CineVegas: A memo to Trevor

From: Anthony Allison

To: Trevor Groth, Director of Programming, CineVegas

Re: DenniVegas 2004

Thanks for bringing the DenniVegas film festival to the Palms last week, and congratulations on staging your third son-of-Sundance event in Vegas. It was a stimulating week of moviegoing and a pleasure to watch the affable Mr. Hopper hobnobbing with his old pals Dean Stockwell, Bruce Conner, Julian Schnabel, David Lynch, Sean Penn, Holly Hunter and, all too briefly, his Easy Rider co-star Jack Nicholson.

It was a shrewd move by CineVegas' organizers to give Dennis last year's Marquee Award, then invite him to chair the "Creative Advisory Board" for this year's sixth CineVegas, thus ensuring that he'd turn up to bask in the limelight. "This isn't about me," Hopper insisted in a Q&A session following a screening of Sean Penn's The Indian Runner. But au contraire, it was everything about him.

"I only came here because Dennis asked me," said Before Night Falls director Schnabel, during another Q&A session. To which Hopper added, "And I only came because Danny and Robin [Greenspun] asked me," referring, respectively, to the event's principal backer and president.

Thank you, too, for your energy and enthusiasm. Your evident love of movies and the certifiably mad folks who make them is infectious and inspiring. It's a pleasure having such a sincere, committed cinephile running an event like this. You are a gracious host, unfailingly courteous, considerate and welcoming.

Too bad the same cannot be said of your boss, at least where the local press is concerned. Danny Greenspun denied press credentials to local reporters (such as this reviewer) whose coverage of past festivals had apparently offended him. He failed to return calls requesting comment until after the event: "It was sensational," he enthused. "Clearly the best we've ever had."

As you probably know, our requests to interview your good self beforehand, for a preview piece, were turned down by your office. But during the event, you were diplomacy personified and kind enough to observe that this paper's coverage of last year's event was more complimentary than critical.

In the spirit of such constructive criticism, here are a few random reflections on this year's festival and, just because it's a free country, a few humble suggestions.

Say au revoir to Dennis

Too bad about the misprint on the program and brochures, which featured a shadowy figure wearing a T-shirt emblazoned, "How much art can you take?" That should, of course, have read, "How much Hopper can you take?"

But seriously, after we'd repeatedly watched the festival trailers (in which Hopper played a card sharp and spoofed his famous comeback role, Blue Velvet's Frank Booth), enjoyed his genial presence at numerous Q&A sessions, seen him play a barman in The Indian Runner and an abusive Frank Sinatra in the new Australian crowdpleaser All the Way and, finally, a laudatory Dutch documentary profiling his remarkable career, it's not churlish to say: enough already. Can we please invite a different Hollywood superstar to be celebrity-in-residence next year?

Ensure Elvis has left the building

Please take a leaf from the New York Times' book and politely dispense with the services of critic Elvis Mitchell too. As a Q&A moderator he certainly asks sensible questions. But he tends to monopolize things, often neglecting to open up the discussion for questions from the audience which, otherwise, is often the highlight of the festival experience.

Make sure CineVegas leaves the building

The Palms is a hip, happening hotspot. But as a festival venue, the Brenden Theatres leave much to be desired. There are the niggly things: theater 10 is too hot, the others too cold, especially in the rear seats; the rubber treads on the leading edge of the stairs in each auditorium make a loud clacking sound--so festivalgoers sneaking out of bad films or dull Q&A sessions sound like castanet-wielding flamenco dancers; and embarrassing technical snafus ensued when Bruce Conner insisted that his groundbreaking underground movies must be screened on a ropey 16mm projector (which broke down and picked up irritating buzzing noises when plugged into the Brenden's sound system).

More to the point, the largest Brenden theater only seats 340, meaning that eagerly anticipated events like Jack Nicholson's appearance at a screening of his 1971 directorial debut Drive, He Said were way over-subscribed. How much better it would be, as the festival grows, to move down the street to the Orleans, which has 550-seat auditoria. (As it happened, like last year's closing night appearance by Hunter S. Thompson, Nicholson's visit was a huge anticlimax. He accepted the festival's Marquee Award, told the audience he was proud of his film, then fled before his painfully bad college kids/draft dodging drama--notable only for Bruce Dern's energetic turn as a basketball coach--began. Talk about a sublime-to-ridiculous comparison: Earlier in the day, a select group of 40 viewers enjoyed the rare pleasure of seeing Bob Rafelson's 1970 masterpiece Five Easy Pieces, with Nicholson's classic "chicken salad sandwich" scene and his heartrending climactic monologue, back on the big screen in the very same theater.)

Remember the locals

"It's hard to avoid the impression that they don't really want us here," said one award-winning local filmmaker. And a glance at the schedule confirmed his suspicion. Whereas most new films in the festival program proper received two screenings, the Nevada ones only had a single screening, usually at inconvenient times: Steve Olpin and Tim Irwin's brief but nicely shot profile of a local BMX legend, A Film About TJ Lavin, and CineVegas co-founder Amie Williams' documentary Fallon, NV: Deadly Oasis played weekday lunchtimes. (Even though it has already aired on TV, Williams' heartrending investigation of the mysterious leukemia cluster in the town 60 miles east of Reno deserved greater prominence.) Similarly, programs of short films by CCSN and UNLV students and other Nevada filmmakers were all late-night weekday affairs that inevitably started late when earlier keynote events ran long.

Consider the vision thing

Sean Penn made a profound point, in the Q&A session following the Indian Runner screening. Asked by Elvis Mitchell about the fact that Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams, in which Penn gave a stunning performance, had divided audiences, Sean said, "People are not just divided by intellect but by their stage in life...It's not our job to please everybody: [the film] might please them 20 years later when they see it again."

Point taken, but it seems highly unlikely that serious film fans, two decades hence, will be reconsidering your opening night selection D.E.B.S., an eminently forgettable Charlie's Angels-style crimefighting parody. "They should've left it as a short," sneered one Sundance regular, who'd seen the original 11-minute film that writer-director Angela Robinson expanded into this silly, formulaic comedy that was only marginally less disappointing than last year's opening night offering, Octane. Much the same criticism applies to the closing night schmaltzfest, The Notebook (see review).

Still, as you pointed out, the beauty of film festivals is that there's usually something for everybody. So maybe it's churlish to dwell on your choice of opening and closing night films. But these keynote events do send a message about the artistic intent, priorities and overall vision of the festival.

Four years ago, CineVegas opened with a great film-fest double bill: F.W. Murnau's 1922 vampire pic Nosferatu, with live accompaniment by the Las Vegas Philharmonic, followed by E. Elias Merhige's fanciful homage to its making, Shadow of the Vampire.

This year, Luck (see sidebar) might have been a more suitable choice: like Stuey last year, Peter Wellington's sports betting dramedy could've been a real hit in Vegas.

As for The Hillside Strangler, the inclusion of this ghastly exploitation flick, in which Brittany Daniel is totally out-acted by her breasts, defies belief. No wonder that director Chris Fisher sheepishly explained that he wouldn't be staying for a Q&A session afterward. He was probably too ashamed to face audience members who were literally nauseated, not by his film's graphic violence, but by the endlessly swirling, dizzyingly circling camera.

Yeah, dear Trevor, we love your eclectic taste--just not that much.