deeplyshallow // starring peter fonda’s corpse and that annoying lady from “home improvement”

starring peter fonda’s corpse and that annoying lady from “home improvement”

The SLO film festival ends this weekend. Last night, after driving back to San Luis Obispo from a couple of days on business in San Jose, Felicia and I put in our time as volunteers. We worked the screening of a short film, Smoke, and the feature that followed it (Ulee’s Gold, a last-minute replacement for a Jack Kerouac film).

G.: Is this the Jack Kerouac movie?

L.: We were so lost! We walked all the way to another theatre and then we realized that the movie we wanted to see was right back here where we started! Isn’t that funny?

J.: The Jack Kerouac film has been pulled.

G.: What?

L.: What’s showing instead?

F.: Ulee’s Gold.

G.: Why was it pulled?

J.: I don’t know.

L.: When will it be showing instead?

F.: I don’t think it will be shown at all.

G.: Well, how come?

J.: I don’t have an answer for you.

G.: Well, do you work for the film festival or don’t you?

J.: You caught us ten minutes into our first day. Sorry.

G.: Well.

L.: We could watch this one instead.

G.: I’ve seen Ulee’s Gold. Didn’t much care for it the first time.

F.: They’re showing The Cowboys at the theatre up in Paso. You’ve got time to make it, if you like.

G.: Oh, no. That’s cowboy country. We don’t go up there.

The event that preceded ours was a screening of a local filmmaker’s romantic comedy and Josh Brolin’s short film. We were early, so we worked the exit, collecting and tallying ballots. We decided that if Diane Lane had accompanied Brolin to the show, then we’d each take one of them down. We stood around a bit, trying not to look official. Then, in the most underwhelming celebrity encounter ever, Brolin appeared with a shadowy figure — Diane Lane in a fedora and men’s suit, with a soul patch and tattoos? — and asked Felicia where the bathrooms were. When Brolin and his compadre reappeared, presumably having tinkled, they wisecracked about rigging the ballots.

(Josh Brolin, by the way, is a stubby fellow whose head is strangely too big for his body.)

Today there were no celebrities to be found. I picked Felicia up from work and we drove to the last screening of the day, the only one for which we could exchange our passes (volunteers are comped one film for every film worked). The lineup was comprised of three student films — Chiles, a Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner-style comedy; A Day’s Work, a dramatic thriller; and Gasoline, a midwestern drama based on a Sam Shepard story. At the end of each movie the audience casts a vote, scoring the films from one to five, five being the highest. Felicia likes to joke that I’m an elitist when it comes to movies; I didn’t score any of them higher than a three.

A Day’s Work was shot entirely with handheld cameras, often for no good reason. During a very still scene — a conversation between two young men as they pack boxes — the camera bounces and jostles around so much that it left Felicia feeling nauseous. When the film ended, another audience member asked the director, during the Q&A, about this style of shooting, and why he chose to use it. The director’s answer came down to: everybody else is doing it, so, um, yeah.

On the last day of the festival, there’s a red carpet event — the King Vidor Career Achievement Award ceremony — honoring, you know, someone who’s probably getting up there in years, and whose career hasn’t entirely sucked. This year they’re giving it to Peter Fonda. Previous winners follow no obvious pattern: Morgan Freeman, Eva Marie Saint, James Cromwell, Norman Jewison, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Wise, Elmer Bernstein. Word is tickets are selling slowly. I would almost guarantee that nobody who watched Ulee’s Gold last night will be clamoring to get into the event.