Thoughts on Film Festivals
by your loving writer, Erika Livingstone
The local film festival is starting up this week, and the VP and I are endeavoring to spend much of our time taking in as many films as possible. I’ve just finished reading over the entire program (it took me 2 days) and, using pie charts, graphs, Pythagoras, quadratic equations, and a magic 8 ball, finalized a basic list of what sounds most interesting at each showing. My thoroughness should astound brain surgeons like a hot damn. However, I can’t help but feel for the programmers responsible for any film festival. Thousands of hopefuls, both seasoned and wannabe alike try their best to wow the best festivals, who in turn try to make cohesive and responsible selections for the audiences and film communities at large. It’s a lot of pressure on the one hand, and on the other hand, it’s tedious as hell. I honestly can’t imagine how many 16 year old high school students write a poem for their crush, throw in some pictures of flowers and sunsets, and what the hey send it into Cannes to see if it wins them true love (read: being waaay too serious). In reverence for those lucky souls making selections at this year’s festival, I would like to share with you a list published by Sundance programmer Roberta Marie Munroe. While I think the list needs to be taken with a grain of salt, it is mightily amusing to imagine what some idiot was thinking when they thought these were great ideas.
TOP SHORT FILMMAKER CLICHES
By Roberta Marie Munroe, excerpted from How Not to Make a Short Film
- Is there a Japanese tea ceremony opening scene?
- Do any of your characters point a gun to their own heads while breathing heavily?
- Is there a woman in your film getting romantic with herself while listening to poetry/spoken word?
- Is the female lead avenging a rape?
- Is there a ninja in your film?
- Is your male rapist living through painful remorse that resembles hell on earth metaphorically or via CG?
- Is Deborah Harry in your movie? Alison Janney?
- Does your protagonist drive down a foggy road, all of a sudden seeing a child in a white nightgown who mysteriously disappears in a reverse shot?
- Is your WWII story set in the hills of Griffith Park? Prospect Park? Palm Springs desert? Appalachian mountains?
- Does your black male lead really really really want to be a rapper/basketball player?
- Is Jesus Christ in your film? Is he black? Is your film based on a short story by someone far more talented than you are? Joyce Carol Oates? Raymond Carver? John-Paul Sartre? Kafka?
- Does your rock star lead overcome his drug addiction just in time to perform for the record label executives?
- Does your film start with solitary piano? Acoustic guitar? The theme from The Mission? Requiem for a Dream? Shaft?
- Does your DVD menu have more choices than a feature? Does it have tone and colour bars? Do I have to scroll through 15 steps before I can even watch your movie?
- Is the title of your film Twilight? The Good Neighbour? Forgiven?
- Does someone vomit in your film? Does it look like milk and Oreo cookies?
- Is there a convenience store robbery that goes awry? Are the owners a Korean couple stumbling through broken English?
- Is the reason the robbery goes awry due to an English-as-a-second-language issue?
- Are the robbers black or Latino men who are actually law abiding citizens who are in the wrong place at the wrong time?
- Is your film called One Night Stand?
- Are two people sitting in a car talking about nothing? Do we find out they’re about to commit a crime? That they’re actually really dead?
- Is your film about a war (Vietnam, Iraq, Desert Storm, WWI, WWII)? Is there a scene where the general is reading/writing at an old desk, looks up as an underling enters with important news? Is the light cascading through an open window where we can hear bombs going off?
- Has your lead’s wife/girlfriend/child died and now he’s gone insane?
- Are two men in an argument (Black, Caucasian, Asian, whatever) where one calls the other bitch? Bro? My Niggah?
- Does your script/film use the game of chess as a metaphor?
- Is your company called Starving Artist Productions?
- When a character gets into bed, does the other person in bed open their eyes? Does the awake character then pretend to remain asleep?
- Do you have a character in a bathtub just under the water?
- If indeed your character emerges from a bathtub full of milky-white water, are they also gasping for breath? Shocked they didn’t drown? Do they knock over a lit white candle? Is there a cat meowing (out of sync) as it’s deciding whether or not to join its owner? Are they startled out of their wishful drowning because a phone rings?
- Is your film about a Polaroid that tells the future? An elderly Black female psychic?
- Does a subway train fly past your main character as he ponders life?
- Is your main character the black sheep of the family returning home because someone died, had a miscarriage, or has developed Alzheimer’s? Does he also NOT know how to cook (bake, help dad in the garage, dress nicely like your sister?) Or does he instead spend most of the time on his cell phone due to his high profile job, much to his mother’s chagrin?
- When having sex, are your characters actually in a position where intercourse is physically impossible?
- Is your animated film an homage to Edgar Allen Poe?
- Is there a tall Black man with a bad Jamaican accent telling your white lead to go find Jah? Go back to his girlfriend? “Slow down, man”?
- Does your submission box tell us this is Temp Sound, Temp Music, Rough Cut, Not Necessarily Picture Locked, Missing Crucial Animated Scenes, and Temp FX?
- When your character is on the phone do they pick it up and listen without saying hello or hang up without hearing or saying goodbye? Do they say they’ll be somewhere without disclosing the location or time to meet?
- Is your terrified character (male or female) running through the woods as the camera tracks their feet crunching the debris underneath him or her? Does he or she trip over nothing and fall, crying out in pain, as the music picks up the pace, telling us to get scared?
- Are your main characters late for a wedding? Funeral? Does this cause them to fight and the woman to go back to smoking?
- Is the child in the film really the main character at another age, or at the Gates of Heaven?
- Is there a modern dance sequence in your film?
- Are any of the characters in your film a mime?
- A zombie? A robot?
- Is the character in a wheelchair in your film actually wheelchair-bound?
- Is your protagonist coming out of the closet? Do they get beaten up, thrown out of the house, alienated from their best friend?
- Does your film have lesbian or gay subtext that never materializes?
- Does anybody commit suicide in your film?
- If you had a quarter for every time one of your characters said “What should we do?” would you have enough money to make your next short?
- Is your short film an homage to the silent film era? Complete with Charlie Chaplin look alike?
- Is anybody in your film being chased due to mistaken identity?
- Did your sound guy put clinking ice in your dinner scene when it’s obvious to the audience that there isn’t ice in any of the glasses?
- Assuming this isn’t a porn short, are any of the women in your film not wearing a bra? In broad daylight?
- Is there a crane shot in your film?
- Does your film feature “the silent homeless guy”?
- Are there white guys in their twenties sitting around a table doing lines of cocaine?
- Does a gun appear out of nowhere, especially when it’s obviously fake?
- Did your DP use the old dolly/zoom combo? It worked in Vertigo, leave it alone.
- Does a couple break up over a conversation in a café?
- Does your film feature a time-lapse montage?
- Does your main character stare into the bathroom mirror?
- Is there a close-up of water dripping from a faucet?
- Is there a close-up of a clock ticking?
- Is your opening credit sequence almost as long as the film?
- Does your film repeat itself – do I get to see the beginning scene at the end… as if I might have memory issues?
- Has the actor you have smoking in your film ever smoked a cigarette in his or her life?
- Are there four guys driving to Vegas and one of them accidentally dies?
All that taken into account, I eagerly await the opening gala of the CIFF. Thanks programmers, for shielding us from the zombie-ninja-robots attempting to drown themselves in Oreo vomit, while looking for “Jah”. We thank you.
