Hey folks, Harry here with the latest adventure known as The Floating Film Festival... I was blessed enough to do one of these and I have to say, it has been one of my most cherished film experiences... holed up on a cruise ship watching films premiere like CROUPIER and GIRL ON A BRIDGE... Wonderful, let's see what this year's line up was!
Barrett Hooper at The Floating Film Festival
Despite the occasional glitch in the projection booth and rough seas mid-voyage that caused a brief rush on Dramamine at the concession stand, it was smooth sailing on the eighth Floating Film Festival last week.
Set aboard the cruise ship MS Veendam out of Tampa, Fl.the bi-annual event originaly entered uncharted waters in 1991 as the first film festival at sea. (Inspired by the FFF, regular programmer Roger Ebert has since begun his own "cruise with a view" with TV sidekick Richard Roeper.)
And the Floating Film Festival is the smallest and indeed, the least pretentious film fest in the world.
The brainchild of Dusty Cohl,this festival caters to only 200 patrons,who miraculously come from all over America.Word of mouth is a wonderful thing. The huge FFF souvenir T-shirt depicts Cohl as a bearded man in yellow robes sitting cross-legged on the ocean, smoking a cigar, his eyes hidden by the brim of a cowboy hat, sort of a zen Buddhist Man With No Name -- the only thing missing was a glass of Crown Royal.
Cohl was a founder of the Toronto International Film Festival back in the mid-70s and turned his eye to creating a smaller, more intimate movie venue after watching his baby become increasingly huge and successful.
Thus the Floating Film Festival, which combines the cineastic feel of the TIFF with the fun-in-the-sun aspect of Cannes, which Cohl has often frequented.
Name another film fest where you can share your popcorn with Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) while watching a matinee screening of the hit German dramedy Goodbye, Lenin and that evening share the microphone with the 82-year-old in an ear-splitting rendition of Rick James' Super Freak during the festival's mid-week karaoke contest?
A semi-regular on the FFF, Wexler was one of the 200 or so movie lovers who took part in this year's FFF, a seven-day schmooze cruise in the Caribbean. Wexler, an acclaimed director and documentary filmmaker, was honoured during the FFF for his lifetime achievements in film. He was joined by his actress-wife Rita Taggart (John Sayles' Limbo) and the acting-directing father-son team of Melvin and Mario Van Peebles, who were there to present the docu-drama Baadasssss, which took home the Jay Scott Award as the critics' top choice.
And while the Floater, as it's been dubbed, is undoubtedly small -- perhaps 15 or 20 films screened between sightseeing and snorkeling excursions in such ports-of-call as Grand Cayman, Montego Bay,( Jamaica), and Costa Maya,( Mexico) -- the lineup is always world-class.
Past FFF's have premiered such festival gems -- and subsequent marquee movies -- as The Silence of the Lambs, The Spanish Prisoner, American Psycho, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Croupier, Chunking Express, Howard's End, The Mambo Kings, Hoop Dreams, Ghost Dog, Way of the Samurai and The Big Lebowski.
And far from being just a theatre adrift at sea, away from Tinseltown's fame brokers, the FFF has its influence. For example, one of the early FFFs marked the debut of director Carl Franklin's noir thriller One False Move, co-written by and starring Billy Bob Thornton, and the publicity surrounding its warm reception led directly to a distribution deal (and a directing career for Franklin, whose last picture was the Denzel Washington thriller Out of Time).
This time out the roster included an eclectic group of films that were sure to satisfy the more cinephilic members of the audience.
The Charlie Kaufman-scripted brain tease Adaptation with Nic Cage was the subject of Roger Ebert's regular FFF contribution, his scene-by-scene analysis dubbed Democracy in the Dark. On previous Floaters the Chicago Sun-Times critic has dissected Casablanca The Third Man and other classics And while the thought of going through a film, any film, let alone one starring Mr. Leaving Las Vegas, so meticulously might seem an exercise in cinematic masochism, the event turned out to be one of the week's highlights.
