Sunday, Jun. 30, 2002 / 7:25 p.m.

~The Film Festival - a Rewrite~

This is what Moby wrote in his Journal Thursday:

i've gone through the boards and i've taken it upon myself to answer some of your questions�..

does moby's music make you horny?
no. as moby, i have to say that my music does not make me horny.

Of course mine was not the only question answered. I enjoyed this one as well:

who has the biggest penis in politics, then or now?
i'm guessing it would be gandhi.

But I suppose I had quoted him fairly accurately, and yes, it was exciting to know he'd read what I'd written, maybe clicked on my Profile. I don't let those board members know about this diary, except for one 18 year old girl who asked for the url, so there is no possibility of Moby, nor anyone else, coming here from there, and that's as I would have it, for now.

A few years ago my main Interweb passion was the movie message boards over at Entertainment Weekly's web site. We had Interweb access from our cubicles at work, and when it was slow I could post for hours on any number of movie-related topics. One of the posters, a woman in Toronto, had attended the Toronto Film Festival, taken copious notes, and returned to the boards when she had time, posting her reviews of every movie she'd seen, days' worth of short films, documentaries, features, foreign films, everything, she'd made herself sick with all the filmgoing, coming down with some cold or virus or flu, posting in between bed rest, sleep.

We were all amazed at her ability to see so many films, to keep going, one after the other, and to write about each one, as well as any professional film critic.

So it was that yesterday Mark and I drove north to the mountains to attend the Dahlonega International Film Festival, in its second year. I'd been to screenings locally during our own Film Festival, but only a shorts program, or a feature presentation, or animated film showings at midnight, never actually attempting more than one screening in a day. We only intended to see the documentary on Nick Drake, but left ourselves open to any screenings that might catch our fancies.

The day was lovely, blue skies and puffy white clouds, air conditioned in Mark's car, me with a huge selection of CDs in my pack, but the drive shorter than either of us had thought, only listening to a portion of The Smiths' "Singles", which Mark had never heard before. Me, singing along, pausing to interpret lyrics for Mark.

We arrived hungry and bypassed one order-at-the-counter cafe in favor of the cafe over the Pottery Shop belonging to my sister in law's brother in law. We'd gone to say hello to him, but the shop was closed. Strange for a Saturday, during a Film Festival - he might have gotten some good business - and I'd gotten very excited at the prospect of simply dropping in, after years of not seeing him.

The cafe chosen (also on the main Square, very quaint and old-timey) was also order-at-the-counter, but we took our food out onto their second story porch, red and white checked vinyl tablecloths on the tables, flowerboxes filled with flowers attached to the railing overlooking a beautiful old tree, a huge American flag, and a broad brick sidewalk, where on a bench below sat a man playing a banjo, knee to knee with a woman playing guitar, as if playing just for us, beautiful haunting bluegrass melodies.

I ate bratwurst, potato salad and coleslaw, lemonade to quench my thirst, and Mark sat with barbecue sandwich, chips and apple pie he deemed "apple-y", whilst we perused the Festival catalog, constantly checking the time on my pocket watch, wondering what other films we should try to see besides the Nick Drake doc.

Horse drawn carriages passed us by, and I interpreted the horses' thoughts, imagining they perk up a bit when they pass the bluegrass musicians, that they dislike the constant stream of Harley Davidson riders circling through the Square, and this made Mark laugh, so I told him about the Pet Psychic, and later interpreted a German Shepherd's thoughts, told him I was going to help comfort him, "Wait a minute, dahhhling, I'm going to let him know it's going to be all right. Now, dahhling, I'm letting him know, it's all right dahhhling. There, he's much better now", and later when we passed the dog sitting with his people on a bench on the sidewalk I said it again, "I'm telling him it's all right, dahhling", and he turned to look at me, tongue wagging from his mouth.

