Today started at an ungodly hour. You see a judge is only useful if completely catatonic, thus the early slave driving. We were to be shipped to our own mutual joy/hell of watching an unending number of film. My fellow judges and I looked like hell, well dressed hell in some cases, shapely in others, but well hell we were.
We were transported to the arena in which we would fight. A single video monitor suspended on one of those college media rollaway racks. We had stadium seating and whatever sort of treats you would want. Not that I could eat any. I had come to the decision with my dad, that I was going to eat good while in Atlanta, because noone should ever be on a diet when the meal is free. (Rule Number One) Of course this trip will add two weeks to the diet, and I just have to hope that the next trip won't have insanely good food and beer.
Let me introduce my fellow judges. Personally I saw us as the residents of Gilligan's Island. I was obviously the skipper (Alan Hale Jr), the shorter female filmmaker was MaryAnn, the taller female filmmaker was Ginger, the much hipper Gilligan (who is in film acquisitions), and finally the weird one of the boat the gentic experiment blending of The Professor and Thurston Howell the Third, who I'll call Professor Howell. We are everybit as lost as those abandoned islanders, each out of their natural turf and each incredibly goofy in their own way.
MaryAnn is a sugar and coffee fiend, her eyelids peeled back like the shell of a hard boiled egg on Easter Day. Gilligan turned in his lame clothes for a damn cool suit (sans tie) and a walk and talk of a cool dude. Skipper (me) is the self sure idiot that is supposed to be in charge, but... well while he fools everyone, he knows he shouldn't be in command. MaryAnn giggles a lot, she does silent laughter with the best of them. Then the wild kook of the group Professor Howell, a distinguished tenured Professor of film (aka a bit of a film snob).
Our spirit guides set up the program for us. We were to start with ANIMATION - VIDEO.
The first item was WOOD TECHNOLOGY, which is about How man eats wood through a personal beltfed sander that channels the sawdust down ones throat. A multimedia experience with live action, animation, collages, etc etc.. We decide as a group to move this project into the EXPERIMENTAL VIDEO category.
Next was FIGURE DRAWINGS, which was real sharp pencil character animation, but had little to more point, and felt like a try out real for Disney or Bluth.
DOG FISHING - Bubba animations. Stars a 'gomer/goober' type with Bill Plympton influences and a funny as hell joke. Suffice to say, this guy should be working on KING OF THE HILL. Funny stupid suburban lifestyle gone to hell. This was by Joe Byrnes. Everyone likes this one.
PHONY TRILOGY - Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. Trilogy of pointless skits that sucked hard, fast and often.
OLD MAN & THE GOBLINS - This was a damn cool animated flick. It starts off with what I can only describe as a Bray Studio style title card and vintage classic score. Then what ensues is a black and white stop motion animation piece that would cause all who saw NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS shout with glee. But, what's even cooler is I felt this harkened back to those strange Russian Stop Motion flicks from the twenties. Real rough, grotesque and haunting. This Mark Caballero is a fella to watch, oh, and they thanked THE CHIODO BROTHERS, and we all know who they are... BUT we had a problem because this obviously belonged in the Film category because that was how this was shot.
Next we moved on to ANIMATION - FILM category...
This started off with CIRCULAR RUINS... This was a tedious bit of claymation, totally pointless in my mind.
DUEL - tells the story of how we are born and our minds are filled with the facts the world and those controlling us want to know. Finally one child breaks free of the trappings of his enviroment to become the renegade rebel he is. This was pen and ink animation with some use of collage..
REPITITION COMPULSION - Charcoal on paper animation of a woman who is abused by the men in her life from the get go. It builds in her the desire to be dominated, thereby attracting evil abusive men. It's about how she tries to break free. There is some powerful animation here, which I loved, but the crowd felt the message was beaten in with a wrecking ball.
PHI-BRITE - Innovative use of a new technology in animation... THE LITE-BRITE device. This was psycadelic but pointless.
CALL ME FISHMAEL - Line Drawn Animation and puppetry. This went over well, but it just didn't do it for me. Gilligan loves this, but I felt that the cool stop motion piece is the rocking piece to go with. I'm attempting to bring MaryAnn and Ginger into my realm of thinking. The Professor doesn't want to give an award, everyone frowns at him.
At this point we switched to EXPERIMENTAL VIDEOS.
First was THE MORPHOLOGY OF DESIRE which was basically just covers of romance novels morphing into one another, with a lame pretense of a story. Wasted thought and energy.
DISSING D.A.R.E. - pretty funny piece about D.A.R.E. Uses clips from White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, Atomic Cafe, Willard and Reefer Madness... with Twilight Zone end title music. Everyone but the professor liked it.
EMILY DIED - BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD MEMORY. GO AWAY. Bzzzzzzzzzzzz... PTUIEEEEEEEEEE!
FRONT ROOM - lewd film of a guy licking his own bicep like it's a breast.
ABSENTA - Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
A.P.BIOLOGY - Strictly found footage of biological events, with a narration of a girl describing a crush/romance with high school BIOLOGY teacher. Boring.
Next we went on to EXPERIMENTAL - FILM.
A CULTURAL OBJECT: THE TAMPON - Funnnnnnny. Here's one line from an ol lady in the flick... "I wear 2 to 3 tampons at a time... you could drive a truck between my legs!" We howled at this. Well technically the Professor stared at the screen blankly.
CHOREA - These 2 women keep running into a mirror over and over again.
LOVE AND OTHER DIFFICULTIES - aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Help me.. Patsy Cline singing... ears bleeding. And a tedious flick too about an obsessive twit of a guy that can't get laid.
FROM THE BEACHES - badly edited film of kites flying. No Point for me, the symbolism was too lame.
