TCMFF 2015 – Day 2

TCMFF 2015 – Day 1 post

Like the rest of the days at Turner Classic Film Festival (TCMFF), the morning started with a Noralil's meeting of the TCM Social Media Producers to go over schedules and priorities for the day. For most of of us, we didn't have set schedules, but a handful were covering certain events. For example, Elise (@EliseCD) was covering the Christopher Plummer Handprint/Footprint Ceremony. I wasn't crazy about the notion of having to get up extra early each morning for a meeting, but they did give us real breakfast, and since real food at TCMFF can be such a problem, having a guarantee of a real breakfast each morning was a pretty good tradeoff for the lack of sleep. 

I was still a bit worried about the videos, but during the meeting Shannon (Noralil's boss) said he really liked the video I did with Kristen, where I asked whether she would rather face the leeches from The African Queen or the giant ant. I had decided to come up with bizarre questions for the end of the videos, and it turned out that some of the most interesting stuff I got was answers to those questions. At least, I felt like I wasn't screwing up at that point. The morning meetings were really short, because most of us were trying to get to 9 am screenings. 

My 15-year-old daughter, Jasmine, and I ended up walking with another Social Media Producer, Ariel (@Sinaphile), to The Egyptian for The Dawn of Technicolor. Ariel works in film restoration and was covering aspects of film preservation for TCMFF:

• TCMFF: Socially Leading You To Film Preservation Victory or Where’s the 35mm, yo?
• Ruminations, Recommendations, and Restorations: TCM Film Festival, 2015

Egyptian ceiling

I really wasn't planning to see all of The Dawn of Technicolor, but my first pass of the schedule didn't have any screenings in The Egyptian. I fudged things around to have The Man Who Would Be King there, but that was opposite The Conversation With Norman Lloyd, so we might not make it to The Man Who Would Be King. This little side jaunt was solely for the sake of seeing the inside of The Egyptian in case we couldn't make it back later. 

Considering The Dawn of Technicolor was a documentary first thing in the morning, there was a really good crowd, though not good enough to justify opening the balcony. Up there you get a really great view of the Egyptian frescoes in the ceiling. I wanted to find seats on the aisle. The plan was to stay for the first 20 minutes or so and cut out for Lawrence of Arabia at the El Capitan. I want to be on the aisle to avoid having to climb over people in the middle of the screening. We had to settle for the last row in the front section all the way by the wall so we could get out by squeezing between the seat and the wall. I wish we could have stayed longer. What we saw of The Dawn of Technicolor was really good, and a lot of people we talked to for the rest of the weekend raved about it. 

We ducked out of the theater and went back to the El Capitan. We probably could have stayed longer, but I wanted to try to do a video in line before that first screening. The people in front of us declined, but after a minute or two an older gentleman named Paul came up and agreed to be interviewed:




One of the great things about the El Capitan is that they have a pipe organ and play movie-related music while you wait for the film to begin. The following video is Over the Rainbow:




Lawrence of Arabia was again Jasmine's pick. I figured that she would like either Inherit the Wind or Lawrence of Arabia out of that block. Before TCMFF, I described both and had her read the descriptions. I really thought she would be more into Inherit the Wind, but she said Lawrence of Arabia sounded more interesting.

Anne V. Coates at The El Capitan, Photographer:
Edward M. Pio Roda. ™ & © 2015 Turner Classic
Movies. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.
 Used with permission.

The intro before Lawrence of Arabia was with Anne V. Coates, Editor of the film. She was very entertaining. She said they originally wanted, Albert Finney for the role of T.E. Lawrence, who she thought looked a lot more like the real man, whom she said, wasn't nearly as handsome as Peter O'Toole. She also spoke about how director David Lean had a vision of how he wanted the film to look. She was working in the U.K., while Lean was on location in Jordan and Morocco. She mostly tried to put the film together by following the script as closely as possible with the footage she was given. She said that on occasion she would have a suggestion that Lean would initially shoot down, but then come back a day or two later and say he liked her suggestion better.

