Monday comes at long last, and yet another day not sitting at my desk at work! Joyousness. Today we got up early and went to see THE DYING GAUL, which was a very "Hollywood insider" type film. A bit like THE PLAYER, but with gay men and a lot less characters. Overall, it was a pretty decent film with great performances from Campbell Scott (I highly recommend his ROGER DODGER), Peter Sarsgaard, and the lovely Patricia Clarkson. They did a Q&A afterwards, and the director was a bit strange and might have been high on cough syrup. Who knows these days.
We met some very nice ladies at the screening, and we all went to lunch at Bangkok Thai on Main Street. Yummy thai food, but a bit overprices and out of place there. The women were from the Bay Area who decided to come down, ski, and enjoy the festival. I found myself wishing that I had time to ski. We had a great lunch and spirited conversation about everything from "The Family Guy" to philosophy, to Mormon culture, to clothing optional hot springs.
After lunch, we wandered around Main Street, picked up more free junk (how many beanies do you really need?) and headed over the Holiday Village Theater to waitlist for THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON. This film (documentary) was on my must-see list, bascially because I knew Daniel had lived in Austin for awhile. Other than that, I didn't know much else about him. I wasn't able to buy tickets, but we did get in on the waitlist (only barely, it was packed). I had to rush to another theater and sell my 212 and DUANE HOPWOOD tickets, because I was going to miss 212 for The Devil And..., and Duane Hopwood (a movie with David Schwimmer...I think I might be tired of David Schwimmer for a bit) was at 11:30pm and I didn't want to be a theater until 1:30am.
We noticed that Spiderman himself, Tobey Maguire, was sitting in front of us at Daniel Johnston, wearing a bulky North Face parka and cramming popcorn down like it was going out of style. The director introduced the movie and then the lights went down...and I was blown away.
This was one of the most powerful and personal documentaries I've ever seen. Daniel was (is) a talented artist who made his own 8mm films and cassette tapes as a kid, and made his own artwork. However, at one point he started recording his own songs on a beat up old kid's organ, and taping them with a little $59 recording unit. They became a cult hit, and people would buy them from him. However, since he couldn't dub tapes (this was around...1982 or so) he would just record the songs again from scratch and then send them out. He appeared on MTV's "Cutting Edge" around 1985 and really started to take off. Kurt Cobain used to wear a Daniel Johnston shirt all the time, and he was becoming known. But, he fell into severe bouts of manic depression, and basically his life just unravelled. Today, he's a functioning manic depressive, but is definitely changed and different. If you get a chance to see this movie, I can't recommend it enough. Check out his music too, it's great stuff.
After the film (which has a very emotional ending) the director came back for the Q&A. The first thing he did was introduce the Johnston Family (!) including Daniel...they were sitting right in front of us. It was really bizarre to see this entire family in front of us, after we had just been exposed to the very intimate details of their lives over the past 30 years or so. They were all incredibly nice, and I had Daniel sign my notebook. He also drew a picture of his famous "hi how are you" frog in it.
I think this highlights the pleasure of going into a movie with zero expectations, and almost no knowledge of what the film is about. Usually it always ends up being a better experience than something you've seen Ebert blather on about, read the reviews on, and seen at the multiplex because 45,000 commercials told you to see.
Stepping off the soapbox...now.
After the movie, we went to a bar on Main Street called....Doolan's? As far as I can remember. We had some grub, some drinks (incuding tequila shots, oy, thanks Victoria), and headed back to our house to continue drinking and finally use the hot tub, which has fantastic view of a frozen lake and a mountain range.
My final day, day five, coming up tomorrow.
Over and out.
Comments