Could any film ever hope to overcome a festival drubbing like the one that greeted Southland Tales at Cannes 2006? Screened in competition, in an early incarnation clocking in at 2 hours 40 minutes (director Richard Kelly later claimed it had been a rough cut all along, but that’s apparently not how it was billed to the press at the time), Kelly’s follow-up to the slow-burning cult hit Donnie Darko was roundly, emphatically, infamously booed. Sometime after the first shockwave of bad buzz hit the States, a handful of critics rose to defend Kelly’s vision. The rest of us sat back and waited a year and a half to get a look for ourselves.
Southland Tales may never be able to live down that first, fateful, fatal screening, but you can’t say Richard Kelly didn’t try to reverse the damage; in fact, he spent a good portion of the 18 months following the film’s ill-fated premiere streamlining his disasterpiece. The 2 hour 24 minute cut premiering in theaters tomorrow boasts a newly-fashioned prologue (wherein a July 4th barbecue is interrupted by a mushroom cloud, touching off World War III), a re-recording of Justin Timberlake’s narration (stoney and oblique, but purposefully so), and the exorcism of one or two subplots (Janeane Garofalo used to be in this film; now she is not).
Most auspiciously, Kelly brokered a deal with Sony that required him to shave a sizable chunk off the running time in exchange for their bankrolling of 90 new effects shots. It would seem that this money was put to good use: I’m not someone who usually takes much pleasure from good CGI, but if there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on when it comes to Southland Tales, it’s that the effects are truly special. Particularly in the film’s spectacular final twenty minutes, Southland Tales contains some of the most purely beautiful digital effects that I’ve ever seen on a big screen.
And the rest of it? It really comes down to what you’re willing to let Kelly get away with.
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Greetings from Portland, the city that apparently has more movie theater seats per capita than any other city in the country. My man Jason and I are out here visiting my brother, Bill, who is a huge film lover–6-foot-4, to be exact (so sorry for the bad pun). For people who are into great community film-watching experiences, this seems to be the place to live. Not only are there theaters all over the city keeping up with the first-run pace of much larger cities like New York and LA, there are several alternative theater experiences to take advantage of. Personally, I’m much more excited about these than I am about catching a new film now that will hit my local art theater back home two or three months later. I can wait. What I can’t do back home is drink a good microbrew while I’m enjoying an affordable, well-chosen film in a community setting (ie: not my livingroom).
Take the Laurelhurst Theater. This movie theater landmark since 1923 shows second runs and classics on four screens for $3 a show, while you fill up on pizza and wash it down with microbrews. The McMenamin brothers have also made a huge name for themselves in Portland, by refurbishing historic buildings, showing $3 films, and serving exceptionally delicious pub grub and their own micro-brewed beers. They have four theater locations, including one in an old elementary school. And get this: The Academy Theater not only has “real” food, beer and wine, it also offers inexpensive babysitting on site! A complete date at an affordable price–what a novel concept!
So all of us not from Portland (or Austin or the few other places in the country that have their theater groove on) are thinking “Of course! That’s the way to see films! That’s the way to keep historic theaters as theaters, and to repurpose other great old buildings into film destinations rather than driving film-lovers all out to the suburbs!” If we’re all thinking that, where are the McMenamins of Indianapolis and Pittsburgh and Louisville? When will every other place jump on the train? Are the rest of us really not cool enough to support these kinds of theaters in small and mid-sized cities across the map?
I’m at the Austin Film Festival. I’ve found at other film festivals that panel discussions can be really hit or miss. Often conversations can meander around filmmakers saying the same things, although they may be good things like "Don’t give up making film," but nonetheless the same things. I’ve found the panel discussions here to be lively with a lot of audience dialog happening.
What is the most passionate dialog about? Two words: Marketing, Distribution.
Everybody is watching what Mark Cuban is up to. Filmmakers like Alex Smith and Adam Rifkin reiterating that filmmaking is two giant hurdles. 1 hurdle is making the film. Once the film is made the next and more unpredictable hurdle is getting through the gate for a film to reach an audience.
Everybody is searching for an alternative avenue to find an audience.
More later.