I'd noticed a scruffily handsome man sitting on the edge of the sidewalk wall whilst we ate, amidst noticing everything really, including the wooden bear cub attached to the tree beyond us, and the fact that every cafe, bistro or food emporium seemed to offer ice cream, even next to the actual ice cream parlour, and I commented that it seemed odd this small town so loves their ice cream. And there, the man so handsome, young, long hair, denim shirt open to the waist, shorts and sandals, tan skin, dark hair, goatee, talking to an older couple, sitting next to him on the sidewalk, next to the bench containing the bluegrass playing man and woman, and he was animated, hands moving as he spoke, laughing, or listening to them, happy to have run into them, because it appeared he had, spontaneously.

He smoked cigarettes, and when he got up to leave, I looking out over the flower boxes on the porch railing, he leaned over to pick up his cigarette butts, and he was my new fixation, my new environmentally conscious hero and handsome artistic type future lover. He walked away to the coffee shop/art gallery next to the ice cream parlour next to the fudge factory next to the restaurant selling pizza and ice cream of course.

I was making up a story about him, how he could easily be the man in the movie, the mysterious handsome stranger who shows up in the small town, hooks up with the lonely widow, makes her realize all the passion locked up inside herself, has a mad passionate affair with her, but he's a free spirit so he leaves her to go on to the next small town, but she's fallen in love with him and she's devastated, and I tell Mark and he says I need to write a book and turn it into a movie. Not a screenplay, which would be the easy way out, but I say this story is an old one, it's been done a hundred times before.

And we choose movies to see. Head to the old theatre with the old marquee Mark loves so much, buy our tickets from the spacey woman who cannot seem to grasp that we are there to see the Shorts Program which starts NOW, so if you could move a little faster, yes, that would be nice, and we buy tickets to the documentary program after, and the Nick Drake doc too, and the man next to the spacey woman has this Jack Nicholson thing going on, with the sunglasses I can't see past and that permanent smirky sexy smile and he chats me up a bit, later asks how we enjoyed the films and the man next to me thinks he's talking to him because he can't see past the glasses either, and he says no and points to me.

We see a program of short films, and I could remember each if I needed to, but they're not terribly remarkable. The director/"star" of one is in attendance, and the producer/distributor of two Czech films is as well, they end up on stage after to answer any questions we may have, and the producer/distributor is French and speaks too quietly in broken English, rather pretentiously I am thinking, about the one short film which is a "tragedie" and he says, "Eets nut aboot ze gueeelt, eets aboot ze feeling of gueelt", and I'm cupping my ear to try to hear him, thinking I'd better not ask about the "pedagogical supervision" noted in the end credits, don't want to open that can of worms.

And the other, the director/"star" is so excited he takes a picture of us, the audience, says we're the largest one he's had yet, and he hops from foot to foot, telling us about what it took to make this short film of his, one woman in the audience asking question after question (his mom?), and I ask what the inspiration was for his character to have pennies attached to his skin�

We have time before the documentaries so we head back to the coffee shop/art gallery, and I'm complimented on my leg tattoos (I shaved my legs in the morning, for the first time since getting the new tattoos, and wore shorts), halfheartedly looking for the mysterious scruffy handsome open shirted tan goateed environmentally conscious man of my dreams, but he's nowhere to be seen. I look at art for sale, find some handmade journals I'd love to buy, but they're $30 each, so Mark and I look at old sheet music for sale and I see one I've got to have, a sheet for "All Aboard For Heaven", a drawing of a train about to take off, the Porter happily waving in a man in a hurry, come along, we're on our way, let's go to Heaven, and I'll come back for it later.

