Day 4: My Festival Experience
In which I declare my undying love for Mo’Nique, drink in some chocolate, stay up late just like a big girl, and squat reluctantly.
An educational video game with child brides and sex-trafficking sounds like something out of a cynical near-future science fiction film to me, but maybe it could work?
Wide awake at 5:30 once again, sigh. Since there’s no going back to sleep, I decide to get some work done, but my pre-dawn brain is so slow and sad, I wind up typing and retyping the same sentence for a great two hours. And then it’s time for my early morning pickup from ride-machine Carl, who’s here to give me my ride into town.
Hot Potatoes
After a brief detour into a steaming plate of cheesy onion pepper potatoes from the Main Street Deli, the best (only?) breakfast on upper Main, I waddle my way up to the Filmmaker Lodge. The lodge is a well-used space, with exposed wood and comfy chairs – the kind of place where a gathering of Girl Scouts, a budget bar mitzvah, and an AA meeting would all be equally at home. It is also where you can find the coldest toilet seat in the West (located in the ladies room, center stall – commemorative plaque forthcoming).
Today the Lodge is hosting Cinema Café, a casual yet moderated conversation between Nicholas Kristof and Samantha Power. The talk has the approachable feeling of a well-organized dinner party, where the guests are two of the most thoughtful, engaged, far-traveled, and well-storied people on the planet. Only this dinner party has film clips (from the two films that Power and Kristof are here at Sundance to support: Sergio and Reporter) and an audience Q&A.
Sadly, the bulk of the questions from the audience are of the “long, free-associative monologue with a question mark tacked on at the end” variety, a particular pitfall of people who are very smart, and informed, and who have so many huge ideas and cross-connections bubbling up inside them that they simply can’t help themselves. The second they stand to ask their questions, that invisible podium just erupts out of the floor.
Potentially derailing questions aside, the event itself has a nice momentum to it, and though the topics are some of the heaviest of the heavy – genocide, poverty, global health issues … hooray! – there are still moments of levity, and at times my recording of the event is blotted out by eruptions of audience laughter. It’s also here that I pick up this mull-worthy morsel: Kristof, in an attempt to reach broader audiences in new and unexpected ways, is working to develop a video game where kids learn about the crushing issues facing women in the developing worlds through the fun, non-didactic world of gameplay. An educational video game with child brides and sex-trafficking sounds like something out of a cynical near-future science fiction film to me, but maybe it could work? Actually get kids involved and engaged? Etcetera? Sometimes I don’t understand what’s going on anymore.
Hot Chocolates
After a lunch at Squatters, the worst-named restaurant in captivity (“squatting” being the very last thing you want on your mind when you’re contemplating food), Brandon and I head over to the offices of the Sundance Channel for a quick interview with Mo’Nique. I sound so calm, typing those words, right? But that’s only because I deleted the 77 exclamation points that I originally had here.
Ever since my recent brush with Push (my write-up of which, I just discovered, has since been picked up by the OFFICIAL Mariah Carey dot com!), I’ve fallen in a deep crush with Mo’Nique, a fact that I feel compelled to gush all over her the second I meet her. “Hi! I saw Push?” I squeal as I squeeze her hand, my eyes all full of cartoon hearts, “And I…I…LOVE YOU!”
Mo’Nique seems to take my swooning in stride, and we have a nice little chat about full-figured action heroes, mattresses, and Patti LaBelle. At one point during the interview, she points out her husband, an exceptional-looking gentleman sitting at the side of the room. Later, as we’re wrapping up, she tells me to feel free to take another look at “that chocolate,” and she nods over in the direction of her man. “My birthday is coming early this year!” I laugh, and she says, “That’s my present to you, baby.” And while typically my first name isn’t “baby,” rather it’s “Evany” or “Miss Evany” if you’re nasty, I’m more than happy to be babied by Mo’Nique, whenever and wherever she wants.
After the interview, we walk over to the got milk? station for a free ho-cho. As we’re heading over, a cascade of paparazzi wind-sprints past us in steaming hot pursuit of (we later learn) Paris Hilton. Brandon, at the top of his lungs, yells after them, “Is that where the hot chocolate is?” Because really, that kind of feverish haste only makes sense if there’s a frothy heated chocolate at the end of it.
Small Victories
I’m jolted from a two-hour chloroform nap by a call from Carl – they’re on their way to the Late-Night Lodge (located at the very same Filmmakers Lodge) and do I want to come? I make some deep-sleep zombie sounds, which Carl interprets as a “yes,” and suddenly I’m in it to win it. After four nights of turning in early and being otherwise disappointingly pregnant, I dig deep, do some party stretches, and actually rally. And I do it up right. I talk to strangers, I jig to Biggie Smalls, I even have a Coke. And I don’t get to bed until almost 2 a.m. – just like yester-yore, only without the hangover! Should I be worried about how self-proud this makes me? Shh.
Tomorrow’s to-dos: Catch the world premiere of Nollywood Babylon, try to squeak in to see Wynonna at the Music Cafe, and build a Mo’Nique shrine out of buttered toast and kitten hugs.
MY FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10
