Wednesday, 2 February 2000

RANTING & RAVING

I'm hung over.

I haven't felt quite like this since the old Lee Majors days. (Hmmm...probably haven't told those stories here. I guess I'll save them for my book, "Dave: The Early Years".) I woke up this Tuesday morning feeling like hell. Maybe I got too much sleep last night. You know, eight hours after 10 days of four - six may have just been too many. What would "hair of the dog" be for that? Insomnia?

It's a funny thing. Given the site's bit of Monday hangover...at least involving this column...I got to wondering...well, that's not completely true...I was already wondering this in Park City...what will the next year of my life be like? Now don't expect to read in the next 1000 words all about my love life because that's not what I'm talking about. I've long realized that the subject of romance is way beyond my logical comprehension, flail at rationalizations as I may. No, I'm talking about this column, this career, this work life.

I have to tell you, this last 10 Days at Sundance was a thrill. Not only because the festival turned up loads of surprises and put all the commercial stuff in its well-deserved place of irrelevance, but because of the joy of doing a daily at the event that was more than just my column. Which is not to diminish the joy that I get from daily discourse of The Hot Button. It's just that the thrill of being able to embrace, figuratively and sometimes literally, young aspiring filmmakers and to have a serious daily discussion with thousands of movie lovers who are sitting in the same tub with you...just wonderful. Not more wonderful than the column, but a different kind of wonderful. (Shouldn't that be a John Hughes sequel title?)

And part of the joy was the surprise. I had asked Ray Pride to do a column for the daily Park City handout, but really wasn't sure what he would write, especially given that he was splitting time between us and IndieWire. But somehow, it was a nice match. And then the beyond-last-minute decision to do 4 editions of "The Other Dances" turned out to be an unmitigated joy. I know that Sundance isn't all that thrilled with the other mini-festivals up and down Main Street (Slamdance being the granddaddy of them all), but the spirit of filmmaking is alive on that thar' hill. Girlfight will be, I hope, a real success story. And there are other Sundance underdogs that may emerge this year. But the best story out of Park City this year still stands to be Farhad Yawari and Dolphins. It's kind of like finding Gas, Food, Lodging and The Big Blue at two festivals that happen to be on the same street in the same week. An embarrassment of riches.

But here's the weird part.

Instead of being "just" a columnist, suddenly I was a publisher. Suddenly, I was not only my own editor (what you read on the Web was edited by roughcut staff, but there was no time for that in Park City, where the copy had to be in by 5 a.m.), but I was editing two other writers...one with a penchant for commas instead of periods...making sure that photos were in, writing filler copy (Must See Movie Du Jour, weather, sales forecast, etc.) and keeping up with production and distribution all at the same time. Plus, I was getting some odd stares, many of which seemed to have come care of "Roger Ebert and The Movies" (thank God I was on during the festival and not the week before) while I was still dealing with being an unknown or undervalued face with many of the publicists who I didn't really reach out to before the event this year. (I forget that most publicists embrace who they know first and never bother to count you guys up - the readers - whose numbers via roughcut and KABC easily put me in the top 20 percent of journalists covering the festival and way ahead of any other web-based writer in attendance. This is not true of all publicists, though I must admit that my favorites don't embrace me for my numbers but for the qualities and weaknesses of my work.)

So, while I sat in the cold, not getting into American Psycho because a publicist didn't recognize me and my badge wasn't juicy enough for her, I started thinking like a media thug. Oh what glee I would get out of shredding the publicist and by association, the movie. But that would make me a piece of excrement, wouldn't it? That's the challenge. When suddenly, one is faced with the power to humiliate and do damage in a business where opinion is power, one's ability to reign in one's ego is constantly challenged. When former hack colleagues make nasty snipes behind your back while smiling in your face - jibes that I would never consider inflicting on the same person despite a wealth of bad history and much more sophisticated skills when it comes to shredding others...one's restraint is challenged. And on the flip side, when you can receive the love of some who need your help more than others, the urge is to put yourself into that warm box.

"More ranting..."