Telluride Film Festival

It rained all day, so good film-viewing weather. I do mean ALL day….
We finally found Jeff Goldblum! “Adam Resurrected” is one of the highlight films at Telluride this year. The film stars  Goldblum, (“The Fly”), who was at the screening along with director Peter Schrader.

As usual, Goldblum delivered an over-the-top, Oscar-worthy performance in a film about a mental institution that focuses on Holocaust survivors. And like Jack Nicholson in “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest,” is it unclear in the film who is actually in charge, the staff or the patient.

And, like Nicholson, Goldblum has sexy, humorous eyes that have dangerous…and possibly insane…inflections. (Really attractive to women!) The film has great buzz here. How do you spot Jeff Goldblum in Telluride?  Look for the really tall Jewish guy with the funky hat.

Stopped by the Sheridan Hotel Bar – the main hang-out for trendy, important film – types during the Festival. Over a delicious cold beer, we met one of our favorite actors, Greg Kinnear (Little Miss Sunshine, As Good as it Gets) who was hanging out at the end of the bar. His most recent film, which is screening in Telluride, is “Flash of Genius”,  about the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper and then fought with GM for years over the patent, (“Tucker,” on a more modest scale with a happier ending…and way funnier…hey, this was just a windshield wiper, not a whole car!).

Greg said he’d love to come to BIFF some time, though “Flash of Genius” is being released in theaters October 3, well before BIFF which is February 12-15. . He likes to ski, so we might be able to hook him with that. He’s not exactly as complex as Salman Rushdie, but is a genuinely nice guy and having a great time here.
All good things must come to an end, and so we took one last midnight trip to Baked in Telluride to pick up something sweet, tucked ourselves into bed (with dreams of Greg Kinnear and Jeff Goldblum dancing in our heads), and woke up this morning with a fresh attitude about life. We’ve got a lot of great leads on films, and we’ll be going to the Toronto International Film Festival next week to scout more films (over 300 to choose from!). Although, we would just rather stay here for another week, sitting on the porch with our coffee and watching the world go by below us.
And so we say farewell until next year! We are looking forward to hanging out with you again!

One of our favorite events at Telluride is “Conversations.” Notable Festival guests talk to each other and the audience about anything and everything. Although the theme is undefined, today’s was loosely titled “Targets in the Eye of the Storm” featuring  Indian author Salman Rushdie. Since 1989, he has been under a $2.8m bounty by Iran because his novel, “The Satanic Verses” was condemned as blasphemous. 

Rushdie carefully explained how he wasn’t brought up to be a devout Muslim in London growing up, but, had a great curiosity about the Koran.  He wrote his book in an attempt to “unscramble the Koran,” and only two 40 page sections in his 650 page book are what caused all the controversy, which amazed Rushdie.   He’s never been able to figure out why they were angry enough to put a fatwa on him. “People get pissed off,” he said dryly.  

Afterwards, we headed for the City Park to check on our chairs for tonight’s film, only to see they had been confiscated by the authorities….

“American Violet” is one of the few U.S. films at Telluride this year. It’s a powerful story about a small Texas town that rounded up a substantial portion of their African American residents one night on trumped-up charges. The film was well-acted, but the highlight of the screening was seeing one of the stars – Michael O’Keefe (Danny Noonan from “Caddyshack”) in attendance. I had to stop myself from shouting “Noonan” when he stood up to the crowd’s applause. Bill Patton was also there, and he was supurb in the film as well.

The Student Shorts program had an excellent Swiss film called “On the Line” about a security guard and his infatuation with a book store clerk. Very well acted and a great story. We hope to be screening that one for Boulder audiences in February.

One often sees bumper stickers saying “Save the Whales.” The movie in the park Saturday night showed you how to do it. It was a powerful film called “Pirate for the Sea” about Paul Watson, a highly controversial person in the environmental movement. As Kitty, one of our companions said “it was painful to watch, but it’s something we all need to be aware of….” Might play well in Boulder.

After the park, we managed to crash the Starz party being held in the hotel right next door to our condo. Salman Rushdie was there, along with what seemed like hundreds of other people. We don’t know who they were, but we’re sure they were very important.

Looking forward to more films tomorrow!

BAKED IN TELLURIDE: DAY 2
Movies didn’t start until 5pm, so we grabbed our beer and fishing gear, and fly-fished for the first time in the San Miguel river just 30 yards from our  little condo.  BIFF board member Bill Viehlier said that the “Trout fishing was good, it was the catching that was slow.”
 
Chastened loser-anglers all, we spent the afternoon with the Festival Program to plot our festival strategy and make assignments. We noticed that there are very few films from the U.S. in the program this year. An article in Telluride’s “Daily Planet” mentioned that it might be because of the writer’s strike. A priority is to track down Jeff Goldblum, who’s in town to present his highly-praised black-comedy “Adam Resurrected” about a concentration camp survivor in a mental institution who befriends another patient who thinks he’s dog, and they help to heal each other. We’ve become quite familiar with the scatological, social and sexual behavior of dogs because they seem to outnumber the people here in Telluride by 2 to 1. From the mangy to the sleek, the friendly to the sociopathic, they all fit in here in this anti-leash-law doggie heaven.
 