Onward to the Jeff Krulik documentary feature program, five short docs and a look at his latest, still in progress, and these are hilarious, movies that look as if they made themselves, just hold out your camera and let the people come to you sorts of films. "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" is fans before a Judas Priest concert, at some arena in Maryland, 1986, and oh, the hairstyles! The devil horn hand signal, the "JUDAS PRIEEEST!", over and over, the camera panning all these young testosterone fueled young white boys in the parking lot outside, getting drunk on Bud and Michelob, getting off on their tabs of acid, the girls with winged hair, all teased and stuck up high on their heads, the one 20 year old young man, on his way to the Navy in 2 weeks, with his 13 year old (!) girlfriend, so many crazy kids, some grabbing the microphone, taking over. We laughed so hard it almost hurt.

And the "Neil Diamond Parking Lot", the same lot ten years later, before a Neil Diamond show, so many old, overweight women, groupies, and I thought of me and my Moby fixation ("Moby Parking Lot"), but I laughed anyway. Then "Harry Potter Parking Lot", which turned into "Harry Potter Sidewalk", outside a J.K. Rawlings booksigning.

And "The Porn King", about a man with a humongous collection of "porno", tapes, magazines, photos, all catalogued and filling his house, rooms of it, including the first Beta version of "Deep Throat", and the Beta video player to go with it. It was hilarious, just this man inside his house showing off his collection, so seriously, so sincere. Again, the audience was full and we laughed hysterically.

"I Created 'Lancelot Link'", about the two writers behind the creation of the Saturday morning kids' show from 1970 (which I remember watching when I was a little kid and finding very stupid, but my brother loved it), and they're older now, maybe late 70s, discussing the behind the scenes stories of the male chimps being castrated, the one chimp, Debbie, and what a diva she was, hilarious, again. And really interesting.

"Hitler's Hat", the work in progress, and the growth of Krulik as a filmmaker is evident in this, it's much more polished, but long, needs editing, and it is unfinished after all, but it's a story about a division of American soldiers who went into Dachau in Germany in WWII, and the one who entered Hitler's private quarters and stole his top hat, stomped it with all his might and fury, only to realize it was a collapsible hat anyway, and he kept it as a souvenir. It's a series of interviews with the men as they are now, all in their 70s or 80s, interspersed with some amazing black and white film footage from the war, seemingly exactly what they describe from their memories. It was captivating.

Krulik was in attendance, introducing the films, and I was anxiously awaiting the Q&A at the end, but the program ran long and we had come to see "A Skin Too Few - The Days of Nick Drake", so we had to duck out. I hated doing it, but it had to be done.

There is no existing film footage, no performances, no interviews of Nick Drake, the one now famous for the "Pink Moon" Volkswagen commercial, so the film was made up of long slow static camera shots of trees in the English countryside, rain falling, or breeze blowing, or sun shining, black and white stills of Nick, beautiful, the camera static, stuck there, so we're forced to just stare at him, frozen in time, Nick's music playing in the background, his sister talking about her brother, in her aristocratic, Theatre-trained and articulate English accent, lovingly, yet only revealing a little of what she believes lay inside of him. Still more revealing than the voices and words of their mother and father.

We see the room where he lived, we see his manager and record producers, sound mixers, and they talk adoringly of Nick's talent, and his strangeness, his elusive personality, and his depression, his demise.

The sister plays a song their mother wrote and sang, played her own guitar to, and it's haunting in its similarity to Nick's style, very revealing, and she reads a poem their mother wrote, as well, describing how difficult it can be for some people simply to be alive and affected by too much of what life is. I wish I could remember any of it, it was very beautiful and described how I've often felt at times in my own life.

And we see a somewhat cheesy recreation of the bedroom scene his mother came upon the morning of finding Nick dead from an overdose, 26 years old, bowl of cornflakes on the floor next to the bed, thankfully leaving out a semblance of his dead body, just rumpled sheets.

