Directors Journal

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FRIDAY JANUARY 21ST

Finally the big day is here. The world premiere of the film at Sundance.

Have a pre-screening dinner at Zoom in the upstairs room. Harry arrives with his posse. Our team from WOW is there: Mona, Jeremy, Will, Ashley, Thairin, Chris, and Mary Anne (they drove up in an RV all the way from LA). The Imagine people are there, and then the HBO crew arrive.

Maybe it's just because its tense but everyone sticks to their groups. Theres not much in the way of mingling.

Earlier in the day, Brian had flown in by jet. As they were approaching the runway, the cabin filled with smoke - something caught on fire. Brian was amazingly unrattled and didn't even seem to want to talk about it. Instead dinner was spent talking about the intricacies of oral sex. I'm so looking forward to the day when I never have to think or talk about this subject ever again!

Then we all pile into a cavalcade of black Escalades and proceed to the theatre where we expect to walk a red carpet clamoring with press. En route we pull over to re-group. Randy and I get out - we're in the front vehicle - and walk towards the back of the caravan because there seems to be some sort of commotion. It's Brian's car. Turns out he can't get his seat to adjust and everyone's trying to fix it.

The two-minute ride comes to an end at the theater and we all pile out to do the red carpet. But instead of a clutch of media there's maybe two camera crews and a handful of still photographers. But hey, it's more than the solitary camera at the Edinburgh film festival.

Now we're waiting to go on and it's still being negotiated how we're all going to be introduced. The final final - and it's seconds before we walk out onto the stage - is that Geoff Gilmore will introduce us and then as we are walking up to the stage he will also introduce Brian who will immediately follow, so that we all arrive at the podium at the same time.

We get Brian to tell his story about his grandmother, and it's on with the show.

The Q&A afterwards is kind of funny. Harry is there and we bring him up. The first question is whether we would now do a feature film, the way we did Party Monster the doc and then the movie. Brian answers that doing the Linda Lovelace story had been his original idea, but that instead he wanted to tell the story of the film's cultural impact. And then - I chimed in at the end, "But, hey, we might do a musical version. In 3-D." It breaks the ice and the rest of the Q&A zips by.

From the Eccles its up to the Schoolhouse and the afterparty, in the exact same location as the party for Party Monster two years ago. Brian Rabin and David Rodgers have outdone themselves, producing a party that's even better than the last one. Though some things remained almost the same: instead of go-go boys we have go-go girls working it on a raised platform in the center of the room. Instead of doughnuts we have phallocentric foods like corn dogs. Instead of Felix Da Housecat we have Bill Coleman spinning an amazing set.

Oh, and it is nice to see Billy Elliot all grown up.

SATURDAY JANUARY 22ND

Press day.

In the afternoon, we are on the way to shoot our appearance on American Shootout.

Azlin, our designated driver, has a pitch for a show. He says it's based on his life and is about a guy who basically loves but mistreats women, and everyone around him hates him because he's such a fool. He wants to call it The Arsehole Bachelor. He reckons that in the end, around series three, he might get the message and shape up. And that's it.

The Shootout piece is taped in a spectacular house that seems to lean all Lemony-Snickety over the canyon. Peter Bart and Peter Guber do a masterful job at making it seem like we're just all chatting.

Then it's back into town to tape the Jay Mohr Sundance Dailies, produced by old friend Jerry Kupfur and Mark Katz. We arrive and people are talking in hushed tones. Turns out everyone's worried that Jay's bawdy humor might upset co-guest Michael Winterbottom, who's here promoting 9 Songs, so, er, can we try and steer it away from the gutter?

Jay is not a man to be trifled with. A hot and instant flirt, he knows just which buttons to press to make us all just sufficiently uncomfortable to be putty in his hands.

Fenton, you fascinate me

Oh, how so?

Don't say anything, just go with it

Shit, now that I'm Jay's bitch how can I rescue La Winterbottom, who's just walked in, his silent intensity arriving before him? No wonder everyone seems to be rushing around in a frenzy of second-guessing. Personally,
I always wanted to meet him, not just because Party Monster was so often compared to 24 Hour Party People, but also because the guy just keeps making films - one, sometimes two, a year. But not now, in my pink Superman T-shirt and wiggling like a worm on the hook of Jay's perverse charm.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the interview segment goes off, at least at first, a little awkwardly. Randy saves the day with a combination of the pithy and the flirty that is the match for Jay's unflappable command of The Uncomfortable Encounter.

MONDAY JANUARY 24TH

Sex Stays In The Picture panel at Sundance.

Our point - one that we don't get to make - is that sex and sexuality (in frank and explicit detail) has been exiled from the cinematic experience.

And the reason we don't get to make it is that one of the magician guys from Penn and Teller is in full-on bully mode, hectoring everyone. His point is that there's plenty of sex in cinema and this is all a load of liberal hand-wringing by the navel-gazing chatterati.

It's a frustrating experience. There are too many panelists and a lack of focus on what the actual issue is. Any attempt to discuss sex seems destined to flail around until it can latch onto a familiar issue that everyone can have a go at.

Nine times out of 10 it's the role of women and the abuse of women. Penn brings this on by saying that there's nothing wrong with people wanting to watch cutting up women (how could you possibly agree), that there's no difference between porn and art (agree) and that the female panelist who raises her voice at him is hot when she gets angry (ugh!). Obviously it's all calculated baiting but it's kind of tiresome.

Made us think that the culture war isn't really between the red states and blue, its between the ascendant bully culture versus the curious culture.

Think back to Clinton's convention remark that the Republicans need a divided nation, whereas the Democrats don't. Underlying the partisan remark is a fundamental truth that in the bully culture there has to be a right and a wrong, a victor and a victim. But reducing complex issues to simple dualities and then taking a sabre-rattling side might have worked in the past, but aren't we ready for a third way?

But it isn't really possible to get a word in.

At the end, a woman sitting next to Werner Herzog stands up and says that the danger today is failing to take the current administration seriously enough. She reminds us that no one took Hitler and the Nazis seriously.

TUESDAY JANUARY 25TH

Despite feeling the onset of Sundance fatigue, big blow-out party day.

The Sundance Channel party, legendary previous home for fat bags of swag, is only handing out hats with headphones built into them. Nevertheless the place is jammed to the gills.

Although the Variety party is up at the Stein Ericksen lodge, the crowds are not deterred by the hike. Variety reporter Dana Harris clings to the walls of the vestibule and sums it all up with her headline, Party Monster Besets Fest.

The IFP party looks like a bomb has hit it at the Turning Leaf lounge, and people lay around in catatonic film fatigue. But there are still two big ticket parties to go: Tartans featuring the Dandy Warhols and the TLA sponsored gig of the Scissor Sisters.

Leave town before dawn the very next day. Not a moment too soon.

(To be continued)