I haven’t found much time to blog while here in Park City. I’m already way behind on my reviews already. But I thought I’d drop by and share a few interesting things that have happened:
I ran into Quentin Tarantino outside of Hell Ride at the Egyptian Theater in downtown Park City. I approached Tarantino, telling him how much I loved Grindhouse, and asked politely, “Is there any chance I could get a photo with you.” Tarantino obnoxiously replied “No! You certainly can not” with a giant smile. I can understand that Quentin doesn’t want to be bothered, especially with other film fanatics around who might jump on the Photo train, but why be a dick about it? I’ve always stuck up for Tarantino when people have told me about his attitude, but as one of the guys standing near me said “what an ass!”
I met Olivia Thirlby at The Wackness premiere. She’s cute but a lot shorter than I expected, which might explain why she only looks slightly taller than Ellen Page in Juno. She was extremely nice, and very down to earth. We also ran into her again at a restaurant downtown.
Alex From FirstShowing and myself ran into Jason Reitman at the Eccles this weekend, and he told us that American Teen was his favorite movie of the festival. I tried to catch a press screening of this documentary on Sunday but it filled up fast. Seems like the buzz is high was this one. There is a press screening later this week, so I hope to catch it then.
A couple days ago I thought I saw Rob from Cloverfield walking around HQ. When I did my double take, he was gone. I wrote it off as a hallucination caused by my lack of sleep until Alex told me later that night that he also thought he saw Rob walking around. He too thought it was his imagination playing tricks on him. And last night we ran into Rob walking down Main Street to see Hell Ride. He was extremely happy to take photos, and seems to be enjoying his new fame. I wonder how he’ll be reacting when people are still calling him Rob two years from now. It’s kinda like Stiffler or the McLovin guy. I mean, Screech was never able to overcome it. At least Rob is a normal name, and not a goofy nickname.
Everyone who is anyone in movie journalism was in a press screening of Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? earlier today when I started to notice a few cellphones go off around the room late into the second act of the film. Alex shows me his cellphone which has a txt message which reads “Heath Ledger found Dead?” It’s hard to concentrate on a man pretending to try to find Osama Bin Laden at a time like this, yet I tried. Word spread amongst the journalists in the screening, and updates were passed along as the film came to a climax. So very strange. So sad. I feel like everyone here at Sundance is talking about this and nothing else.
I get out of the movie theater and everyone is on cell phones trying to contacting sources to find out what really happened. I hop on a shuttle bus to head to the Hollywood Life Lounge in downtown Park City to interview one of my heroes Chuck Palhnuik, who in turn asks me if I know anything. So very strange.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:52 am
It seems to me that you might have come off as a little insensitive to the death of Ledger and it’s morbid popularity at the festival. Deaths of high profile people usually trump anything else happening. It’s not so strange to me.
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:11 am
Jed, it was not my intention to be insensative. I can tell you this. If I had been in Boston or San Fran at the time of something like this happening, most people (with exception of my film geek friends) would not be as obsessed with it, not to say it wouldn’t be somethin g they mention in conversation that day, we do live in a celebrity obsessed culture. It just wouldn’t be the topic of conversation for everyone for the remainder of that day.. At Sundance its totally surreal because everyone here is in the industry and 99% of the people you talk to or run into or pass by are talking about it. Maybe you just had to be here, but I think three other blogs have posted about this as well (screenrant, fsr, cine)
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:43 am
I understand exactly where you’re coming from now. I believe why it’s disturbing people so is because we all now see the face of a tormented HEATH in the pictures of the Joker, and not so much the character he’s portraying. It’s really an eerie feeling wondering whether or not I’ll be able to handle him as the suicidal, unbalanced Joker in TDK, or if I’ll even be able to watch it knowing that there was more than a portrayed character behind the paint he wore. Emptiness is a killer.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:05 am
Oh, give Tarantino a break and tone it down. I thought his response to you was playful and funny. He wasn’t malicious or being a huge dick. And you have to realize that he doesn’t necessarily see you as the lone white knight who has been defending him online, but just some guy asking him to pose for a picture. I can understand that you’re disappointed because you would have liked to have a picture of him with you and it would have been cool to post on your site or show your friends, but creative people and artists shouldn’t have to act like politicians and placate anonymous crowds, campaigning for people, and saying how high when they’re asked to jump. And I viewed his response as friendly, but maybe asking you to take a step back.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:11 am
“It seems to me that you might have come off as a little insensitive to the death of Ledger and it’s morbid popularity at the festival. Deaths of high profile people usually trump anything else happening. It’s not so strange to me.”