The saddest was at the end, seeing home movies of the Drakes, little Nick as a baby, never looking happy, nor smiling, his mum tossing him into the air, trying to get a giggle from him, his father chukking him under his tummy, but nothing, even toddler Nick at the shore, wading through the water, hair blond from the sun, looking lost, out of place, and I felt so sad thinking that he was here and perhaps he wasn't even supposed to be. He lasted longer than maybe was even intended. But I'm glad he was here, so glad he made the music he did, and if only he could know that he did indeed affect people, his frustration was in vain, because he did what he wanted to do after all�

That wore me out, that film, and all the laughing from the docs prior to it, and we returned to the coffee shop/art gallery, still no sign of mysterious stranger, but I bought the "All Aboard For Heaven" sheet music, for $6, and we listened to a little band get ready for a show, so busy with sound checking we couldn't wait to get away, "How's the guitar? Can you hear us okay? How we sounding? How's the coffee? Mmm, can't wait to get a cup myself. A little more on the guitar mike. How's it sounding now?"

Back down toward the first theatre, to the French Bistro next door where earlier we'd run into the singer/songwriter/musician Mark saw in Asheboro a few weeks ago, and Mark introduced me - we saw him again, eating alone, and he seemed so shy and lonely we wanted to invite him to sit with us, but it would've been awkward. So we ate Nachos, the waitress telling us they'd run out of beer the previous night, and all they had left now was bar food if we were hungry. The Film Festival was wiping them out, but I'm sure the French man behind the bar, who seemed to be the owner, was happy for all the business. I was oohing and ahhing at the man's accent, joking that if I'd heard that accent come from the mouth of the cigarette butt picking up handsome scruffy goatee wearing open shirted stranger, I would've run to be with him, leaving Mark behind, finding my own ride home!

12:30 at night and we headed over to yet another venue, our third of the day, and on Campus of a University, to see more short films and one interminably long, "Pizza Wars". Turned out we both were dying to get up and walk out, but neither said anything until after it was over! That was worth yet another laugh.

We were in an auditorium in the Student Center, whose Main Hall we visited for a bit before the films, a HUGE room with very high wooden ceiling, exposed beams, stone fireplace with wild boar's head hanging over the mantle, glass cases housing old rifles, tapestries on the walls, two large seating areas, long sofas, big comfy chairs, and I wanted to sit in there forever. It was downright Medieval.

But, alas, 2:30 in the morning we left Dahlonega, an old gold mining town in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, to come back to town, an hour drive, listening to James Brown along the way, cool in the car, misty outside from a recent rain we'd luckily missed, fog everywhere.

Home by 3:30 and we both agreed it was well worth the time. I'd love to do a full Festival, Sundance or Cannes or Toronto, it's great, confusing, totally draining fun!

I'd written this all out earlier, almost just as now, and when I clicked to add it, I got that message, "unable to connect to database". Just as it was taking me from one page to another, my cache also cleared, so it was gone forever. I tried to "refresh" over and over, and I was devastated, frankly, that I lost it all. So, I've re-written, in Word, and it's awfully long, up to 6 pages now, but I couldn't not make another attempt to document it all. It was sort of an amazing day.

Just getting out in shorts with my tattoos showing was new for me, just being in Dahlonega again, for the first time in years, almost seeing the potter who's related to me, in a way, being with Mark, out of town, being at an International Film Festival in a small mountain town, all of it, was remarkable, and though I don't need to write it here to remember it, because I'll never forget any of it, especially not the German Shepherd, nor the horses, nor the man and woman playing music because they wanted to (this I know, because I asked them why they were there, telling them how much we'd enjoyed their music - it was their first time coming to the Square, they'd hoped to jam with some other bluegrass musicians, but ended up just sitting there on that bench, playing for themselves, and us, without knowing), not even to make money, nor the scruffy cigarette butt picking up man, with whom I instantly fell in "love", the Bratwurst, the documentaries, laughing so hard, feeling so sad afterward watching the baby Nick Drake who never belonged in this life, then that horrible late night showing at the University, all the audience seemingly University students, it's all stuck in my memory without putting it here, but I felt compelled to because this is where I come now when my life happens around me.

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