Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Doug Pratt
Ray Pride

Newport
Film Festival
2006 Wrap-Up

The Newport Film Festival, which ran June 6-11 and just wrapped on Sunday, is one of the last safe havens of the true independent film left.

Nestled in the delightful setting of the historic seaport town and former playground of the very rich, for one week a year for the past nine years, Newport, Rhode Island has found itself host to a loyal crowd of New England film buffs and transplanted New Yorkers, determined to turn this small festival into an East Coast version of That-Other-Film-Festival-In-The Mountains-In the-West.

Newport certainly has the brains, heart, guts and location, location, location to do just that. The potential it has already shown, going from a minor festival to a major fete, is enormous. And, oh yes, to have a fun, film-filled fling away from the madding crowds of the metropolis to the North (Boston) and to the South (NYC), Newport can't be beat.

Wouldn't it be more convenient for all the journos and talent involved if Newport did become the New Sundance? There, I've mentioned its name, Sundance, and I swore I wasn't going to. But Sundance casts a long, and sometimes not very pretty shadow, over all other, smaller film festivals. At the big festivals like Toronto, it does not matter a jot who won what and where at Sundance, but everywhere else on the smaller Film Festival landscape, it does.

An independent film can be made or broken depending on its reception in Park City, if it gets any reception at all. This can lead to a marvelous cinematic afterlife for a small film like Quinceanera which won BOTH the Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance, a first I'm told. Quinceanera opened the Newport Film Festival with much-deserved hoopla, where it also went on to win the Audience award.

Or it can lead to the filmic equivalent of a slow death for a small, equally quirky, unlikely film like Live Free or Die. Live Free or Die was rejected by the Programming Poobahs of Park City, but was given a second chance at Newport, where it was received very warmly by the seaport viewers, hilarity reigning. The packed house was laughing their collective asses off at the screening I saw. I was stunned in the following Q&A with their smart, savvy young director/writer duo (Seinfeld graduates, no less), Gregg Kavet and Andy Robin, to find out that this marvelous, original, dark comedy still had no distributor! I'm naïve, I guess. I thought quality, originality and edge counted at places like Sundance. Evidently that is not always the case.

Live Free or Die is the kind of small, smart, funny gem that film-festivalers like myself always hope to find, but seldom do. It's an original, comic, but violent take on a New Hampshire (-yet!) white, gansta kid, one John Rudgate, who reinvents himself as a rural equivalent of an Urban Legend, calling himself Rugged. Rugged is played with great humor and passion by Aaron Stanford (Pyro in the X-Men films). His retarded, but pretentious Special Ed childhood friend, LaGrand is a uniquely effective comic character in a memorably hilarious performance by Paul Schneider. The mismatched comic duo careen through a series of petty and not-so-petty crimes and misdemeanors in the freezing cold of the Great White North of New Hampshire, whose state motto is the title of the film Live Free or Die. And the film's motto is "The Criminal Mind is a terrible thing to waste."

Why this neat, dark, funny film was rejected by Sundance programmers, I have no idea. But it didn't deserve to be. Festivals like Newport or SXSW, where it was first screened to an equally enthusiastic response, and where it won the jury prize for Best Narrative Feature, provide life and hope to young filmmakers like Kavet and Robin. Which is wonderful. And to a small film like this, vital.

Quinceanera, which already had the Great Big Sundance Approval Stamp, is an interesting contrast. You practically had to drag me kicking and screaming to a film about 15-year-old girls and their coming of age ceremonies, their Quinceanera of the title. Gag me! Please! I thought.

On paper, it just sounds like a barfish idea. But in execution it was utterly charming, moving and delightful. Another new directorial duo, and an out-gay couple in real life, Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, bring you totally into the other-worldly Hispanic neighborhood of Echo Park, Los Angeles. With a cast of mostly non-actors, they deliver a marvelously simple, charming story that utterly won over the hearts of a sold-out Newport Opening Night audience in the un-air-conditioned Jane Pickens Theater. The film is half in Spanish and the 14-year-old, amateur actress who plays the leading role of the Quinceanera girl, Emily Rios, ended up winning Best Actress from the Newport judges.

This film is already headed to a theater-near-you via Sony Pictures Classics, in August, and will undoubtedly blaze a very unique trail continuing to win over astonished hearts and minds around the country as it won over Newport's and mine.

Live Free or Die, good and funny as it is, still has a very hard road to hoe ahead of it, and as of this writing still does not have a distributor.

Newport was also very heavy on quality docs that will all be enjoying releases soon. Wordplay, The Road to Guantanamo and Who Killed the Electric Car? main among them.

I had a real problem with The Road to Guantanamo, which opens shortly in the major cities. It, and another purported doc, which turned out to not be a documentary at all entitled The Hole Story, play with the form of the documentary itself, tricking the viewer into thinking it really IS a traditional documentary, but turning out to be a quasi-dramatic fiction film, using and including re-created & re-enacted footage to bolster their dubious claims to credibility.

In Guantanamo, esteemed British director Michael Winterbottom and co-director Matt Whitecross, credulously follow a group of four British-born Pakistani youths who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time - in Afghanistan after 9/11. They supposedly were there to attend a wedding of one of them in Pakistan and were swept up by events and "kidnapped" by the Taliban. Or something like that. It's all very confusing, using non-actors re-enacting the tales of the remaining three survivors, who also narrate the film. So in essence there are SEVEN major characters, and who is playing whom, and what is going on is kind of a narrative mess.

