March 30 - April 2, 2000
Wisconsin Film Festival
Isthmus articles
The Wisconsin Film Festival
searches for an identity
Could this year's fest be the start of something big?
By Aaron R. Conklin
Best of the fest
Isthmus' film critic surveys the offerings at the festival.
By Kent Williams
Made in Madison
Local filmmakers strut their stuff at the Wisconsin Film Festival.
By Aaron R. Conklin
Film Fest Web Log
Live updates from Isthmus correspondents at the festival.
Monday, April 3, 2000
The Straight Story didn't make it on a ton of "Best of 1999" lists, but it probably should have. The film can be described as simple, beautiful, moving, life-affirming, thought-provoking and even nice. Ironic doesn't necessarily fit, unless you count the opening credits as part of the movie, especially the part that reads: Walt Disney presents... A David Lynch film."
But by Sunday afternoon, most of the people gathered in the Orpheum's main theater had become comfortable with that. They'd either seen the movie before, some several times, or had spent over an hour listening to John Roach and Mary Sweeney, the film's screenwriters, talk about writing the story, getting Lynch to direct it and hanging on for a wild ride that included the Cannes Film Festival, Academy Award nominations and critical acclaim.
Seated between Roach and Sweeney, Chicago Tribune film critic Mike Wilmington moderated a talk that explored the true story of Alvin Straight and how the two Madisonians came to turn it into a movie. For those who are unfamiliar, Straight was the guy who drove a lawn mower from Laurens, Iowa to Mount Zion, Wisc., to visit his ailing brother. He had no driver's license and didn't want to leave the driving to a bus driver, so his riding mower was his only option. It's not a glamorous story, there's no violence (unless you count a car vs. deer collision), no sex and the closest any character comes to swearing is "Cry-eye." It's a great film and the viewing experience was only enhanced by hearing the care and dedication in the screenwriters' voices as they talked about the story.
Alvin Straight is portrayed brilliantly by Richard Farnsworth, who was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar this year, eventually losing to Kevin Spacey. Farnsworth was a real cowboy, then a Hollywood stuntman before taking up acting relatively late in life and Roach talked about their relationship with true reverance for Farnsworth's talent and the image of old Hollywood that he represents. In fact, both Roach and Sweeney talked about the cast and crew of the film with great respect. When asked about moments during the making of the film that moved him, he spoke of the night he and Sweeney met with Lynch. Lynch asked Sweeney if she had a good bottle of wine and he poured three glasses when she produced one. Raising his, he asked, "John and Mary, may I direct your film?" The moment clearly meant a lot to Roach, who frequently mentioned that writing a screenplay was one of his life goals.
Sweeney has edited several of David Lynch's films, but she didn't appear a whily pro to Roach's amateur. As editor and co-producer of the movie, Sweeney was involved in the shooting itself and hardly seemed like a jaded veteran when discussing the realization of her script.
One of the aims of the second Wisconsin Film Festival was certainly to expose the locals to some movies they would normally not get a chance to see, but with the screening and discussion of The Straight Story, it accomplished something a little different. Even if everyone present had seen the movie, they likely watched it from a unique perspective after hearing their neighbors talk about the experience of putting it all together. -> 4/3/00 09:02:49 PM
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Saturday, April 1, 2000
Standing in line to see Around The Fire is a little different from some of the other films I've seen at the festival. Gone are the black turtlenecks and horn-rimmed glasses. In their place are some tie-dyes and patched jeans. A few genuine Dead heads are here and they're amped. I wonder how they'll actually respond to the movie which, from what I understand, deals pretty frankly with drug abuse. It's been my experience that people who go on tour with the Dead or Phish generally avoid any discussion of the dark side of drug use, preferring to think of LSD and mushrooms as experimental tools for mind-expansion. One college-aged woman in line repeatedly uses the phase "break out and get wild" to talk about the enviable position of Dead heads and, presumably, the characters in the film.
Co-writer and producer John Comerford introduces the film, thanking everyone for coming out despite the Badgers Final Four basketball game. He talks a little about the status of the film's release, pleading with the audience to spread the word about the test-market screenings in Madison, Austin, Tex., and Burlington, Ver. next weekend. If the test markets don't produce decent crowds, Around The Fire will go straight to video. Comerford then talks about how a Madison-area high school contacted him about speaking and showing the movie in school and requested a few clips. After viewing the clips, the high school uninvited Comerford, telling him they didn't think it would be such a good idea after all. Comerford asks the audience to think about whether a movie like his is appropriate for high school kids.
