sxsw film pass day eight

I had not planned to see Mr. Lonely, Harmony Korine's latest film, and Film #14 for me in this festival.

A Michael Jackson impersonator lives alone in Paris and performs on the streets to make ends meet. At a performance in a retirement home, Michael falls for a beautiful Marilyn Monroe look-alike who suggests he move to a commune of impersonators in the Scottish Highlands. At the seaside castle, Michael discovers everyone preparing for the commune's first-ever gala - Abe Lincoln, Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Stooges, the Queen, the Pope, Madonna, Buckwheat, Sammy Davis, Jr. And also Marilyn's daughter Shirley Temple and her possessive husband Charlie Chaplin. Meanwhile, a miracle is happening somewhere in a Latin American jungle.

I had not planned to see it, but people in lines were talking about it, and M called me from Shreveport where she's been stuck for the last couple of months working on a movie there, to beg me to go see it.

It started out very nice, then it became two films -- the impersonators film and the flying nuns part -- and the two never coincided. It seemed to me that they could have come together easily, but the director apparently chose not to do so, and so I'm left wondering why both parts existed.

I actually preferred the nun part of the film better, maybe because fewer of the actors spoke. It felt like there wasn't actually a script, that the actors were given an outline and told to ad lib, or maybe they were given a short line and told to work around it, but some of the lesser among the actors -- the little boy who played Buckwheat and Werner Herzog as the alcoholic priest -- just repeated one or a couple of lines over and over again, which took me out of the experience of the movie.

At 108 minutes, the film was way too long for what it needed to be. And there were some problems in editing, or perhaps, again, the (non-) script, in which parts of the story were confusing, sometimes very confusing, sometimes to the point of making me think something had gone terribly wrong with my perception of the story.

There was no emotion to latch onto in the impersonator commune story (though I was a little worried -- after having seen Korine's earlier films, I don't trust him to take care of his actors or the animals on screen -- that when a sheep got sick and the whole flock had to be killed and the Three Stooges showed up with rifles, that I was going to have to watch animals getting shot, or at least frightened). There was more of an emotional, though ethereally emotional, story line going on with the nuns in Latin America. But after all was said and the credits were rolling, I still couldn't figure out why they were in the movie.

I sat next to my new friends D & J, the couple I met at an earlier screening, he with the website who's "really interested in seeing my work," and she the "all-around artist," like me (actually, she's a sculptor). We had a nice conversation, and I figured out that they are a couple. Well, I surmised that they're a couple because they were all tangled up with one another during the movie and they both had on wedding rings.

I had Sex Positive on my list for the next film to see, but it was showing at the Austin Convention Center, and I was feeling a little headachey and wanted to get away from the cacophony that is Sixth Street, with loud, loud music pounding all around. I had to put up with it (and the hot sun) while I waited in line for this movie I didn't enjoy, so I decided to go home.

After I got home, I was wired (partly, I suppose, from the large Coke I had just drank). C called from Florida to tell me she wasn't in Guatemala as she had planned to be right now because her mother had to have emergency back surgery. Jeez! She spent ten hours in the hospital on her birthday on Wednesday, poor thing. I told C about my bad movie experience and she questioned whether it was because I was overloaded...

I was too wired to stay home, so I found a movie on my secondary list of films to see. It was showing at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, far from the musical mayhem, and I didn't think the film would be a big draw. Film #15 was Do You Sleep In The Nude?

Before there was Siskel and Ebert, before there was Simon Cowell, there was Rex Reed. He was the first superstar movie critic, the first celebrity journalist who became a celebrity himself by appearing on TV and in the movies. He helped push the idea that movies and movie stars were as important to our culture as politics and the economy, even as he pierced the veil to show that celebrities were, in many ways, just like you and me. Forty years after he blazed across the scene, he's still going strong, a brand-name movie critic whose name and face remain easily recognizable, even if his influence has waned. But the scene he helped create -- whether in terms of movie criticism or the nature of celebrity journalism -- has changed drastically.

I always enjoyed watching Rex Reed on The Gong Show and the talk shows of my youth. He was such a flamboyant "unmarried" man, and I'm sure I more than once questioned his sexuality. Well, this film outs him, much to his chagrin. The director made the movie and then showed it to Rex -- I guess for his approval -- and filmed him watching it to get his reactions, many of which were venomous. (Seems like he was getting a little of his own medicine, really.)

He did make a comment toward the end though that he felt like he was being outed, and the director asked how he felt about that, to which he said, "I'm getting used to it." Then he said, "Why don't you just put my phone number on the screen too so people can call me. Like I said, I'm open to anything these days, so just put my number right here." And the director did.

212-873-4311

flashed on the screen and I wrote it down, curious as hell if it really was his phone number. After I'd had a cup of coffee this morning, I called the number, figuring it was probably not his number, or at the very least it would have been changed (and it still might after the movie gets wider distribution), but the phone rang and there was his voice. "Hello, this is Rex Reed. Leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

I stumbled through a message to him. I mean, I'm not a "fan" of his, I wasn't tongue-tied because I couldn't believe someone who meant so much to me had given me his phone number. (He hated Dancer In The Dark, Lars Von Trier's dark musical, which I love, though his review, which he read in the film, is pretty humorous.) Part of the reason I called the number was because I thought it would be really sad if he had put his number on the screen and nobody had called him (there were fewer than a dozen people at this screening)! So I called, told him (or his answering machine, anyway) that I liked the movie, that I admired him, left my own phone number -- not sure why I did that! -- and that was it.

I enjoyed the movie. It wasn't the best thing I've seen. It was like watching TV, which, after all of the intense movie-watching I've been doing, was kind of nice. I had a chocolate malt while I watched it and came home more wired than after the Coke at the previous movie, not sure what to do with myself, a bit sick to my stomach so I didn't really want to lie down. I did a little cleaning around the house, then finally lay down with On the Road, which I'm trying to finish before the public reading on March 29th that I'm taking part in.

Okay, last day is upon me. I've got three movies planned for, all of them at the Ritz (which means opportunities to spend money on food, I wonder if I can resist); I wonder if I'll make it.