammon answer the burning questions
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Sunday, January 21st
Madigan left this morning, after having 45 minutes sleep. We were up late.
Saw INTIMACY at The Egyptian Theater. Sat next to a very nice woman who was acquiring films for the Philadelphia World Cinema Festival. She shared her Red Vines with me. I was worried at first that the film was going to be one of those pretentious brooding French films, but it actually turned out to be quite good. The sex wasn't sexy, but the intimacy was intimate, and it was an unflinching look at relationship in a very stark and truthful way. For some reason the French director thinks the light in London is beautiful, but it always looks pretty grim to me.
There was another CHAIN CAMERA screening in the afternoon - also sold out, also very well received. Audiences really like this film. They laugh, they cry, they clap. Cinammon and Kirby did a good Q&A after the film.
A bunch of us had dinner at a Nouveau Grill on Main Street, where the special was a mixed grill platter that included pan-seared kangaroo thigh in a mango reduction. Savages. I had a salad.
The Killer Films party was a good Sundance event. Difficult to get in, but we got in by charging the door with a group of people who were on the list. Packed full of The Beautiful People, laughing, dancing, schmoozing, drinking. I made friends with one of the overworked bartenders, and was set for a couple of hours. I introduced Kirby's daughter Lena as my fiance (she's 14) to the post-production supervisor of Hedwig. Chatted with the LIFT filmmakers, who were very nice. Basked in the glow of the Hedwig posse - it turns out I went to school with Arianne, the costume designer, and she remembered me. At one point my cell phone rang, and I had to strain to hear Lew Goldstein calling me on his cell phone. There was an incredible din in the background, and it turned out he was calling from a mountain-top chateau where the Rolling Stones were playing.
Never did get to the Macy Gray party, but I heard she didn't show up.
To be continued...
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Monday, January 22nd
An insane morning. Met Amy and Robin on Main Street for breakfast at 9:30 (They were half an hour late), then shuttled across town for a 10:30 Chain Camera Q&A, then had to move out of the condo, drop my stuff at another hotel, and get a $10 cab ride to an 11:30 screening of MEMENTO.
Well, MEMENTO was worth the rush. It's a complicated film noir about a guy with complete short-term memory loss, and the structure of the film is backwards. The last scene is first, and it works it's way backwards in time from there. Really interesting storytelling. Clever, clever. You have to pay attention hard and remember a lot of details, but it's an unusual pleasure to submit to such rich and complex narrative experience. Great picture editing by my friend Dody Dorn. A side note; I could pick out many of the temp music cues they had used in the film, most notably The Thin Red Line and The Killing Fields. It's weird as a composer when you can so easily tell that the score to a film is copied from another score. When a director asks me to do that, I usually try and hide my tracks a little better.
Popcorn for lunch.
Took Amy Vincent to the afternoon screening of Takeshi Kitano's BROTHER. She had never seen a Kitano film before and was blown away. I had seen the film at the New York Film Festival, but it's easily good enough to warrant a second viewing. It's a super-violent Yakuza tale, but the twist is that it all takes place in Los Angeles, where the main character is transplanted and creates a mixed-race Yakuza style uber-gang. Everyone dies in the end, but not before learning a thing or two about honor, loyalty, fearlessness, the value of silence, and how to kill someone with a pair of chopsticks.
I wasn't formally invited to the HBO dinner, but Kirby dragged me along, convinced that it's good for my career to see and be seen. I truly appreciate his sentiment, but he doesn't realize that I NEVER get work by schmoozing and networking; the only way I get composing jobs is from people hearing my music and liking it, and from personal recommendations from those I have worked with in the past.
Regardless, there was good free food and drinks, and lots of free disposable HBO hats and scarves, which were warm and fuzzy and will come in handy. Because I am a nobody in the power structure, I was seated at the children's table with Cinammon and Lena. Fine by me. I got warm and fuzzy by drinking lots of sake and telling people what I really think. Someone showed up with the latest issue of Premiere Magazine, which has an article called "The 25 Most Dangerous Films Ever Made." Kirby's previous film SICK was featured as one of the films, but he was outraged and ranting that it didn't mention his name.
Stumbled up Main Street to another restaurant and had a last drink with Amy. Got the shuttle back to the hotel, grabbed my stuff, and took a van to the airport. Shared the van with the girlfriend of the producer of AMERICAN ASTRONAUT, and told her what I thought of the film.
The JetBlue flight to NY was cheap and comfortable, and I managed to sleep the whole way, even though I couldn't find the Xanax. Driving back into the city from JFK at 7am the rising sun was reflecting of the skyscrapers on the horizon... a city on fire.
Sundance was a lot of fun this year, but it's always good to come home.
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Takeshi Kitano's BROTHER is a great film
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