TCMFF 2018 – Day 2

Friday at the TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMFF) started with breakfast at Subway and a change of plans. Of course, I'd pretty much decided to change my plans ahead of time. The original plan called for Grand Prix at the Cinerama Dome, but that would have been involved taking up two film slots for one movie, and I just wasn't willing to do that, especially since the second slot was Witness for the Prosecution.

Getting ready for Pink Panther cartoons.

This meant not seeing Eva Marie Saint speak after the end of Grand Prix, but I did have a chance see her later that day. Unfortunately, that didn't work out either. More on that later.

I started the day with my daughter Jasmine at the Pink Panther Cartoons on the Big Screen. We sat with Michelle and Tom, a woman from Colorado and her adult son who lives out in Southern California and works at a Disney Museum, I think. The presentation by animation historian, Jerry Beck, included the title sequence for The Pink Panther (1963) and numerous shorts from The Pink Panther cartoon series. Also in attendance, where Larry Mirisch, son of producer Walter Mirisch, and the daughters of animation director, Friz Freleng, and one of the animators from the series whose name I don't remember. The animator said that one of the things he was responsible for was the lettering for the credits on the cartoons. Originally, they had a production house do the lettering but any time there was a typo, that caused production delays. By doing the lettering by hand, he could fix minor problems in just a few minutes. He also did a great drawing of the Pink Panther while we watched. Unfortunately, from where we were, you couldn't see it real well. Also there were technical difficulties with the lights.

Next up was a trip down Hollywood Boulevard to the Egyptian for Witness for the Prosecution. I knew that Jasmine had a very short window of only 15 minutes before her next screening, so we ended up sitting in the balcony on the end of a row so that we could get out quickly.

Ruta Lee backstage before Witness for the
Prosecution (photo courtesy of TCM).

On hand for the screening was Ruta Lee. She played a small part in the film and had some great stories about Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester and Marlene Dietrich. She told a great story about Marlene Dietrich, and how she was very particular about how she was lit on screen. She wanted one light down low and another higher from the one side. She even knew what size and type of lights she needed. The guy in charge of lighting said they didn't have that type of light. Marlene Dietrich told him to wait, and she pulled out a trunk with all kinds of different lights. She had brought her own lights and knew exactly what she needed and just how they should be set up.

Ruta Lee also said how helpful both Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton had been. As a young actress, she knew how to play British accents in fairly broad terms. She could do Cockney or British upper class but the standard British Midlands accent she had no idea about. Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester coached her in a more standard accent that worked better in the part. She also said that everybody had warned her on set about Charles Laughton, how he was a big mean fag (not her term, but what other people had said), and he hated everybody. She found exactly the opposite was the case. He took her under his wing and was very put out if she didn't pay enough attention to him and didn't talk to him first thing when she got on the set.

There was one annoyance. A woman came in and sat next to us and spent the entire time during the interview with the flashlight lit on her phone, taking notes on a little pad. I honestly don't even think she was taking notes on what Ruta Lee was saying but something else she was working on. Then at the end of the interview she got up and left before the film started. Jasmine and I were thinking how rude that was.

A woman in front of us in line had
the coolest Van Gogh Godzilla bag.

The film itself was great. Jasmine had never seen it,  and I've seen it several times. If you haven't seen it, I won't give anything away, only say that it has one of the best twist endings ever. Then after the twist ending, something unexpected happens. I knew the film well enough to know exactly when these things were going to happen, so I knew when to look at Jasmine's face. Her expression in these spots was totally worth the cost of her TCMFF pass.

As I said earlier, we only had a short window before the next film. Jasmine and I booked out the side door and down Hollywood Boulevard back to the TCL Chinese. We caught a light to cross the street and ran down Hollywood Blvd., dodging in and out of the tourists. Right with us was another woman matching our pace step for step. We had to wait for the light at Hollywood and Highland. Turns out she was going to the same movie we were, so in between breaths, I told her we had a different way to get into the Hollywood and Highland Mall. This is what we had found on the Wednesday before TCMFF. If you go north on Highland there's a set of stairs near the bowling alley that goes up into the mall. From there, it's just another quick set of stairs into the movie theater. Well, we made it. Hot, sweaty, and out of breath but we made it.

