Day 2: My Festival Experience
Bottle-talk with Tracy Chapman, mouth-to-mouth with The Dude, a blind fumble with Ben Affleck and Nicholas Kristof…it all sounds like a dream. And yet!
After a disappointingly decrepit end to an otherwise auspicious Day 1, I launch into Day 2 with renewed resolve and freakish vim, getting up an unholy 5:30 a.m. for a few hours of feverish typing and unprecedented productivity. The stench of go-getter is all over me, and I hardly know myself.
A Slip of the Tongue
Photographer Brandon and I head down to Main Street for some Man on the Street fun, wherein we stop strangers on the street, take their picture, and make them say amusing things into my digital recording machine.
We manage to snag Laurel Nakadate, writer/director of Stay the Same, Never Change, who’s freakishly well spoken and pulled together, even with wet hair. We run into some of the crew from Humpday. Twice. (Main Street is a small, small world.) We fail to recognize Thesy Surface, who has a standing role on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but since her character is the unibrowed she-him Margaret McPoyle, this I think is one of the rare times when lack of recognition is actually a kind of compliment. Right?
And then I make out with Jeff “The Dude” Dowd, somehow? Longtime Sundance supporter (he’s been to all 25 Festivals), Jeff is the reported inspiration for The Dude of The Big Lebowski fame. I’m not sure quite how it happens – the question of the day, “Who would you most like to make out with at Sundance, and why?” may have something to do with it – but suddenly Jeff’s is full-on seventh-grade frenching me right on my makeout maker. Dude.
Once he finishes Adrien Brodying my Halle Berry, I yell, “Oh my god, I think I’m pregnant now!” Which is my version of a joke, but since I am in truth pregnant right now, there’s a strange sense of authenticity to the accusation, like maybe I’m going to try to sue The Dude for paternity payments? I guess it’s worth a try.
I spend the rest of the day shellshocked, with the lingering taste of Jeff’s Nicorette gum on my uvula.
Pushing It
Next I head over to the Racquet Club to cover the world premiere and Q&A for Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire. As I wait in the wending, Disney-long line, I hear the two ladies behind me complaining about the concession stand’s lack of bottled water options. Ever helpful, and chatty, I turn and explain that this year the Festival is trying to reduce the number of wasted bottles, which is why they’re handing out mini Nalgene bottles and posting Brita “hydration stations” in strategic spots throughout the City. Unfortunately, there’s nary a Nalgene in sight, so tonight people are just buying bottles of soda instead. The ladies and I muse over how the bottle-reduction plan might backfire when the crowd, reduced to sipping sugary caffeine things, suddenly erupt into a dangerous hyperglycemic rage. And that’s about when I realize that one of the women I’m talking at is Tracy Chapman (looking eerily untouched by time, how? what?), and that maybe me and my endless bottle-talk are coming off as weird, lonely fandom? Abruptly I turn back around and scuttle off to find a seat, setting up camp in the frontest, rightest, eagerest seat in the house, mere inches in front of the podium, pow!
The movie is stupid-great. Horribly, retchingly sad – I actually had to fish out some tissues at one dark point, at which point my seat neighbor tapped me and asked for a tissue of her own – the movie still is somehow leavened with hope, a seemingly impossible trick given the length of the list of downers the movie throws at you.
The star of the film, Gabourney Sidibe, is amazing and so cute in her strapless satin premiere finery. But I’m especially shattered by Mo’Nique and Mariah Carey, both of whom give performances so transformative that they’re basically unrecognizable. I really don’t know how director Lee Daniels managed it. Maybe he took them to some sort of Stanislavsky cult compound for reprogramming? Hypnosis?
By movie end, I’m in love with the director, the cast, and author Sapphire – who are all up on stage, crying and smiling – I just want to take them home and have a hug(e) party.
The very first question from the audience was for Mo'Nique: "So, what are you wearing to the Oscars?" My thinks exactly.
Reporting the Reporter
After being thoroughly Pushed over, Bob the Ride Maker whisks me over to Temple Theatre to cover the Reporter.
The documentary is stupid-great in its own right. And I’m not just saying so because filmmaker Eric Daniel Metzgar shared my shuttle. Beyond telling the story of an interesting, energized, care-full man Nicholas Kristof, the film also offers engrossing insights into the psychology of sympathy and giving, along with the mercenary mechanics of how to leverage those sympathies.
Bob and I loiter in the lobby, waiting for the movie to let out so I can crawl around on the floor in front of the podium with my digital recorder. Suddenly the Headsets give the green light, and poof here’s Nicholas Kristof and Ben Affleck (the film’s Executive Producer), like the answer to one of those “if you could invite anyone in the world to dinner” questions.
The Q&A is one of the good ones. Both the Qs and As are thoughtful and eloquent, everyone turns out to be even more likeable (and, in the case of Ben Affleck, better dressed, in the jeans-fitting kingdom) in person.
Exhausted from crying and thinking and talking to Tracy Chapman, I head for home, today’s movies looping in my head like a rib-sticking dinner (only stuck inside my thinker) as I eat my toasted English muffin, get into bed, and turn out the lights.
Tomorrow’s to-dos: See Prom Night in Mississippi, try to catch a glimpse of la Anna Wintour, maybe eat something green?
MY FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10