Instead of stripping away the pleasure of watching the brilliant Adaptation, the discussion -- of everything from whether the character of Donald Kaufman is real within the context of the film to whether the birds heard chirping in the Florida swamp scenes would ever be found in a Florida swamp -- was both enlightening and entertaining. And in the end Adaptation be comes more watchable than ever.
The Haskell Wexler tribute, which included clips from several of his films, ended with a Q&A conducted by Ebert. Among the highlights of the conversation was the story of how Francis Ford Coppola fired Wexler from The Conversation after only a few days because Wexler did his job too well. (It seems Coppola assigned Wexler to set up and shoot a complicated crowd scene while he went off to write an opera, of all things. But instead of taking days to accomplish that assignment, Wexler managed it in an afternoon, leaving Coppola unable to finish the opera and unprepared to return to the set to continue filming.)
Finally, the presentation of Baadasssss. A hit at the Toronto festival last fall, where it was still titled How To Get The Man's Foot Outta Your Ass (it seems the MPAA won't let you use the word "Ass" in a title but "Baadasssss" is acceptable), the film has been picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics and will hit theatres in NYC and L.A. this May.
It's the story behind the making of 1970's Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song, the seminal black film (and seminal indie film) that Melvin Van Peebles wrote, directed and starred in (as Sweetback). Sweetback was the biggest indie film of that year, and a top-10 grosser overall, and helped launch black cinema (and blaxploitation cinema).
And in a case of one degree of separation, Baadasssss was written, directed by and stars Mario "Stitch Jones" Van Peebles as his father. On a humorous sidenote, the elder Van Peebles' resemblance to Dusty Cohl, right down to the grey beard and ever-present cigar, was so uncanny that they were often mistaken for each other -- brothers from different mothers, as it were.
The discussion afterward covered topics from the changing face of minorities in film (or the lack of change, as it were), to producing an indie film to Mario's early film career (he credits pal Clint Eastwood, who hired him for Heartbreak Ridge, for helping him get films like New Jack City made.)
The regular festival slate was equally diverse.
There was the Krzysztof Kieslowski-scripted The Big Animal, which has to be the best Polish camel movie ever made. Plots With a View (to be retitled Undertaking Betty for theatrical release) is a lighthearted comedy starring Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2's Dr. Octopus) and Christopher Walken as competing undertakers. Plots, which also stars Brenda Blethyn as a woman out to fake her own death and Naomi Watts as a sleazy British tart, picked up the FFF audience choice award.
The French-Canadian comedy Seducing Doctor Lewis (La Grande Seduction), about a fishing village's attempt to hire a new doctor (think Northern Exposure), picked up major kudos at the Sundance Film Festival in January and was another major crowd-pleaser with the FFF crowd.
Young Adam, however, was not. The dark drama about a seductive (and conscienceless) drifter working the barges of Glasgow's canals starred Ewan McGregor, who gives yet another glimpse of his assets with a full-frontal performance.
Time Magazine critic and FFF programmer Richard Corliss again indulged his passion for Asian films with a pair of Chinese films that have yet to find there way into American cinemas. The first presentation was the stunningly beautiful Hero, the wuxia "flying swordsmen" epic starring Jet Li, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. It was a Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars two years ago and has been sitting in a Miramax vault ever since.
More likely to find an audience here, at least in a Hollywoodized (bastardized?) version is the stylish, twisty cops-versus-triad Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, starring Tony Leung and Andy Lau as two moles working opposite sides of the same crime war. Dreamworks has picked up the remake rights and Brad Pitt is attached as a producer and possible star).
Documentaries included the acclaimed The Corporation (now in theatrical release in some cities), Broadway: The Golden Years, a delightful glimpse into the early years of the Great White Way told through interviews with those who tread the boards, and Festival Express, a from-the-vaults rock doc about a cross-Canada music festival back in 1970. Containing amazing live footage of the likes of The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, it was the perfect final night film.
Finally, throughout the trip a rather nasty rumour circulated that this was the Floating Film Festival's final voyage. "Not true"said Cohl. while he admits that this was his last venture as the captain of the festival, he expects to announce,very soon,the name of a younger and extremely capable successor.Barry Avrich,anyone?
Barrett Hooper