It becomes much clearer when the "Tipton Three," as they came to be known for their native Birmingham, England 'hood, get shipped off to the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo, Cuba. There the film really does take off, and the depiction of prison life and its' horrendous conditions bordering on torture are brought all-too-graphically to life. This film and The Hole Story I think deserve to be dubbed by a new title "Ficumentary" because of their very overdone blend of fiction and fact. Not to be confused with "Mockumentaries" like the classic Spinal Tap which are meant to be funny and actually ARE.

The Hole Story was meant to be funny, perhaps. But it certainly wasn't. There's no focused irony, no coherent point of view. The Hole Story is a totally self-indulgent look at a totally self-indulgent Boston filmmaker, Alex Karpovsky, who is its' star/writer/director, who takes off with funding and a camera crew to find out why a hole has appeared in the otherwise ice-bound North Long Lake near Brainerd, Minnesota.

No, I'm not kidding.

That's actually what happens here. This film purports to be a doc, too, but isn't. The Hole in the Brainerd lake is real. Many of the people in Brainerd are real and "play" themselves. The story expands to be about an Eastern Urban filmmaker's collision with Midwestern, near Artic Minnesota culture. Karpovsky's insane or near insane obsession with not just the Hole, but himself, is flat out not interesting. The black hole is really Karpovsky. Is this worthy of anyone's attention, except maybe Karpovsky's therapist? Who also appears in the film. Or some one playing him. This film does not, unsurprisingly, have a distributor.

An EXCELLENT doc however, the far-from-fictional, and far more frightening, is Who Killed the Electric Car? Director Chris Paine elucidates the situation that we all know of subliminally, but maybe are afraid to face head on, that we do not REALLY need the deadly oil, or in this case, gas, to make our lives and our cars go. They can run just as easily, and more importantly, cleanly, on electricity. Paine outlines in chilling detail how the major car companies created, then reclaimed and destroyed the very vehicle that may save our planet, from everything from Global Warming to War in Iraq. That terrible secret is laid right out clearly and powerfully. The Oil Companies are running this country and our lives. And their greed for fossil fuels is destroying our environment, our health and maybe eventually the entire planet itself.

Who Killed the Electric Car? is electrifying and should be required viewing for every driver in America. Scratch that. EVERY American. Kudos to distributors Sony Pictures Classics for putting this important film out there for all the world to see. I hope out of all the films I saw at Newport that this one nabs an Oscar nomination, for Best Documentary.

Newport seemed to have a much stronger handle on quality docs than it did on its fiction films, most of which , except for the scintillating Quinceanera were weak indeed.

I got through all of the star-studded, not-funny comedy The Treatment starring the usually terrific Chris Eigeman in his first misfire in a leading man role. This falls into the Woody Allen genre flick of the New York nerd, whose failure with women is the core of the film's predictable plot. He keeps seeing his Argentinean psychiatrist, played with a Viennese accent, by Brit star Ian Holm, of all people, jumping out at him from closets and corners as he tries to woo the widowed mother-of-two Famke Janssen. Janssen gives one of her best performances here, but it's not enough to save The Treatment from tedium.

I managed to only make it through 40 minutes of the even-more-boring The Champions. The less said about this lame-o, non-engaging dud the better.

There were 100 films screened at Newport including three series of shorts and animation shorts and children's short films, too. There was also a diverting change-of-pace provided by the great SNL stars Rachel Dratch and Horatio Sans and their back-up comedy improv group, the Upright Citizens Brigade, who delivered two hilarious, live evenings of improvisational delight at Newport's Blues Cafe. Dratch, evidently a devoted Newport Film Fest supporter, goes up there every year to make this her contribution to supporting independent film. And a welcome change of pace it was. Her comedy brigade was indeed funny.

The other great charm of Newport is the town itself, which boasts many first class bed and breakfasts as well as a wide variety of hotels and restaurants. Needless to say, order seafood at any of the town's many fine eateries and you'll have a mouth-watering, fresh-from-the-sea dining experience. For more info, see the town's website, www.gonewport.com.

For gay travelers, check out the Hydrangea House, for ornate, campy splendor that matches the warm, campy hospitality for its gay hosts, Dennis and Grant, who have been together for over 20 years. They even had one room named and modeled after an episode of Sex in the City! For Sarah Jessica Parker fans, check out their "Carrie in Paris" suite. Gourmet breakfasts cooked by Grant himself are served.

Straight festival-goers may find the white clapboard Marshall Slocum Guest House Inn, with its' charming newlywed owner/hosts, Dana and Mark Spring, just the right, classic New England change-of-pace. This year marked the 150th birthday of this historic 1855 Inn. With no phones or TVs in the rooms, those seeking peace and quiet, as well as marvelous home-cooked breakfasts by Mark will not be disappointed.

Both these B&Bs are within walking distance of the Festival and its' theaters.

Newport, like Reyjavik, which it strangely reminded me of, goes wild and gets jam-packed on the weekends. It's essentially two different towns, the wild weekend one, and the much quieter weekday one. So take your pick. Reservations are a necessity and are easier to get during the week.

Lastly, the variegated Newport Film Festival hosted a series of Panel Discussions with industry insiders. The one that I attended called "Get It Made the Legal Way" was hosted by Nicole Page and featured Lauren Valentine from Talent Solutions and two entertainment lawyers from Reavis Parent Lehrer LLP, Nicole S. Page and Neil P. Parent. All were extremely forthcoming and helpful in their spellbinding presentations of the pitfalls awaiting indie filmmakers and documentarians who do not have all of their materials first cleared with one or the other of these organizations for possible copyright infringements, which seem to be lurking around every corner.

The official Newport website is www.newportfilmfestival.com. I can't wait til next year, when we'll find out whether this festival takes its next step towards topping the mountain.

- Stephen Holt
June 21, 2006

Stephen Holt is a veteran NY-based journalist. The Stephen Holt Show continues to run weekly in NY.

 

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