The film itself was spectacular. I had never seen it on the big screen, and it was just beautiful. It is such a great film though I do have to say there are some things that a bit hard to take. Lawrence does some pretty awful things, but does so for a nobel reason, so it's very compelling. Jasmine thought it was good too, but found the part with Peter O'Toole and José Ferrar particularly hard to take.

Jasmine's #TCMFF15YO twitter review of Lawrence of Arabia:

Beautiful movie but Jose Ferrar creepier than Olivier in #Spartacus

On the break before the next movie, we took a trip down the block to Fresh and Easy for a good old sandwich in a bag. When we got the El Capitan, the kind workers for TCMFF let us know that we should put the food in our bag, because the El Capitan didn't allow outside food. Yea, TCMFF workers, and yea, man purse. In line, we got an interview with Steven who programs films for an old movie house in Austin:

The El Capitan Theatre showing Pinnochio. Photographer:

 Edward M. Pio Roda. ™ & © 2015 Turner Classic Movies.

A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Used 

with permission.

Next up was Pinnochio. This time we sat in the balcony. The intro was by animators William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg. They spoke mostly about how great the Disney hand drawn animation was and remains to this day. They also mentioned that Pinnochio was one of the only appearances of Mel Blanc in a Disney movie. Mel Blanc provided the voices for most of the classic Warner Brothers cartoons, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. Blanc did the voice or more accurately the meows of Figaro the cat. The only other time Blanc did voices for a Disney movie was four decades later in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. 

One of the things that you forget about with old theaters is that they have curtains in front of the screen. The El Capitan is no exception, and for Pinnochio, they pulled out all of the stops. There were at least three curtains, a normal cloth one, an absolutely gorgeous one with an Art Deco design, and a light one with the Hollywood Hills. I assume this was because Pinnochio is a Disney movie, and Disney owns the El Capitan. Whatever the case, it was really cool. 

The film itself was great. I know I had seen it in the theater in the 1980s, I assume that would have been the 40th anniversary. I know that Jasmine had never seen it. We tend to buy most of the Disney movies on DVD when they come out, but for whatever reason we missed Pinnochio. I know we had it on VHS, but I don't think we had a working VCR for most of Jasmine's life. It was shown in digital but looked absolutely beautiful. The animation of Cleo the goldfish with translucent fins was so cool. Again Jasmine loved it, but was in full snark mode afterwards.

Jasmine's #TCMFF15YO twitter review of Pinnochio:

Adorable movie, but somebody's gotta buy Geppeto some Breathe Right Strips

Later that evening, channeling my inner Bond 

Next up was Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I wanted to change clothes beforehand. I had bought a white dinner jacket, and wanted to wear it later that evening for On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I had got the full deal, tuxedo pants and shirt, cummerbund, and bow tie. I got a real bow tie (that you have to tie). I had learned how to tie one last year, but have only done so a handful of times. About a week before the Festival, I tried tying it for practice, and it came out perfect the first time. I figured, hey, that's easy. Of course, that night in the hotel, not so much. I took me about eight attempts before I finally got it right. Whew. I do have to say, I looked pretty sharp. 

The intro  before Raiders of the Lost Ark was a Ben Mankiewicz interview of stuntman, Terry Leonard, who was the stunt coordinator on Raiders. He also did the truck stunt. Ben Mankiewicz talked about him a bit before bringing him onstage, and said among other things, that he looks like a stuntman, and yes, he does.

Terry Leonard and Ben Mankiewicz at the El Capitan.

Photographer: Adam Rose ™ & © 2015 Turner Classic
Movies. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.
Used with permission.

Terry Leonard had great stories. He said that the hardest part of the truck stunt was not going under the moving truck, but jumping from the horse to the truck. Apparently, on the first take, the driver of the truck shifted, and the truck backfired right as the horse came up to the truck. On the next take, the horse didn't want to have anything to do with that truck. 

