So I saw The Guitar..and it was...well...disappointing. Directed by Sundance founder Robert Redford's daughter Amy Redford, the film premiered at the large Eccles Theater to much anticipation. There was noticeable unrest after the first 15 minutes of watching the film's star Saffron Burrows buy everything her little heart desired in order to somehow come to terms with the fact that she is going to die. This tuns out to be a wonderful premise for a porno as she sleeps with her various delivery people, sometimes separately and sometimes together. Burrows does as good a job as possible, and when she finally regains her voice and begins to scream and cry, and scream, and scream, I can only say that that moment mirrored my experience of watching the film.
After the film we dashed off to The Queer Lounge for a GLAAD party welcoming new filmmakers. It was there I met up with emerging director Benjamin M. Piety, whose short film The Lonely Lights, The Color of Lemons I reviewed briefly while at the Nevada City Film Festival.
[Here is young Benjamin at The Queer Lounge -- his new short, Sunlit Shadows, premiered last night. Benjamin calls it a "Breakup Mix Tape Movie," and Paula Abdul is on the soundtrack.]
Piety went to film school in Florida and then made The Lonely Lights ,The Color of Lemons, a personal short film about a young man coming to terms
with his sexuality. I will refer to my original review to describe it further:
Not afraid of
stationary shots, Piety allows the camera to hold spaces of nonaction while he recounts an early sexual experience with his male cousin or the absurdity of his father teaching him the difference in pronunciation of the words "crash" and "trash." His sparing use of cinematography only serves him later in triumphantly visual scenes, such as when the camera pans to reveal our hero standing dumbstruck in the middle of a room full of "lonely lights" as they fill the edges of the frame. Piety splits the frame here to make it seem at first as if things are opening up, identical worlds pulling apart, and then collapsing in on each other until all that is left is a small and empty chamber.
Next, we went downstairs to the Absolut global cooling lounge, where gorgeous waiters poured delicious drinks and we all basked in a light blue, Arctic glow.
[(left) Advocate film critic Kyle Buchanan talks to OUT Executive Editor Bill Keith]
Then I was off to Chefdance, which is a multi-night event founded by Park City real estate mogul Kenny Griswold. Griswold brings a different A-List chef from all over the country for each night of the festival, and patrons enjoy a four course meal of their speciality. The portions are infamously small, so I stopped into a new sushi place on Main Street for a roll and some miso so I wouldn't pass out. At Chefdance, I was the guest of Indievest, a new financing and distribution company with board members like Don Cheadle and Liev Schreiber. Indievest hopes to be the ultimate merger between Hollywood and Wall Street, and the gist of it is that qualified investors can invest in specific projects and serve as Executive Producers. However, unlike other outfits where the money barons are in name only, Indievest claims to involve their investors from start to finish, so they are truly for the film enthusiast—who happens to have enough money to underwrite a movie. They will focus on small budget films and they are guaranteeing distribution for every film they produce, as well as marketing and publicity support—which is where most indie films die in the market. They were lovely and I look forward to the three films they intend to distribute this year.
My last stop was The House of Hype, where Flaunt and Puma were hosting a party. The room was sweltering and the garage-style band was deafening, so I made my escape and went home to my precious, precious humidifier.
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