Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Puff 'n' Stuff

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This may be my favorite picture from yesterday (and you'll notice me in it!). It was taken by Greg Rihl of The Davis Enterprise, with whom I work frequently--and whom I did not recognize yesterday because he was without his traditional baseball cap! It was one of those "that guy looks familiar, but I can't place him" things until Ellen and Shelly had everyone go around the room and introduce him/herself and I realized who he was.

I spoke with Ellen this morning and you can't take the smile out of her voice. They knew being married was going to be good...they had no idea it was going to be this good. Amazing what a difference being officially recognized as being just like everybody else makes, even after 34 years together.

I'm sorry I didn't make the small reception they held at their house after the wedding. Two of their four children were not able to make it to the wedding; one was there, and one stayed away because of fear there would be too much publicity (ya think?), but came to the house because it wasn't the event that was the problem, just the media circus. Gotta respect that!

But I didn't go to the reception because, first, I was racing to Woodland in the hope of finding my cameras which I'd left behind. (You'd think I'd have learned about that by now, wouldn't you?) And second, I had a movie see.

Julie, Julie was scheduled to air at 8:30 at the Varsity Theatre (where Paul and Jeri worked, where Lawsuit had so many concerts, and where Paul inaugurated his monologue series). This was a test screening, to get the first audience reaction before it is submitted to a local film festival.

I toyed with getting a bite to eat at a local eaterie, so went downtown early, but wasn't really hungry so just picked up a $4 cup of gelato and sat outside the theatre, reading my newly purchased book (see yesterday's entry) and waiting for patrons to be let into the theatre itself, later than expected, since the marquee now said that it would begin at 8:45 (in reality, it didn't start until 9).

One of the cool experiences was sitting outside the theatre with a bunch of people (many of them UCD interns who had worked on the film and would be seeing the completed product for the first time) when a couple of guys came up to ask the woman sitting next to me what was going on inside the theatre. She started giving them kind of a capsule summary about the movie and then held out her hands and said "Here--there's an article all about it." It was my article. Now THAT was fun.

The movie was written and directed by Liam Creighton, a young British guy whose wife is in a PhD program at UC Davis. He has created this movie for Sacramento's French film festival (for which he worked for a few years after moving to Davis) and it will also be part of his application to film school when he returns to London.

I met with Liam twice, the second time because my tape recorder gave up the ghost during our first interview. But the second time was great because I got to see about 1/3 of the film, just enough to whet my appetite to see the full movie.

It ended up being a triple showing. The movie being a short, Liam wisely decided to give his audience a substantive amount of film for their donation, so it opened with a film by the woman who plays a doctor in the film (and who owns her own casting agency in San Francisco); the second was a film starring the woman who plays Julie in Liam's film, and then closing out the evening with Julie Julie.

One thing I learned is that I think I don't really like short films. I must not "get" the genre. I didn't feel satisfied at the end of any of the three, though I felt the first was the weakest of the lot. Interesting camera angles, quirky characters, but it didn't go anywhere, didn't impart any message, and was supposedly an homage to would-be screenwriters, by, I guess, making fun of the whole process.

The second film had more substance to it. It was basically a character study done via a conversation between two strangers in an airport bar. This kind of came to a conclusion of sorts, but I didn't like the over-exaggeration in one of the characters, and the occasional mugging for the camera. Overall, though, it was quite good, for a short.

Julie, Julie was my favorite of the lot, and looked the most polished, to me. The thing I found most interesting was knowing what went into planning this film--the miles traveled, the struggle to find places to film, all over No. California, the cost and hassle of getting permits to film a street scene that takes only a few seconds on film, the glee Liam got from finding the house they rented for the interior, so that they could do a special overhead shot (which is over in an eyeblink).

Having read (and written) about all that went into the making of this film -- and how much it cost -- it was interesting to see what the final product looked like. It's an interesting story of a man whose wife is in an auto accident and suffers a concussion, and then wakes up from her coma not only with amnesia, but unable to speak English; she speaks French. The film touches on love and communication and I found that when it ended I wanted more because there was no real resolution, which left me feeling unsatisfied. I want to see Julie, Julie--the sequel.

But it was an interesting night and a good follow-up to my interview with Liam. I rarely go to something that I don't have to review just because I interviewed someone who had invited me. But the 1/3 of the film that I was shown was a good enticement and I'm glad that I went.

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