Now, this hadn't been my plan either. Since I had blown off Grand Prix, I wanted to go to A Hatful of Rain in this block to catch Eva Marie Saint. But in all the excitement to get to How to Marry a Millionaire, I couldn't very well just leave the theater at that point. It turns out this was one of the few films that Jasmine had seen before. It was one of her grandmother's favorites, and she used to watch fairly regular when she was a kid. She actually knew the film fairly well. She didn't know that going in but she did.

I have never seen How to Marry a Millionaire on the big screen and that was a treat. It's such a fun movie, plus for Jasmine, who had just been turned on to Lauren Bacall the night before, seeing her in this in a more mature role was cool for her.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss line number

Next up was Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, but we did have a two-hour fifteen-minute break, which in TCMFF terms means just one thing, a hot meal. Okay, it might also mean an nap, but for us at that point, it meant a hot meal. We toyed with the idea of going to Hollywood landmark Italian restaurant, Miceli's. Unfortunately, I thought it was on Hollywood Blvd. on the north side of the street, but it turns out it was just off Hollywood Blvd., just a half a block south. Whatever the case, we didn't find it. Note to self: You have a computer in your pocket with maps, use them.

Anyway, we ended up going to Pig and Whistle, which was a good alternative. In looking for Miceli's, we did find a couple of Goth stores (if you don't know what that is, think Hot Topic with less Disney). After dinner we had enough time for Jasmine to look through them, while I got coffee at Starbucks.

We sat with Film Geeks San Diego's Beth Accomando and Miguel Rodriguez.  The talk before the movie was with Melvin Van Peebles and fortunately his son,  Mario Van Peebles, was there to translate. Possibly Melvin Van Peeble wasn't hearing the questions or maybe he was tired and having trouble concentrating that late in the day, but all of his answers came out as, how glad he was to be there and how great it was to see all these people, Keep on, keepin' on.

Melvin Van Peebles, Mario Van Peebles, and
Jacqueline Stewart (photo coutesy of TCM)

Having Mario Van Peebles there to speak to the questions being asked was essential. He knew his father's work well enough to speak to it. He was working with his father on films from when he was about 12 on, and it didn't matter that he was just a kid, he had to pull his own weight. He said something I found very interesting. He said that other fathers taught their kids how to play baseball. His dad taught him how to own the team.

The film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, was disappointment, more so for Jasmine than for me. While I can acknowledge that it's an important film, I can't say it's a film that works very well. There's some inappropriate sexuality in the film. That in itself isn't a big problem, but the way the sexuality was handled was gratuitous at times, okay, not just at times, a lot of the time. The film did earn its X rating. The problem with the film is not so much the story, but how the story is told. The story of abuse in the black community is important, and it was good that it was dealt with straight on. But there was some experimental elements going on in the film that made it just a very weird watch. There was a great soundtrack composed by Van Peebles and performed by Earth Wind & Fire but at times, other music was layered on top of it, that just ruined it. There were experimental visual effects that I didn't think served the story. It is an important film, but I think it would have been better served with a more straight-forward approach.

Now, that is my adult objective assessment of the Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Jasmine on the other hand just outright hated it. She was looking forward to that film more than anything else at the festival and then to have it be that disappointing, it was a blow to her. She'd already made the decision that she wasn't going to be doing the late movie. After Sweetback, she was just done.

Dennis Miller, Ruth, and I

My choice for the next block was Romeo and Juliet but a lot of that was I wanted Jasmine to see it. There was nothing else I was particularly enthused to see in that block, so I walked Jasmine back to our AirBnB and headed back to the Roosevelt see if anybody was at Club TCM. I ended up hanging out with a woman I just met a couple of days earlier named Ruth Mundsack. We'd interacted a little bit online on the Going to the TCM Classic Film Festival Facebook page. It turns out I had a flask of some really good bourbon, but I didn't think it was appropriate to drink it inside the hotel lobby so Ruth and I went outside to have some. 

When we got back in and were sitting around talking, we noticed Dennis Miller was standing just about 20 feet away. We went over and talked to him and got a picture. Then we ended up talking to an older couple from somewhere in the Midwest, Nebraska or Wyoming, maybe. It turns out the main lobby bar makes a pretty decent, Mint Julep. In a way, I kind of felt like I should have found another film to see, but had I not taken a break to just slow down and have a drink, I'd never have met Dennis Miller. It really is hard to make a bad decision at TCMFF.