April 23, 2004

Movie ghettos are a dangerous place… especially when movies feel they have to choose to live in them in order to get the attention they want and sometimes even deserve.

Tarnation first came to my attention back in January when I got an e-mail from indie publicist Mickey Cottrell touting the movie as the next hot item at Sundance that was sure to be overlooked in the rush. Gus Van Sant called the film a masterpiece. He and Hedwig hyphenate John Cameron Mitchell had signed on as Exec Producers. And most headline grabbing of all, the film cost only $218 to make.

$218.

Uh, bullshit. And Gus loves it, so this $218 thing must be artistic enough to choke on. And though it was politically incorrect to note it… with Van Sant and Mitchell and Cottrell aboard, it has to be really, really gay. Of course, some of my favorite filmmakers (And about 90% if male publicists) are gay, so that doesn’t matter. But they are favorites, in part, because they don’t make films that are really, really gay, but really, really good, even when there are gay themes in play.

Still, Cottrell’s story was too good to ignore and I was unhappy to miss pre-fest screenings and then the film’s real screenings in Park City. Equally sad was the blatant non-response to the film within the industry. Of course, this was a terrible Sundance year to trust industry buzz. There was an utter fixation on a few titles and little attention paid to anything that didn’t explode out of the gate. And indeed, Cottrell’s story may have been too good… in a festival of unending hype, one’s tolerance of the use of the word “masterpiece…” especially when none of the Dependents are chasing the title, is very, very limited.

Of course, many people saw the film anyway. And there were some wonderful reviews. And so what? But one of the people who saw the film after Sundance, on videotape, was Roger Ebert, who didn’t attend Sundance this year, which is quite an anomaly. (Texas Red’s, where Roger infamously was talked into watching one kid’s film when it was played on the restaurant’s TVs, no longer exists, replaced by a more expensive BBQ chain… sigh…)

Here in Champagne-Urbana – or as Roger prefers, Urbana-Champagne – the Sixth Annual Overlooked Film Festival is underway. Opening night was cause for a look at the best print of Lawrence of Arabia that I (or apparently anyone in the room) had ever seen. The film is not overlooked, but qualified by being in the overlooked format of 70mm and also as the subject of a very difficult restoration. In the crowd of people amazed by the quality of the viewing experience was restorer Robert A. Harris and Lawrence editrix Anne V. Coates (who I still feel was robbed of an Oscar – no nomination even – for her remarkable work on Erin Brockovich). Besides the remarkable print and huge screen experience, we got to hear the story of the four versions of Lawrence of Arabia – the 222 minute version, the 202 minute release version, 189 minute TV version, and the one we saw, the 217 minute version. Why is the restored version shorter than the first, pristine 222 minute version? After they painstakingly restored the film to its 222 minute glory, David Lean wanted to make a few edits.

The first show of the first full day of films was Tarnation. 1pm on a Thursday on an Illinois afternoon. And it was sold out. Wow. But I still didn’t quite know what to expect. Was Roger the victim of a Bad Gus Selling? What could we really be seeing that cost only $218 to make… or even $21,800 or even $218,000?

In my usual habit of not researching films in too much depth before seeing them, so they stay fresh, I really didn’t know. At the opening cocktail party, the film was introduced with two creative types, so I assumed that one was in the film and the other directed. I was wrong.

Tarnation has had a lot of big expectations shoveled onto its shoulders. But like most great things, it is a true one-of-a-kind. It’s a little bit Capturing the Friedmans and a little bit Michel Gondry’s style in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as if directed by the very young Todd Haynes from his Karen Carpenter Story era. (Available only on illegal-art.com, the film is Haynes’ telling of the Carpenter story using Barbie dolls as actors, which was soon kept out of circulation by Mattel.) But you could never rationally combine these styles and skills. It could only be born into you. And it was born into Jonathan Caouette, both literally and figuratively.

Tarnation is the ultimate personal scrapbook of a life… Caouette’s life. From a time before he was born, the film seeks to make sense of a life loaded down with the incomprehensible while still maintaining an apparent degree of objectivity, an unfathomable relentlessness, which would suggest that someone other than Caouette is taking us on this tour. After a while, you realize that there is not a frame of footage that was created for this movie as such… thus the price tag. But at the same time, a lifetime of videotape makes the film’s existence seem like an act of inevitability.

I kept thinking as I was watching this movie “found art.” Because while Capturing The Friedmans and Raw Deal: A Question of Consent may be the two most extraordinary, agonizing, gripping examples of home video and Super 8 footage of private acts turned into documentaries to date, Tarnation is something they are not. It is a work of fine art. Caouette has the aesthetic instincts of a Mapplethorpe… an Arbus… a Kenneth Anger… and yes, modern film aesthetes Van Sant and Haynes. And watching his film is a lot like being in the studio with him because even though the film is finished (actually, he plans a few more cuts before the film is shown at Cannes), it is so alive with his energy that it feels like a free-form improvisation. One almost expects that if they see it again, it will be different… not that it will seem different, but that it will be different.

Of course, I am heaping even more high expectations on this little film. And though 1000 people in the gut of the Midwest sat through the film and applauded it wildly in the middle of a Thursday afternoon, they were still at a film festival. And as Roger himself answered when someone asked whether the troubles in the film could be negatively associated by some audiences with Caouette’s homosexuality, no one who would go to see this film would be likely to judge someone’s life as a reflection of their sexual preference. And no one in the audience at the Overlooked (that we know of) would either. Nor would they be unwilling to take the very funky journey of this man’s life with open arms. And some audiences will be quite unwilling.

