Festival filmmakers dance to attract partners
By Joe Williams
POST-DISPATCH FILM CRITIC
Friday, Feb. 03 2006
PARK CITY, UTAH
“Make Your Own Damn Movie!” advises the title of a book by Lloyd Kaufman, president of Troma Entertainment. The ultralow-budget film studio is probably best known for “The Toxic Avenger.” Kaufman was one of the many do-it-yourselfers at Park City last month.
While the Sundance Film Festival was attracting most of the headlines and hangers-on, humbler filmmakers were attending ancillary festivals, such as the feisty Slamdance, the outdoorsy X-Dance and Kaufman’s kitschy Tromadance. But from the trust-fund Fellinis to the trash-can Cassavetes, all of the filmmakers had a similar goal: to get their hand-made creations seen by an audience.
When the Oscar nominations were announced Tuesday, they underscored the divide between studio Hollywood and the independent film community. Only one of the best-picture nominees, Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” could be considered a studio film. The rest were made independently and then acquired by distributors.
In retrospect, sleeper hits such as “Crash” and “BrokebackMountain” seem like shrewd acquisitions. But first those films had to preen for potential suitors on the festival circuit.
If this season’s Sundance movies include a Cinderella, it’s probably “Little Miss Sunshine.” By the time this road-trip comedy premiered at Sundance, potential distributors were already lined up, perhaps because it stars Steve Carell, hot off “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” and a Golden Globe for TV’s “The Office.”
Focus Features, a division of Universal, spent $10 million for the rights to “Little Miss Sunshine,” so you can bet it will be coming to St. Louis. Ditto these other films acquired by the studios: “The Night Listener,” with Robin William as a radio talk-show host; Michel Gondry’s “The Science of Sleep,” with Gael Garcia Bernal as a man whose dreams overtake his waking life; “Wordplay,” a documentary about crossword puzzles that could be this year’s “Spellbound”; and “Neil Young: Heart of Gold,” a concert documentary by Jonathan Demme.
Dozens of others seemed headed for at least a brief run through the commercial pipeline, based on their star power.
Yet just as worthwhile were the movies made in a vacuum, such as the working-class drama “SteelCity,” by Alton’s Brian Jun. As of press time, there was no word on whether the film had been acquired by a distributor.
The big winners in Sundance’s juried and audience competitions completely blindsided the pundits. “Quinceanera” is a Mexican-American coming-of-age story, and “God Grew Tired of Us” is a documentary about Sudanese refugees.
Yet, arguably, the real epicenter of creativity is not Sundance, but Slamdance. Up hilly Main Street from the Sundance soirees, past a rent-a-hall showing a rock-mom movie called “Siren” and a station wagon screening a damsel-in-distress melodrama with toy piano and xylophone accompaniment, the Treasure Mountain Inn played host to some ragtag renegades.
While feature films such as the Bigfoot comedy “The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang” and the documentary “Abduction” had some faint hope of repeating the success of Slamdance alum “Mad Hot Ballroom,” most of the films were simply labors of love. And none more so than “Phone Sex Grandma,” a short film by Jack Truman of Milford, Mo., north of Joplin.
In documentary style, it shows a sixtysomething woman doing housework in a tumble-down shack while she spews the filthiest fantasies imaginable through a headset microphone. In its way, it’s as funny as “The Aristocrats.”
After the screening, star and screenwriter Opal Dockery revealed that she has never worked in the phone industry but learned such salty language while toiling 20 years as a stripper. And she did it while raising a son, who just happens to be the filmmaker, Jack Truman. They are now trying to develop a feature film based on their life together, called “Son of a Stripper.”
Now that’s a movie that demands to be seen.