BLUE DIARY - beautiful shots, but terrible narration by a depressend self-whipping and 'empty' woman, whose entire life mirrors her empty soul. There is a good idea here somewhere. Buut... dissatisfying.
Then we broke for lunch. I rode with MaryAnn and Professor Howell to this little place in Little Five Points (an area of Atlanta that resembles the coolest spots of Austin and Seattle) called Brewhouse Cafe. A giant sign saying GUINNESS beckoned me, so I drank, then I ordered the Irish Stew served in a Guinness gravy. Ohhhh man... this is why I'm off the diet for Atlanta. Man, this sauce is... AB-SOooo-LUT-LEE EX-tra-ORD-IN-aiRY! The rest of the stagglers stuck on this island in the North Atlanta(ic) had a repreive. We began to... mingle.
I noticed that Gilligan and I seem to be the most vocal, though MaryAnn talks a lot too. Ginger.. well she's the movie star so she giggles insanely like a nitrous oxide addict. Actually all the judges are pretty cool... even Professor Howell is likable in that "Crumb-esque" sort of way.
Then we went back to our little hell hole to watch more short films. However, we judges demanded a film, a feature if you will. So our spirit guide plugged in PARADISE FALLS.
The film doesn't star anyone in particular, just a sort of early 20th Century ignorant farmer types that decide to become outlaws. The music by the Red Clay Ramblers was mixed too high, overpowering the scenes with subpar music and caused the film to drag... in fact it dragged so much that three judges... MaryAnn, Professor Howell and Ginger voted it down. Oh by the way an old friend of Ginger's was now in our midst. Since he's on this island of ours, I guess he must be Ben Gumm, a cackling gnarled up young semi-handsome in that bizarre poke a stick at him way, kinda guy.
So we go to NARRATIVE SHORTS
The first was a really cool short called 4 SECOND DELAY, which is about a shock jock that has Bob Woodward on, during the 25 anniversary of Nixon's exiting of office, and... well I won't spoil it. This was really good, a delight. Keep your eyes on ROB LURIE.
Next was PATSY WAYNE which was a kinda cute one trick pony of a flick. You see Patsy Wayne is the love child of Patsy Cline and John Wayne, or so she says. It never lives up to that identity. There was room for a lot of tricky coolness, but it just sort of dragged forward.
Then came BACKGAMMON which bored the crap out of me.
Then LARK RHAPSODY which is set entirely to weird standards played upon what sounds like a church organ. It has that weird Tim Burton/Jim Jarmusch kinda feeling to it. Old ladies on those motorized larks dodging in and out of suburban 'Edward Scissorhand' landscapes meeting up with weird dazed and confused coffee sippers in a donut shop. It's a bit of a musical, except the dancing is the choreography of the Larks. Pretty cool, I liked it, damn peculiar.
Then came LOUISVILLE which I missed while I was in the bathroom, but everyone seemed bored with it. Professor Howell gave the only real compliment, "Some really nice beans were in the film" Apparently there is a picnic.
Next was FAST FOOD, which was a slapstick GOODFELLAS set in a BURGER JOINT. Too cute for it's own good. Nicely filmed but was way too contrived feeling.
We went on to PHIL TOUCHES FLO - which I won't describe, but if you've seen the short BLUE CITY, then you know the feeling of this. It's very cool and entertaining. Nicely done.
LOUIE was B----ooooooorrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnnnngggggg
And then came ONE HAND LEFT which is hilarious. I loved it. Sort of a movie about the hand possession problem from EVIL DEAD II. I liked it, as did everyone but Professor Howell who dismissed it as... a joke. That's a bad thing? Corky Quackenbush, of Saturday Night Live infamy, was responsible. This had all the originality that THAT show is missing.
Then we broke for dinner. For dinner each judge is taken out by a board member of IMAGE the group that throws this little festival. The crew of the SS MINNOW begin joking about the bad boardmember, and who will be stuck with the short straw. I got this fellow who is like an executive on the RoughCut Website. He took me to this cool restaurant called AGNES & MURIELS. A sort of a cool retro-fifties world of meatloaf, pork chops, gumby, barbie and key lime pies. A complete retro-world. I felt like ordering a Martin & Lewis, but it wasn't on the menu. We talked TURNER and WARNERS, WEBSITES and ADVERTISING... basically all the major stories of life, liberty and the web.
After dinner he drove me all over Atlanta showing me vintage movie palaces, the house Margaret Mitchell wrote GONE WITH THE WIND, the hotel that Gable and Vivien Leigh stayed at for the world premiere. The building in SHARKY'S MACHINE, the prison in MANHUNTER. He drove me by BLAST OFF VIDEO and A CAPELLA BOOKS, both of which are amazing. Then... it was back into the breach. More films.
As we return back to the prison, after my brief furlough, Professor Howell is carrying a hubcap and talking about going to Allah's hell for having dirty hands while banging on the door. Exec dude and I stare in disbelief. The Professor begins mumbling professionalism and courtesy, I metion patience as being a virtue. It was all rather funny. Finally we get in and it was waaaaaaaaay too noisy to listen. Some sort of construction was upstairs.
By the way Ginger is now tipsy as hell (typical Moooovie Starrrr), Gilligan is loose as Max Fleischer toon and I'm pleasantly plump. MaryAnn is wired on a billion double expressos. So we all go over to MaryAnn's room to watch the film...
We watch KITCHEN PARTY, which is pretty good in a high school coming of age/revolt against the parental figure sorta film. The asshole from that Robert Rodriguez SHOWTIME film is in it, and is pretty good again. We enjoy this film, and afterwards we go back to the rooms, where I collapse.
Sorry for not having this up right away, but yesterday was looooooooooooonnnnnnngggggggggggg.