Leonard also talked at length about the train stunt from The Fugitive (which he had coordinated and took a month to plan). The idea on that stunt was to blow out the tracks, so that the rail would collapse under the weight of the train and cause the train to derail. The problem is it didn't collapse, so instead of going off the rails and coming to a stop on its side, it continued on the tracks, pushing everything in front of it. The end result was way more spectacular than what they had originally planed. That part where the train is throwing dirt at the camera was also unplanned and actually buried a $250,000 camera. They had to dig out afterwards and find it was undamaged. Since the talk was going so well, Ben asked if Terry Leonard would come back after the screening for a Q and A. 

The screening of Raiders was a blast as I expected. I don't think I had seen it in the theater since it first came out. Jasmine had not seen it at all. I felt a little like I failed as a parent on that one, but I would feel even more so if I hadn't used this opportunity to rectify the situation. The term thrill-ride to describe a movie is so overused it's become a cliche, but I think Raiders of the Lost Ark is the first film where it really fit. My second choice in this block was Steamboat Bill Jr., with a world premiere score and full orchestra, conducted by its composer, Carl Davis. I may never get a chance to see Steamboat Bill Jr. with a live orchestra again, but seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark at TCMFF with my 15-year-old daughter who had never seen it before, I have no regrets.

Jasmine's #TCMFF15YO twitter review of Raiders of the Lost Ark:

It's what kids in my day call freaking HARDCORE

We got out of the theater, shortly after the credits rolled. We didn't stay for the Q and A because I didn't want to take a chance on messing up On Her Majesty's Secret Service in the next block. It turns out we got queue numbers in the low 40s. We probably could have stayed for part of the continuation of the Ben Mankiewicz/Terry Leonard interview, but we didn't know that until afterwards.

We ran into Miguel (@HIFFSD) and Beth (@cinebeth) from our native San Diego. I had met Miguel at TCMFF last year and Beth earlier this year at a screening of Yojimbo. Miguel had been a TCM guest programmer, and he and Beth are running the Universal Suspects festival this year, showing all 31 Universal Monster movies. We did the following video with them:

George Lazenby at the Chinese Multiplex. TM & © 2015
Turner Classic Movies. A Time Warner Company. All
Rights Reserved. Used with permission.

Next up was On Her Majesty Secret Service. We took seats up front off to the one side mostly for the sake of getting good pictures of George Lazenby. The results were something less than stellar, so I decided to go with the one of the pictures that TCM kindly gave me access to. George Lazenby was absolutely hilarious. He talked about how he basically, bluffed his way into the role James Bond. 

Lazenby told the one of the producers that he had made some films in Czechoslovakia, and then when he was meeting with the main producer, he couldn't remember what he had told the first guy. So when Lazenby was asked about what film work he had done, he just looked out the window and told him to ask the other guy. The producer had apparently had never had anyone talk to him like that, and was so impressed and told Lazenby that he needed to come back the next day. Lazenby bluffed again, saying that he was going to Paris the next day to start a film, and they were paying him £500 a day (that was about half a year's wages in the U.K at the time). The producer told him to go downstairs and draw out £500, so that he could lock him in for the next day. Thus, George Lazenby became James Bond. 

Another great story was how after On Her Majesty's Secret Service, one of Lazenby's friends convinced him that the whole James Bond thing would never last. This friend said everybody was becoming hippies and nobody would be into short haircuts and suits. He had introduced Lazenby to John Lennon and The Rolling Stones, so he was very impressed with him. When the James Bond producers tried to get ahold of Lazenby for the next Bond film, he avoided getting back to them and ended going sailing around the world until his money ran out. Ben Mankiewicz said out loud, what pretty much everybody in the audience was thinking, "That is possibly the worst advice I have ever heard in my life."

Lazenby went on and on, and the stories were hilarious. I have to say Ben Mankiewicz did a great job on the interview. The stories were so funny, and he was just enjoying it all with the rest of us, but then he would stop and say, "Maybe, we need to bring it back to James Bond for a minute here." For me, hearing his stories for 15 or 20 minutes was a highlight of the entire Festival.