He is not, why would you say so? it’s “popular” because is shocking and terrible, you want it to be like:
-Hey man, Heath Ledger is dead!
-Really?? oh we better not even mentioned, we have to be sensitive
???
Also, Tarantino what an ass
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:36 am
Fuck Quentin. He IS a dick. He’s a hack who got lucky and that’s it.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:06 am
@Robert,
Maybe Tarantino isn’t the friendliest guy to strangers, but how is he a hack? And how did he get lucky?
Everyone needs a certain amount of luck to breakthrough at first, but since being lucky in terms of attracting Harvey Keitel to Reservoir Dogs, and therefore getting a solid cast and funding to a terrific script, how has he been? Everything he’s gotten, he’s more than deserved. He didn’t have tons and tons of opportunities and connections. He forged his own way through applying his passions and interests.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:55 am
Roger Avery wrote the best bits. And did most of the leg work. His stroke of luck was working with him. His stuff has gone downhill ever since. Now all he’s able to do is steal scenes form other movies and recreate the with a bigger budget. His entire schtick is this, look at how cool I am for what I like. If he could stop getting stoned and running his mouth long enough to actually do something, he could be a decent director. Death Proof was terrible. His worst so far. I enjoyed Kill Bill because of the excellent performances, but he stole alot, ALOT for that movie. All directors do this from time to time, but he hardly bothers to put anything original in between. I though he was cool when I was in my twenties and was stoned all the time too, but now I can see how vacuous he really is. All borrowed style, zero substance. A one-trick pony with a big mouth.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:29 am
@ Kode
If you try really hard to see my initial point, you’ll realize that I was referring to the sentence “I feel like everyone here at Sundance is talking about this and nothing else.” It seemed out of place for me (someone that has never been to Sundance) because it seemed like Peter was sour about people paying attention to his death and not the movies. However, Peter kindly brought up a very poignant point about it being talked about in an area he didn’t think to be obsessed with it.
I realized his point AFTER he allowed me more insight to it, thus my REPLY just below his post. As far as me using the word “popularity”, well, it’s true. Don’t try to convince yourself that the death’s of high profile people doesn’t just strike a cord in your interest for that person. Some people call that “paying respect” when what they really mean is “I’m seeing what I had been missing.”
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Full Disclosure: My first two points are speculation on my part. But I stand by the rest. And I can’t abide a lazy person. He could have made at least 10 movies by now.
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I ran across Tarantino at the ‘03 Comic-Con, and these two kids approached him and asked for a picture; he totally blew them off, almost exactly like Peter described. Until then I thought he was just this manic, intense guy, but after that incident I realized his “intensity” was just him being a dick :P
January 26th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Tarantino came to Iceland and had a special movie showing of three old chinese martial arts movies, open to public, well the ones who bought a ticket.
One of them was with a very young Jackie Chan. Don’t remember the names of them, though.
He talked about his influences with the movies, and also told us that this was from his personal collection of films.
In between films was a short intermission and him and Eli Roth, who brought Tarantino to Iceland in the first place, allowed everybody to talk to them. And they didn’t patronize anyone. They were very nice and humble to everyone.
I think that Tarantino just doesn’t want his picture taken by everybody everywhere. Probably a personal code or a rule he lives by, or maybe his agent or lawyer told him to do it. If I were him I certainly wouldn’t let anybody take a picture of me.
If you just talk to the guy, and treat him like a normal person, not a “gimme a picture” celebrity, he really is great. I really liked him.
Ps. I know Tarantino stole in Kill Bill, but the man is just trying to entertain us with themes from movies not many have access to anymore.
January 27th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Out of curiousity, does anyone know if Tarantino just acts like this to men who come up to him or to women also? I can picture a guy like Tarantino being annoyed by males coming up to him but totally basking in it when the ladies do. So yeah does anyone have or know of stories like this from a chicks point of view??
thanks in advance!