Too Cool

Let me pick up from yesterday's post and move forward. Chronology.

There is a film festival going on in our town just now. It is not Tribeca, but people are thrilled.

The audience is varied. There are the kids from the local colleges and university and, of course, the world-famous private school that charges kids thirty-thousand dollars a year to get a degree in music or film or animation. They are excited, of course, and both approving and critical of the films they see, but always cool the way kids are in funky clothing and fuck you hair and ink and metal, some nerdy, others otherwise, but all recognizable as chrysalises ready to erupt.

Then there is the museum crowd who live where there is not museum. O.K. There are. There are many. There are museums of folk art and railroad art and art of the state and a museum by my house that is pretty good but small at Country Club College. And if you want to count it, we even have First Friday or Third Thursday or Wicked Wednesday (no, wait, I'm mixing in some bar's happy hour here) where the downtown galleries stay open at night so people can drink and see art and schmooze. But these are the people who also have a little money and get to go to the Museums of the World. They always have the best seats at the art festival.

And there is also the older hipster crowd who used to hold a central place in the creative soullessness of the city but who have been displaced by money and by time.

I like them all. This is what I got.

But what I don't understand is why anyone wants to go to a film festival. I was asked to be a judge twice by the organizers, and I turned them down. There was money involved, and, of course, a season's pass to the funky little art film theater that runs this show, but, I thought, who wants to spend their time watching hours of bad movies? Even at the festival, if the film is any good, it will show there in the next year. Why do I need to go through all the agony of putting up with a crowd of people who are test rats for production companies?

I did go to the awards ceremony one year. There was a red carpet and a crowd held back by velvet ropes and everybody dressed up like they thought they were going to the Oscars. I sat behind Henry Winkler who kept turning around and grinning at my girlfriend. She was embarrassed, I think. I could only laugh.

I was funded once to go to the Tribeca Film Festival. I went to NYC, of course, but didn't bother with the festival. Been to Sundance, too. Ibid.

So, what is the lesson to be learned from this? Just that I'm a jerky boy who thinks he's cool because he doesn't participate in things like film festivals. Above It All. At least that is what I get from it. Self-revelation is a bitch.

I had something else to say here today, but it will wait until tomorrow. It will have to. The Sands of Time and all that.