The screening of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, now that was another thing. I think I should preface this by saying I love Bond movies, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service remains one of my favorites of the whole series. That said, seeing it on the big screen was not a good experience for me. I react very poorly to shaky camera work as it can make me nauseous, and there was a lot of it. Helicopter shots, point-of-view shots, and the tight frenetic way the fight scenes were done were all combining to make me ill. I've never had this reaction to seeing the movie on TV, but here I did. It may be that the screen was big, and we were very far forward and off to one side that made it worse. It had a similar effect on Jasmine, not nausea, but she said it was giving her a headache. It also didn't help that we were seeing it at the end of a very very long day, and I kept forcing myself back awake after dozing for a few seconds.

It's a shame, because I really do think it is one of the best Bond films. Lazenby though inexperienced was great as Bond. He had the right amount of what, for lack of a better term, is a sort of dickish arrogance that Jame Bond demands. He was also very good at the physical stuff. I hadn't seen the film for probably five or ten years, and I completely forgot that he was wearing a kilt in part of the film. I wore a kilt to the TCMFF closing party and was somewhat disappointed that no women wrote their room number on my inner thigh in lipstick that night. Then again, much as it pains me to admit, I am no George Lazenby. 

In a way, it was daring that they tried to make it into a love story, but the love story is really undercut by, umm, it being Bond. He has infiltrated Blofeld's lair, and the night he is discovered and escapes, he had arranged trysts with three different women, at eight o:clock, nine o:clock, and ten o:clock. He then escapes and happens to meet up with Diana Rigg and confesses undying love for her and proposes. Not that men can't be in love with one woman, and sleep with others at the same time. That's kind of what men do. Okay, it's what they would do if they looked like George Lazenby and figured they wouldn't get caught. 

As we left, I asked Jasmine what she thought about On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and she said she didn't like it. Part of that was the headache, but when I asked her about it that night, she didn't say much beyond that. I think she knew that I liked it and didn't want to hurt my feelings. I asked her about it just now, she said, she thought it was slow. "He just had sex with a bunch of women and then explosions." Now, technically, that is pretty much what happens in every James Bond movie. Then again, she wasn't raised on Bond like me, so how can I blame her.

Jasmine's #TCMFF15YO twitter review of On Her Majesty's Secret Service:

Don't eat the pink snow #ImSorry

If you haven't seen On Her Majesty's Secret Service lately, one of Blofeld's henchmen has a rather unfortunate altercation with a snow blower.

We went back to the hotel. I had toyed with the idea of going to the midnight movie, Boom!, but considering how many times I almost fell asleep during On Her Majesty's Secret Service, I figured that would be a bad idea. I think hadn't had anything but popcorn to eat since that sandwich during Pinnochio. Jasmine would have been fine calling it a night, but I guilted her into getting something to eat with me at 25 Degrees in The Roosevelt.

I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich over my first choice of a burger (didn't think a nice juicy burger would be a good choice when wearing a white tux). Jasmine just got order of fries. the sandwich was very good, but it had so much cheese I could only eat half of it. Had I finished the whole thing, I don't think I would have pooped for the rest of the weekend. The highlight of the meal was the Guinness milkshake:

As we were leaving, I asked a guy standing outside to closed doors of Club TCM if he would take a picture of Jasmine and me. I'd missed the chance to get a picture of Jasmine and me when she was wearing her dress. I didn't want to make the same mistake twice (this time with me in the white dinner jacket).

Jasmine and me

If there is any one thing from this year's TCMFF that I cherish more than any other it is the above photo. 

It was probably 1 am when I put Jasmine on the elevator to go back to the room. I really wanted another beer and turned to the bar, and there was Theresa (CineMava). We talked for a while about life, the universe, and old movies. While I was sitting there, I had two different groups of people ask to take a picture with me in my tux. The first was a blond woman in a group of very young, very hot women. It was sort of like doing cosplay at a comic convention. Now, I'll be 53 in August, and as you get older, you start to wonder if you still have it. All I can say is, sitting on a bar stool in Hollywood and having a hot-ass blond woman half your age ask to take a picture with you, that does wonders for your ego.

