This Savage Art

I know the city is getting swallowed up by Mumble Mania right now but as far as I can tell other films are still being shown throughout our fine metropolis. I told you about attending the ACE Film Festival on Sunday. There was an excellent film there called Little Chenier directed by Bethany Ashton Wolf that takes place on the pre-Katrina Bayou. It’s a moving piece with authentic Cajun flavor down to its local dialect. In a Q&A Wolf explained how a month after the wrap every single location was destroyed. Luckily it exists on film which you will be able to see soon, it just got picked up for distribution by Radio London Films. Also worth mentioning: (all shorts) The Doorstep, Villains and Aesop’s Diner.

A few words on the festival itself – it’s not easy being the new kid on the block but like Woody Allen says, “80 percent of success is just showing up.” While attending my one day at the first American Cinematic Experience Film Festival I saw signs that the two runners of the festival, Tom O’Malley and Luke Szczygielski, got a lot right with their first run. ACE flags on the street corners (The Tribeca Film Festival makes this kind of announcement downtown – these guys did their homework.) Well put together printed materials. A premium venue located in Manhattan for the screenings. Unfortunately that venue proved to not be the most optimal place to show a film. The space itself is full of old New York grandeur but my biggest complaint was that the echo from the high ceilings plagued every single film. While some films I didn’t mind that I wasn’t privy to what the actors were saying, the dialogue was lost in others and it was frustrating. With a little tweaking, some lessons learned and a new place to screen films I think this can grow to be a serious festival in the future. I wish them all the best.

Tuesday I checked out a double feature of Born To Win and Klute, part of the Film Forum’s NYC Noir series. This is my element, I have arrived. The early bird special crowd, cinemaniacs and film freaks (myself included in the latter that is although I am forty now so eating at 5:00 is getting more and more appealing.)

I always found a likability in George Segal and that hasn’t changed with Born To Win as he plays a strung out ex-hairdresser looking to score. Yeah, sure, some of the slang is dated but it’s slang that I heard growing up. Freehole. My uncle would have gotten a kick out of that one. Keep an eye out for a pre-Johnny Boy/Mean Streets DeNiro if you rent this. Next was Alan J. Pakula’s Klute. Always on the “to see” list but never seen, I can’t believe I let this one slip by. What can I say other than I am now proclaiming Gordon Willis the greatest cinematographer on earth. Damn, does he know how to compose a shot. I think this film, for better or worse, is the template for a lot of modern crime/drama/thrillers¹ and an excellent character study. You can read the screenplay I found online from this PDF I created.

Yesterday I checked out The Panic in Needle Park. I guess a lot of the same people were showing up to see the whole noir series because I saw some familiar faces from Tuesday. The crowd is half the fun. This is no multiplex crowd, hell no. I almost thought for a moment I might have to go toe to toe with this 85 plus year old man because he wouldn’t stop ripping into his wife about what time they were going to get out after the second film of the double feature. A couple of guys behind me were shooting the shit and one wondered why they didn’t program Born To Win and Panic on the same day. Now I know why. It would have been too much. Both films deal with drug addiction in a very honest way. A lot of the nuances of each film overlap each other² . It was the drug culture in the city circa 1971. Brutal, gritty and very real. Jerry Schatzberg’s film based on a screenplay written by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion from John Mills’ book is harrowing. It’s probably one of the first films to deal with this subject in this way by chronicling the minutia of day to day junkie life.

So as I wait for my New York Film Festival tickets³ to arrive I’ll bide my time with one more. The French Connection concludes the NYC noir series at the Film Forum playing for a week. C’mon ya gotta go, it’s New York State law.

1. Sharon Stone owes her career to this film not to mention Jane Fonda. [↩]
2. Characters in both films suffer from receiving hotshots - a lethal dose of poison laced heroin. [↩]
3. As a member of the Lincoln Center Film Society you get first dibs on festival tickets. Fucking expensive tickets! $35 for the first showing of the opening night screening of The Darjeeling Limited (I opted for the second showing at $20) and I still don’t know if I actually got them! [↩]