Around The Fire is about Simon, a suburban rich kid who is sent away to boarding school in hopes that he will be accepted at Princeton. He lost his mother when he was young and rebels in high school by shoplifting. At boarding school, he meets Andrew, who introduces Simon to marijuana and the Dead scene. Things quickly spiral out of control for Simon. He gets busted at school for smoking dope, walks out on his family to tour with his hippie friends and begins dealing acid. Most of the film is a flashback and we're occasionally brought back into the present, where Simon is in rehab. The rehab process results in a confrontation between Simon and his father where, after getting some baggage out in the open, they embrace. Simon then returns to the travelling Deadhead village and reunites with his hippy girlfriend and they all dance like Deadheads happily ever after.
I didn't buy it.
The biggest problem I had was right at the end, when Simon returns to hang with his using friends, including a dealer, for support in staying off drugs. Doesn't make much sense, does it? But, as Comerford said before the movie started, Simon's story is really about a kid who feels isolated and alienated and reaches out to a community for a feeling of family he never found at home. But what's so great about that community if they drive him to drug abuse and irresponsible behavior? It didn't seem to matter to a lot of the flower children present, who grooved along with the soundtrack and smiled and nodded at familiar situations on tour. Even if Around The Fire isn't the most realistic look at the cycle of chemical dependency, perhaps it's one of the most accurate looks at what drives kids to drop out of society and follow a band around the country in a VW bus... in the 21st century. -> 4/1/00 10:16:52 PM
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If Circle’s Short Circuit is a little avant-gardey, it’s hard to imagine people not enjoying Grand Illusion. There wasn’t a lot of crossover, however, as just about everyone who watched Circuit left Vilas Hall.
Grand Illusion is considered one of the great classics and was the first foreign film nominated for an Academy Award. Former Isthmus and current Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Wilmington introduced the screening by explaining that the print was made from an original negative. Willmington’s passion for the film was obvious in his remarks. “I don’t know who I envy more,” he said after asking who had never seen the movie. “It’s like seeing Citizen Kane on an original print after only seeing it on second or third generation dupes.”
The film is about French military officers serving time in a POW camp. Despite varied backgrounds, they become comrades during attempts to escape and make their lives in the camp comfortable. If you’ve ever seen Stalag 17 or The Great Escape, you’ll see some familiar scenes.
Grand Illusion provided a nice contrast to Circuit on the festival’s second night. The opportunity to see these kinds of movies are few and far between, so viewing it in a room full of enthusiasts was a nice experience. -> 4/1/00 10:02:00 AM
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It was clear early last night that this year’s festival is already a success. A sign hangs in the window of the Orpheum announcing Coven, the object of the Chris Smith documentary American Movie, is sold out. Might have something to do with Mark Borchardt, the director, touring the talk show circuit last year. And it seems like everywhere I go, people are talking about Coven, or rather how to pronounce it. I overhear a couple debating before a screening begins.
“In American Movie, he kept saying co-ven, long ‘o’,” says the guy.
“But a witch’s gathering is a coven, like oven. That’s a fact,” says the woman.
“I’m boycotting that pronunciation,” says the guy. “It’s his movie and he can call it whatever he wants.”
Over at the Memorial Union, the line for Wisconsin Death Trip starts at the door of the Frederic March Play Circle, goes down the stairs, wraps around the Union Theatre lobby and then heads back up the stairs. And even Room 4070 at Vilas Hall, home to UW’s Cinematheque, is near capacity for the screening of Circle’s Short Circuit, an experimental film.
Circuit director Caspar Stracke is here for the festival and introduces his film by explaining that it has no beginning or end and would ideally run on an endless loop. The film travels a circle made up of five episodes which address interruption in communication. Somewhere near the middle, the credit sequence rolls. Of the five episodes, I was most intrigued by “Hobart,” which is filmed like a silent movie with constant static instead of organ music. It’s the story of a man, Hobart, trying to save his wife who has a lotus flower growing in her lung.