If you're reading this and wondering whether you should dress up or even overdress next year, well, I guess it probably comes down to how much you like positive attention. Me, I kinda like it. Your mileage may vary.

The second group who wanted to take a picture with me were some TCMFF folks. In fact, I think one of them worked for TCM. While we were talking, Theresa ducked out. I turned around and noticed that she'd left her phone on the bar. I knew she couldn't have left more than a couple of minutes earlier, so I grabbed her phone and ran out to catch her. I figured she was probably staying at the Loews Hollywood Hotel. There was a decent chance, she would have had to wait for a Walk signal, and I could catch her. I got almost all the way to Highland before I realized I had missed her. I came back figuring I could leave the phone at the front desk at Lost and Found. When I got back in the lobby, I saw Theresa and another woman frantically searching around the fountain in the lobby. Theresa had come in through the side door of the lobby while I was running out the front. Boy, was she glad to see me. The last place in the world you want to lose your phone is TCMFF. Okay, maybe, the desert with your car broken down would be worse, but TCMFF has to be second.

####

I've heard that there are ghosts of Golden Age Hollywood

haunting the Roosevelt Hotel, but I guess they like TCMFF,

so it's all good. Photographer: Adam Rose. ™ & © 2015 
Turner Classic Movies. A Time Warner Company. All Rights
Reserved. Used with permission.

TCMFF 2015 – Day 1

TCMFF 2015 – Day 0 [Wednesday] post

Thursday at the TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMFF) started fairly late. I was able to sleep in until about 8:30. My 15-year-old daughter Jasmine was already up, which is not really a surprise to me since she's always up before me for school anyway.

I took a shower, got dressed real quick, and ran downstairs to grab some coffee and something resembling breakfast for the two of us. When I got back, I turned on TCM more out of habit than anything else. They were showing the delightful cinematic gem, called The Manitou, starring Tony Curtis and Susan Strassberg. Jasmine walked in right as his Susan Strasberg screamed. She gave me a weird look like, what are you watching.

I said, "Hey, they can't all be Casablanca." If you haven't seen The Manitou, it's delightfully awful. Susan Strasberg goes to the doctor because she has a growth on her neck the turns out to be the spirit of a Native American shaman. It continues getting bigger and bigger until it actually comes to life, and emerges from her body. At that point, I had to call Jasmine in to look at it, "Doesn't it look like Danny Trejo as a little person?" Jasmine shook her head and left.

I decided I wanted to get a video of Jasmine before the Festival started. She was going to be working the camera the whole time, this might be the only time to get a video of her, so we ended up filming in it in a hotel room before we had to leave for the morning Social Media Producers meeting. That video is here:




The Social Media Producer meeting started at 10:00. Noralil from TCM explained how everything was going to work. I think we all were a little bit fuzzy at that point. We got our TCM bags, and they had a stack of posters. We could all take one. She explained how the buttons were to work. We all were to wear a Social Media Producer ribbon, and we all got a certain number of Patton buttons. Anyone who found us, we would give them a Patton button. We all also were given a smaller number of Calamity Jane buttons. For these, people were supposed to take our picture and tweet or post to the TCMFF tumbler page, mostly to facilitate people finding us to get the buttons. A handful of us got a whole bunch of a single button, because for that person, giving out that type of button was what they were doing as a Social Media Producer. For example, Kellee @IrishJayhawk66 had all of the Buster Keaton buttons, and you had to find her and answer a trivia question to get that one.