But this movie is not about being gay. It is not about being made for $218. It is not about going to the cinema in search of a traditional narrative. It should be hanging in a museum. And if your museum is full of projected images, it is for you.

I haven’t really told you anything about the story of the movie and frankly, I don’t want to. This is not a film that you will want predigested for you. If you want to take a bite, you will want to chew it all for yourself… to feel it for yourself… to consider the rollercoaster of the experience for yourself.

I will tell you this… it is a true-life fairy tale. There is a beautiful princess trapped in the castle tower of her fate. There is the child who is being raised by kind, but non-royal parents, barely aware of the existence of his fairy tale mother. And there is the handsome prince who wants to make it all right… though in this story, the prince has to save himself first, evolving from another one of the story’s “characters”, and may or may not be able to live up to our fairy tale expectations… or his own.

The film is not the next Blair Witch Project, though I expect its profile to be raised to the roof when it appears at Cannes. I am here in Illinois and having technical difficulties so I could not contact every I might, but my guess is that very few key players at very few of the major indies even saw this film. If they had and they couldn’t see that if they desperately want Van Sant or Haynes’ next films, they should desperately want to have Caouette’s next film and the credit for having “discovered” him. That honor will instead fall to Wellspring, which is beginning to look, because of its taste, to be the next great distributor on the art film scene. Tarnation is a film that Bingham Ray would have gotten for UA and that Linde & Schamus, when their sights were less commercial, would have bought. Warner Indie should have picked it up just for the credibility it would have brought to their next distribution effort.

One last thing. See Tarnation on a movie theater screen if you have the chance. It will be fascinating to watch on DVD, most people will end up seeing it that way and it will, of course, be preserved forever in that format. But in your living room, it could easily turn into a bad episode of Short Attention Span Theater. Your focus will make a huge difference in your viewing experience. And if you don’t think it will ever show up in your town… if Nathalie doesn’t turn up soon… here’s what you do. Say something to your arthouse operator. Tell them about the film you have read about and ask whether it will be booked. Demand it if you are so inclined. But say something. They can’t read your mind or mine. And Tarnation will be remembered as a milestone in filmmaking… not repeatable, but a milestone nonetheless. Make the effort.

ONE MORE EBERT NOTE: There is a daily blog being done at the festival this year, which can be found here. And while I am talking blogs, people seem anxious to know more about the blog (found here) by “Rance,” who presents himself as an industry person, probably a movie star. Theories about who “Rance” really is vary. But last week I spent some time with one of the alleged possibilities, Owen Wilson, on the set of the upcoming New Line film, The Wedding Crashers. And either he is a better method actor than has ever been indicated (least of all by him) or he is not “Rance.”

First, he denied it directly, doing what would have to be an Oscar level “Rance? What… who… huh?” Second, there was no computer apparent in his roomy trailer, the most complex electronics in view being his Blackberry, his Apex VCR and his gorgeous girlfriend. (Just kidding!) Third, when I tried to spin the Wheel of Duh by talking about suspicions about Luke (his brother) as “Rance,” he laughed, pointed out that he was Owen and then that Luke is even less computer savvy than he is. And finally, his assistant, who is quite web savvy, detailed Owen’s utter lack of web interest.

Owen is a practical joker and between he and Vince Vaughn, there were at least a half dozen games played in the few hours I was on set. So if someone pulls a prank on you and screams “I am the master of all time!” and there are no cameras, it could be Owen. But “Rance?” Nope.

READER OF THE DAY: First, a pal pointed out that Budd Boetticher is pronounced “BEH-tik-ker,” which is precisely what I meant when I offered “Be-tik-ker,” which goes to show that I should give up on phonetic spelling now.

And now, a tech note from NOT THE AMERICAN IDOL: : ”Blu-ray has neither the storage capacity nor bandwidth to deliver a 4000-line video format (which would have a resolution somewhere in the general vicinity of 4000x2000 pixels). What it can do is deliver high-def, which offers a 1080-line format (1920x1080 -- a quarter the resolution of any 4k format).

High-def doesn't come close to offering the resolution of 35mm film in any form, though with substantial care decent-looking albeit soft transfers to 35 can be made. The question of whether the new 4k formats (such as this drool-worthy system -- http://www.dalsa.com/dc/dc.asp) equal the resolution of 35 is complex and has many partial, overlapping and sometimes contradictory answers, but regardless of how you look at it, there is no home delivery mechanism for any 4k video format even on the horizon, let alone at hand, not even in Japan.

Their purpose in scanning Bond movies at 4000 lines is twofold and does not presently involve delivering 4k video to the consumer at home. First, the better the resolution of your initial images (in this case the scans of the Bond film negatives) the better you can make your output at any resolution, even if the destination is NTSC, and second, because that 4k master can be used for today's NTSC (and PAL) DVDs, for tomorrow's high-def discs, and for some hypothetical future 4k home video format a generation from now, not to mention for possible digital (or even film) theatrical rereleases, it's an investment that could pay dividends for decades to come.

To be fair to you, David, Kaplan's original Times article was riddled with technical flaws including these.”

E ME: I'm not responding very efficiently, but write anyway, please.