Dogs and humans alike love hanging around “Baked in Telluride,” a huge, funky, sprawling, old-fashioned hippie bakery that serves big, gooey, melt-in-your-mouth cinnamon rolls, sandwiches and pastries. We were there three times yesterday, and were insanely delighted during the wee hours of this morning, when we discovered they were still open AFTER THE BARS CLOSED!!! (Most of the customers at that time were “baked” as well.)
 
Another beloved Telluride tradition is to shut down all of main street for the “Public Feed”, featuring a band. This spectacle that always reminds me of the old SNL comedy-sketch called “Trough and Brew” starring John Belushi,  which featured sticking your face in a trough of chili, and a trough of brew, and being hosed off as you leave…
 
The first film we saw was called “Kisses” up at the Chuck Jones Theater. You have to take a steep Gondola ride to the theater in Mountain Village, but on the way down strangers discuss and analyze the last film, and, with a sunset so glorious that it seemed like a wildly over-colored process shot from the “Ten Commandments,” we struck up a conversation with George, a stoner-mountain-biker who shared our gondola. After we mentioned that we were from the Boulder International Film Festival, George was quiet for a moment, then his face exploded into an “aha” moment. “You guys must be with the banner hanging on that balcony!”
 
“Kisses” is a lovely coming-of-age film from Ireland that featured two very sweet, unknown, amazing 11-year-old actors…After running into BIFF Selection Committee member Marty Mapes who loved  the film, we decided to try to get “Kisses” for BIFF 2009. (Not bad, one out of one so far.)
 
The free film in the park tonight was Youssou D’Nour. The film documents the making of Youssou’s ground-breaking 2004 album “Egypt,” a musical exploration of Islam, and examines the critical and public response to the album at home in Senegal, where it was initially met with resistance and ultimately welcomed (sort of). Abroad, it was highly acclaimed and got a Grammy Award. They said in the interview in the Program that Youssou could easily sell out Madison Square garden, so as you can imagine, Telluride’s little town park was rocking last night.

 

More films tomorrow, as well as a party or two we’ll try to crash!

TELLURIDE: Opening Day
The weather is perfect, and the sun is beating down on our shoulders, which are still red from our Orvis Hot Springs Experience the day before. Telluride is a fabulous jewel of a movie-set-Western-Town in a box canyon surrouded by towering peaks, and dominated by a 400 ft. tall waterfall gushing out of the eastern end of the canyon. The town was crowded with the $200-sunglasses-set, along with swarms of workers looking like Oompa Loompas putting the final touches on the grand spectacle of one of the top five film festivals on earth.

We immediately, (and possibly illegally) parked our car in the center of main street. We grabbed the folding lawn chairs out of the trunk and nabbed the best spot in the town park for the free film fest movies at night. (BYOB).  In the park last year, we watched “Into the Wild,” (with Sean Penn in the audience) through a thunderstorm-from-hell. Seemed like the perfect setting.

After marking our territory in the park, we started a desperate search for a Festival program.  (Telluride is famous for not releasing it’s film program until the day before the Festival…mainly because they don’t have to – people will come anyway) The first store we went into, the bored clerk said “What Program?”  “Well, the Telluride Film Festival program of course!“ “The WHAT? he replied, eyeing us suspiciously. Pouring over the elusive, finally-found Program while leaning over a broken down picnic table in the town park, we high-fived each other when we saw that the shorts programs were moved from 9:00 in the morning (a pretty depressing time of day for my sisters and I) to later at night.  Great change!
We looked further into the program and when I remarked “Oh, a tribute to Jean Simmons!” Shelly immediately blurted out “that was my favorite band in high school!”  It was not that Gene Simmons it turns out, but the classic, legendary actress Jean Simmons, who appeared in films such as Great Expectations, Hamlet, Guys and Dolls, and Sparticus.  How exciting to possibly meet a legend!   We immediately put Jean Simmons on our list of possible celebrities to target…

Our little condo (that will ultimately sleeps god-knows-how-many-people), is a half-block from the gondola that takes you up to the Chuck Jones Theater, and the “Brigadoon” which is a DIA-like tent that serves as the Telluride Film Festival headquarters each year.  The first thing we did at our condo was to hang the Boulder International Film Festival banner up on our balcony.  We’re taking bets on how long it will last….

The opening night film in the park was a Swedish film from 1997 called “Frozen Dream,” about a perky hot air balloon team from Sweden that attempted to fly across the north pole in 1897.  I don’t want to give away the ending, but you can infer from the title what that it will not be happy.

One of the films with a lot of buzz this year is Director Steve McQueen’s controversial new film “Hunger” (no, not that Steve McQueen, he’s dead) will screen at Telluride. It opened Cannes this year as well.  Hunger is a film about Bobby Sands and The Irish Republican Army hunger strikes, which features almost no talking, except for a singular scene. Quite a few people left the Cannes screening because they were shocked by the violence.  The program says the film is supposed to “possess tremendous contemporary resonance” …whatever that means. Can’t wait to see it.

We went to the movie in the park last night with friends Kitty Nicholason, Bill Vielehr (Boulder sculptor and BIFF Board member) Laird Grimm and Kevin Shand, the Colorado Film Commissioner, who dropped by earlier to say hello. That’s us with Kevin under the Telluride Film Festival banner. Parties later.

More stories to come, because as you know, what happens in Telluride – gets blabbed all over Boulder!