Then we all went around the table and introduced ourselves and explained what we were doing as a Social Media Producers. It was a good cross section of topics. Jasmine and I were one of two father daughter teams, the other being Jack and Diane. Yes, like the song, and yes, I still have it stuck in my head. I already knew quite a few of them from last year, and was following on Twitter most of the rest. Still, it was hard putting together names and faces, that I was just learning with Twitter handles that I sort of knew already. One of us, Annemarie Gatti (ClassicMovieHub), did a really good post, compiling what most of the Social Media Producers were doing all in one spot:

TCM 2015 Classic Film Festival: Meet the Social Producers! 

After the meeting, all of us went across the street to the Italian restaurant, Trastevere, in the Hollywood and Highland Mall for an early lunch. Jasmine and I sat at a small table with Annemarie, Kellee, and Christy (suesueapplegate). The food was really good. You could do way worse foodwise at TCMFF. The plan was to be done in time to make it back for the Meet TCM event, but as usually happens when a large group goes to a restaurant, it took longer than expected. Meet TCM was already going when we got back.

Ben Mankiewicz, Jennifer Dorian, Charlie Tabesh, 

Sean Cameron, Genevieve McGillicuddy, Pola Changnon,
Richard Steiner and Darcy Hettrich at the Meet TCM
event. Photographer: Edward M. Pio Roda. TM &
© 2015 Turner Classic Movies. A Time Warner Company. 
All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.

"All of these films are the DNA of films to come."

Pola Changnon at Meet TCM

As I mentioned in my last post, the Meet TCM panel covered much of the same ground as the press conference had on Wednesday. Again, the question came up about TCMFF showing more newer films. This time Charlie Tabesh used the example of TCMFF Guest, Film Editor, Anne V. Coates. She had edited both Lawrence of Arabia and Out of Sight, and showing both offered a chance to compare and contrast a film using traditional editing techniques with one using modern digital editing techniques. Again, TCM is holding the line of modern classic films as they relate to traditional classic film. 

I guess eventually I'm going to need to do a post on the issue, but to me, it is a nonissue. There are great movies from the classic period as well as mediocre and just plain bad ones, just like there are great movies from the modern period as well as mediocre and just plain bad ones. At some point, you have to say that films like The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption need to take their place next to Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. There you have it.

The #TCMParty gang, picture stolen from Will McKinley,

photo taken by @BeesKnees_pdx.

Next up was the Twitter #TCMParty get together by the pool. I actually knew a lot of the people there by name, face and Twitter handle, kind of a feat for me. I spoke to Deborah (@d_Leigh_Writes) a fair amount. We had been talking on Twitter quite a bit leading into TCMFF. Turns out we had spent most of the day together last year on Sunday, when we both blew off our schedule to do one TBA movie after another. It was blazing hot out by the pool, but the time but the time went quickly. The next thing I knew Ariel (@Sinaphile) was pulling me away. She had assembled a team for Bruce Goldstein's, So You Think You Know Movies, trivia challenge.

I had promised Ariel that I would be either brilliant or atrociously bad, and as it turned out, I was true to my word. Ariel had recruited six people but they wanted only teams of eight so we ended up getting put together with an older woman and her son, I think, that none of us knew. Not that it mattered really, because we kind of sucked. One or two of the questions were easy, but the rest were not-a-clue-you-got-anything insanely hard. Plus, you only had about five seconds to pool your teams hive mind and come up with an answer. My own personal highlight was that I did know one answer that I don't think anyone else on our team knew, but it was a guess, and I didn't push hard on it and we went with someone else's guess. It wouldn't have made a difference anyway. The winning team only missed one of the 15 questions, and we missed six or seven.

After the trivia while milling about Club TCM, I noticed something. My deodorant had failed. Since I need to change into better clothes for the opening night festivities. I took that as my cue to go upstairs. Jasmine and I got to our room, and I went to the bathroom and discovered something. My deodorant had not failed. I had failed to pack any. Oops. Fortunately one of the nice things about staying at The Roosevelt is that if you do something stupid, it's close to everything, so you can deal with it. There was a drugstore a block away; problem solved.

