VIP passes offer top seats for comedy shorts
My family loves movies. One wall in our living room is devoted
to DVDs and videos. They pile up on the coffee table. We watch
movies on TV, online and on portable DVD players. Friends and
family use our place as the local neighborhood video store instead
of Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. So, yes, my family looks forward
to taking a few trips to the Cinequest Film Festival when it rolls
around each year. There is something about seeing films in a
theater that can’t be beat.
VIP passes offer top seats for comedy shorts
My family loves movies. One wall in our living room is devoted to DVDs and videos. They pile up on the coffee table. We watch movies on TV, online and on portable DVD players. Friends and family use our place as the local neighborhood video store instead of Blockbuster or Hollywood Video.
So, yes, my family looks forward to taking a few trips to the Cinequest Film Festival when it rolls around each year. There is something about seeing films in a theater that can’t be beat.
My sister, mother and I headed to San Jose March 2 to be part of the opening night festivities. The opening night screening featured “Thank You For Smoking” at the California Theatre in downtown San Jose. Aaron Eckhart, Katie Holmes and William H. Macy star in the film. Directed by Jason Reitman, the film opens for wide-release March 17.
For most people who go to local movie theaters or chains with stadium seating, the California Theatre itself is a treat. It isn’t the kind of venue where feet are propped up on the seats and popcorn is spilled on the floor. The recently renovated theater served as a cinema during the heyday of films when organ players entertained the crowd and played the score of silent films. It is also the home of Opera San Jose and the Silicon Valley Symphony.
Clark Wilson, an acclaimed organ player, distracted film fans from the long wait for the screening to start. As is often the case, the event started late.
While the film festival touted technological advances which make it possible to watch Cinequest films on Palm Treos, Apple Ipods and video cell phones, the technology wasn’t welcome in the theater. Security guards and ushers urged film fans to turn off their cell phones as soon as they entered the theater. One security guard distracted film viewers more than the actual cell phone rings when she swooped down on rows, trying to locate offenders.
But in between being chastised by security guards and mistaking every pregnant woman with long, brown hair for Katie Holmes, I enjoyed a few good movies.
As a former film student, one of the highlights of the film festival is attending a shorts program. Shorts have fewer venues than feature length films, according to filmmakers Jon Frechette and Adam Bertocci, whose films are featured at Cinequest Online as part of a viewers’ voice competition. And without the huge financial price tag that comes with longer films, they can experiment in ways that fewer feature filmmakers can.
Cinequest breaks the more than 50 short films into seven shorts programs. The categories range from straightforward ones such as “International Affairs” for foreign shorts to “Mindbenders” which are films with odd twists at the end.
“I can see the advantage of shorts because there will be some films you absolutely love and will also be some you really don’t like,” said Grant Richards, a film professor at Gavilan College, in an interview about the festival before it opened. “If you choose one you don’t like and it’s an hour and a half long, that’s a lot more to sit through.”
Each screening at Cinequest has two lines – one for pass holders and one for ticket holders. Pass holders pay $125 to $500 for preferential treatment, including entry to all festival screenings. That means those who buy tickets for individual screenings at $9 a pop are the last to enter the theater. Rumor had it that some ticket holders missed out on a March 3 screening when more pass holders showed up than expected, or so my mother overheard while waiting in line with the other ticket holders while I sat inside the theater with the other elite pass holders.
This year, we chose a Saturday afternoon shorts program, “Hit the Ground Laughing,” hoping for some good comedic turns. In a mix of ten films, ranging from 10-20 minutes long, there were a few whose endings couldn’t come soon enough. But overall, the comedies garnered quite a few laughs.
One of the favorites of the afternoon, “The Awesome Robots vs. Transformo,” directed by Aaron Peterson, had my videogame/comic book crazy sister practically rolling in the aisles. The film is about a trio of comic book writers who look for inspiration by dressing up as their characters at a taco shack.
Other hits included “Kind of a Blur” directed by Jon Goldman and “Zombie-American” directed by Nick Poppy. “Blur” stars Sandra Oh, of “Grey’s Anatomy” fame, and John Wright as a couple who have been out all night with blurred memories of the evening before. Wright recalls writing something important on a cow, only to realize he wrote on Oh’s stomach, proposing marriage. He attempts to wipe away the evidence before she discovers it.
“Zombie-American” starred Ed Helms, from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” as a zombie searching for acceptance and a date.
The simplicity of comedy is that it doesn’t always take a lot of money to be funny, if the gags are played right. As is common at Cinequest, many of the filmmakers shared the tribulations of making short films in a question-and-answer session after the program.
The film”K-7″ started with a budget of only $10,000 according to producer Laura Harkcom. But the short about a software engineer, who unwittingly joins the CIA, required more than $24,000 to complete.
“It was the first film director [Christopher Leone] and I made,” Harkcom said. “It was a matter of poor planning. We didn’t realize how much film we needed and on the first day of filming we realized we needed 5 or 6 times what we budgeted for.”
Many of the filmmakers said they try to get people to work on the film for free, but it doesn’t always work out.
“Things happen, like they get a paying job that they’ve got to do,” Kheel said.
Kheel’s film “The Method” came in at $8,000 after the crew encountered unexpected permit costs to shoot on the streets in Los Angeles. The film is about a young Hollywood hopeful whose agent signs him up with a wacky acting coach the night before a big audition.
Each screening I saw included at least one technical snafu, something that comes along with trying new technology. During the opening screening a promo reel about Cinequest played with no sound right after Executive Director and Co-Founder Halfdan Hussey talked about the great technical advances this year. At the comedies program, “Nevel is the Devil,” a short about a crazy boss, started off with fuzz playing over the theater speakers rather than the movie’s soundtrack. Several attempts to get the sound working failed, so the projectionists skipped the movie and came back to it later in the program. The volunteers also seemed unable to coordinate the houselights with the programs, leaving the lights down after the last film and requiring the filmmakers to find the stage in the dark for the question and answer session.
But with more than 400 volunteers working at the festival each year, some glitches are expected. And it’s still a great opportunity to see a few good films.