I’m not a fan of experimental cinema, so I was tempted to compare parts of the film to the those in the old Saturday Night Live ‘Sprockets’ sketches. But it’s clear that a great deal of artistry and thought went into the making of Circuit. But it’s not for everyone. -> 4/1/00 8:35:58 AM
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Friday, March 31, 2000
At 10:30 this morning, we found a busy but happy Mary Carbine in her office in Vilas Hall. Carbine, the director of the second-annual Wisconsin Film Festival, was delighted by the scene on opening night.
"I was working at the Orpheum last night and I was so excited and pleased by the response," she said. "Everyone's very excited and positive about the festival and we're working hard to make it the best experience we can."
So far, so good it seems. While Carbine didn't have actual ticket counts from Thursday night, she said every venue was close to capacity for each event and the two screenings in the Orpheum's Stage Door theater (Chump Change and American Job) were sell outs. -> 3/31/00 11:43:04 AM
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Last night's theme was work. Not that there needs to be a theme, but on opening night of the Wisconsin Film Festival, I found myself drawn to two films inspired by work. The first was The Target Shoots First, the result of Chris Wilcha shooting footage of his job as a marketing assistant at Columbia House, the mail-order CD club. Wilcha’s tenure at Columbia House coincided with a shift in the American popular music world toward “alternative” bands, spurred by the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Wilcha, who played in a punk band in college, became a translator of indie music and culture for the corporate suits at Columbia House and found himself turning into a sell-out.
A ton of conclusions can be drawn from a documentary like The Target Shoots First, but the brilliance of a project like this is that it didn’t even start out to be a project. Wilcha, as director, producer or whatever you can call him, had no agenda going in other than to use the Hi-8 video camera he had received for Christmas to document his work life. That the film would turn out to offer any sort of commentary or criticism of society seems purely incidental. Wilcha was lucky enough to be in an interesting place at an interesting time and we’re lucky he had his camera turned on.
The Memorial Union Play Circle was close to capacity for Target, and that seemed to be true of the other venues as well. Mary Carbine, the festival’s director, said crowds were at or near capacity for all of Thursday’s programs, including 700-plus attendees for the main-stage events at the Orpheum.
Next stop was the Orpheum’s Stage Door for Milwaukee director Chris Smith’s American Job. This film was made in 1995, but only started receiving attention after Smith’s American Movie became a critical success last year. Job isn’t a straight-up documentary like Movie, but uses a documentary-like narrative style in following Randy Scott, portrayed by Randy Russell, through a series of minimum-wage jobs. Randy’s deadpan approach to the world of menial labor, fast food and telemarketing is simultaneously hilarious and pathetic.
Festival goers greeted each of these movies with excitement, relishing the opportunity to see something different from a theater seat. What they saw take place on the screen, however, probably wasn’t much different from what they see at their own workplaces each day. But perhaps just watching either of these films will persuade people to more actively seek out the ridiculousness of their everyday lives. -> 3/31/00 09:26:25 AM
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Best Bets
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Seventy films. Forty filmmakers. In four days. That's a lot of material to cover, even for film fanatics with a ton of time on their hands. If you're like most of us, you're only going to have time to check out a few events. Which to choose? We asked organizers Mary Carbine and James Kreul to point us in the right direction.
Carbine's pumped about the event that kicks off the festival: Music for Film, a concert that features guitarist Tom Verlaine playing his scores for avant-garde classics like The Fall of the House of Usher and Man Ray's Emak Bakia. (March 30, Orpheum Theatre, 7 p.m.) She also mentions Genghis Blues, an Oscar-nominated documentary about a blind blues-singer who competes in a Tuvan throat-singing contest. (April 1 at 8 p.m., April 2 at 5 p.m., Orpheum Theatre.)
Kreul suggests checking out Original Schtick, a comedy-documentary about a flamboyant art dealer who flimflams his way through Melbourne's art scene. (April 1, 4070 UW Vilas Hall, 7 p.m.) He's also jazzed about Circle's Short Circuit, an avant-garde entry that features five short films tied together by the theme of communication interrupted. (March 31, 4070 UW Vilas Hall, 7 p.m.)
-Aaron R. Conklin
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