A-List: Film Festival Finds
By Josh Spiegel
September 16, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
This week’s A-List, in lieu of talking more about Emma Stone and Easy A (or, conversely, the hopes that Jon Hamm’s supporting role in this week’s new release, The Town, will help catapult him to film fame), let’s talk about five of the big film festival finds of the past 25 years. My guess is that you’ve heard of most of these films, if not all of them. Not all of them went much further than being big news from a film festival, but some are among the most well-known movies of past years. Nowadays, film festivals aren’t just for low-budget independent films, so who knows? Maybe we’ll be talking about movies like Black Swan and The King’s Speech decades from now. Hype isn’t everything, of course, as one of the films proves. Let’s get to the list.
sex, lies, and videotape
The movie that put film festivals on the map as something that could control content in Hollywood was sex, lies, and videotape. It notably premiered at the Sundance Film Festival back in 1989, and was a major shot in the arm for almost everyone involved. For Sundance, it made the festival more than just a nice hobby Robert Redford had as one of the festival’s backers. Here was a movie that would get seen by audiences worldwide because it was shown to the right people at Sundance. The film’s director and writer, Steven Soderbergh, became as big a star as the movie and the festival where it premiered. Of course, Soderbergh’s career wouldn’t be solidly upwards, but nowadays he’s still one of the most respected American filmmakers of his generation. It all started with sex, lies, and videotape.
Soderbergh has always been known as a do-it-yourself kind of filmmaker, but he managed to populate the personal, intentionally awkward, uncomfortable comedy-drama with names we know today: James Spader, Andie MacDowell, and Laura San Giacomo. No, none of them are the biggest stars in the world, but one of them won countless Emmys as a slightly less icky version of his character from the film. MacDowell was, for a time, one of the most charming It girls; San Giacomo…well, we all liked her on Just Shoot Me, right? Either way, sex, lies, and videotape is a movie known for its title, for its frank sexuality and explicit nature, for making Soderbergh something close to an indie household name, and for making Sundance more than just Redford’s name in a 1969 classic.
The Blair Witch Project
There was a time before movies like Paranormal Activity, a time before movies like The Last Exorcism. There was a time when people took movies at face value, and nothing more. When people were told, in 1999, that the movie The Blair Witch Project was a found-footage film made up of what was discovered from the remnants of three college students who disappeared, they believed it. By the time the movie hit theaters, and hit big, the game was up. Example: the weekend The Blair Witch Project opened, the three college students who disappeared were interviewed on The Today Show. Funny how that works out, huh? Yes, as we all know, The Blair Witch Project was an elaborate, purposeful hoax, but one that scared the pants off those who first saw it. And those who first saw it were at the Sundance Film Festival.
These days, The Blair Witch Project is something of a quaint curiosity, kind of like thinking about America Online being a major force in the Internet in the late-1990s. Of course, if it wasn’t for Blair Witch, would Paranormal Activity exist? If it existed, would it have been nearly as successful? Of course, The Blair Witch Project may not be as big a hit these days as it was when it came out, but like only a handful of films, it’s entered the American lexicon. It’s so well known that a single shot from the film - say, of the young woman staring the camera down and breathing heavily in fear - is an instant touchstone. And it all started at the Sundance Film Festival, gaining so much buzz instantly that it was hard to avoid in the media. I’ve never been a fan of the film, but it only became a juggernaut because of Sundance.
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is one of the most iconic, quoted films in American cinema. “You talkin’ to me?” has been a common line in our culture for 35 years. Of course, before it came out, Martin Scorsese wasn’t one of the best or well-known directors of our time. Now, he’s the king of directors (and if you want to argue with me, good luck finding any solid explanation for how he’s not the grand poobah). When Taxi Driver came out in the States, it had the rare distinction for an American film: winner of the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. A few films over the past decades have won the Palme D’Or (including previous entry sex, lies, and videotape), but Taxi Driver’s award stands out, partly because it ended up losing the biggest American prize: the Best Picture Oscar.
There are, of course, plenty of people who won’t dispute the 1976 winner (my wife included): Rocky. I like Rocky. Of all the many, many, MANY Sylvester Stallone films, it’s probably the best. But I gotta tell you, it’s not Taxi Driver. And when you consider that Taxi Driver and Rocky were joined by Network and All The President’s Men in the Best Picture category, it’s all the more jaw-dropping that the crowd-pleasing boxer mook won the big golden boy. We all know how long it took for Martin Scorsese to win a Best Director Oscar, but for Taxi Driver, all he had to console with was the Palme D’Or. I don’t often agree with the Cannes voters - they often vote for the most esoteric entries - but they were dead to rights about Taxi Driver. Too bad the Americans weren’t.
American Beauty
The people behind the Best Picture winner of 1999, American Beauty, have mostly gone on to even further success: the film’s writer, Alan Ball, is the creator of Six Feet Under and True Blood, two wildly popular HBO dramas; the film’s director, Sam Mendes, has made a career of not living up to his potential but still making visually interesting films. Among the performers, Chris Cooper went on to win an Oscar, and Annette Bening could be receiving a nomination for her role in The Kids Are All Right. Nowadays, it seems like one of the surest Oscar winners ever. The wunderkind director, the quirky and original screenplay, the high-quality performances…how could this movie not win the Best Picture Oscar? There was a time, though, when it was just another movie. What set it on the fast track was its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
A recent example of a movie that seemed tailor-made to win Oscars by starting at the fall film festivals - but failed - is Up in the Air. Unlike American Beauty, Up in the Air premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and was immediately the talk of Hollywood. Unlike American Beauty, I have a feeling the film is going to hold up well (I like American Beauty, but at all times, it is waving its hands, shouting “Look at me! Don’t I look cool?”), but the films share similar traits. Both are high-quality, high-class affairs from wunderkind filmmakers. Hell, the latter film’s director is the son of a famous comedy director, but even that didn’t help the film out. Sure, Up in the Air got Oscar nominations, but it won nothing. Even the film’s screenplay lost to Precious (and think about that one for a second). American Beauty got lucky, a cinematic trailblazer from the moment it set foot at the Toronto film festival.
Happy, Texas
You know Happy, Texas, don’t you? Of course you do. It’s one of the best feel-good comedies to ever come out of a film festival. Why, every year, we all throw a Happy, Texas viewing party, right? And when it won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, parades were thrown in the street! Oh, wait, sorry, I was in the alternate universe where all of that happened according to Harvey Weinstein’s best wishes. I’m back. You probably have not seen Happy, Texas, but if you’re enough of a film buff, you’re likely familiar with the story of the film being acquired by Miramax Films for millions of dollars after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. On the one hand, it’s hard to blame Miramax: the film stars Steve Zahn, Jeremy Northam, and William H. Macy; it’s a crowd-pleasing yet quirky comedy and Sundance crowds loved it.
So what went wrong to make the movie only gross just under $2 million domestically? It’s not a lack of critical praise; the film has a 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. There’s no easy reason to pin the film’s lack of success on. The reason why I’ve put Happy, Texas on this list is because it’s one example of a common thread in most film festivals: a movie - genre doesn’t matter - is shown at a film festival, distributors go crazy because the festival crowds ate it up, the movie is released to mass audiences and it fails. This happens a lot less these days, since Happy, Texas was such a notable failure. A movie can be good, it can be great, or it can be terrible; sometimes, audiences just don’t give a rat’s ass, even if there’s no reason for them not to. Happy, Texas (a movie I haven’t seen, being fair) could be brilliant. The unwashed masses just didn’t care.