Jasmine in a dress; she like it because it
was all science-y

We both changed clothes. I did get Jasmine to wear a dress, and I will call that a win. I did a post about her and the dress. I did eventually find one that she liked. I got a picture of her later as we waiting for Too Late for Tears.

We went downstairs to Club TCM. I figured that I should try to do a video interview or two, since that was what I was on the line for as a Social Media Producer. Just one problem, Club TCM pretty insanely loud, not conducive to passable audio on video recorded on your smartphone. I tried the main lobby, it seemed to be at least as bad. I checked outside. There is a door directly off the room that houses Club TCM that leads to the pool. Immediately, outside the door there was a large group of people taking a group picture, a lot of noise. As you moved closer to the pool, you lost the noise of the group of people chatting behind you but started to pick up noise of the hotels AC units. Then when you get close to the pool, you start to pick up both conversations of people by the pool as well as the music they had playing. Well, shit. Glass, half full thought, at least I was wearing deodorant now.


I went back inside and found Paula Guthat, owner of Cinema Detroit, co-founder of #TCMParty, and a TCM Guest Programmer, late last year. Plus, I knew Paula fairly well, so at least, she might not freak out if I suggest we find a more quiet part of the hotel. We ended up on a couch downstairs, near the front desk. I did a short video and thought, ah, all is right with the world. Until I previewed it before uploading. The audio was still kind of bad, we were picking up a conversations from the front desk, plus, because the light wasn't very good, the video was bad too. Questionable audio is one thing. Questionable audio coupled with dark video where you could barely make out the faces, that's another thing entirely. I was so hosed. Did I mention that I glad I was wearing deodorant now?

We left at about 5:30. I wanted to get to our first screening early. We were going to Too Late for Tears, a Film Noir, one that probably a lot of people hadn't seen, and it was showing at the smallest venue. I figured this was a ripe candidate for turning people away. We ended up getting queue numbers in the high 50s so we would be in good shape. We were with Casey (@NoirGirl), whom I'd met earlier. I asked if she would mind doing a video. She agreed and was very patient with us as we wandered around the lobby trying to find a spot that was somewhat quiet. We did the video and while the audio quality was still not great, Casey said one of the coolest things I heard all weekend long. I'll let you watch the video for yourself:

Note to self: Next time have someone 
take a picture of Jasmine and me together

We still had time before we had to be back in line, so Jasmine and I explored the area around the TCL Chinese to try to find a place that was somewhat quiet, but ultimately it seemed to be kind of a losing battle. Almost everywhere in the mall had canned music playing and if you started to go down the stairs you began to pick up traffic noise from Hollywood Blvd. We did find one spot that was pretty good and did take pictures of both of us (Jasmine's above and mine to the right).

When we got into the theater for that first screening, I got on my phone and started searching for an external microphone that I could connect to my phone to alleviate the audio woes. I didn't find anything but stumbled on a blog post that suggested getting closer to the subjects as a way of getting better audio. Turns out that was a huge help and allowed us to get at least passable audio for the rest of the Festival.

The intro for Too Late for Tears was by Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation. Although we would be seeing a restoration, he said, it was not the best quality restoration. The problem was that the best copy they could find was a film negative that someone in France had made. Normally, having a film negative is a good thing. Here though, whoever made the film negative didn't clean the print before making it, not a good thing, so they were still working a poor quality source. He also spoke about Too Late For Tears star, Lizabeth Scott, who passed away in January. Of all of her pictures, she hated Too Late for Tears, because her character was so evil. I had never seen it before, and this is exactly why I loved it. She was so over-the-top, almost campy evil. I mentioned this in my initial wrap-up post but Theresa (@CineMava) said something brilliant about the movie later that night in the bar, "Anytime you have someone so crazy they make Dan Duryea back down, that's pretty crazy." Needless to say, I loved Too Late for Tears. I would say that this was my favorite screening of the entire festival.

Jasmine's #TCMFF15YO twitter review of Too Late for Tears:

Went from Fast & Furious to Kanye West Gold Digger video to total crazy woman

If you haven't seen Too Late for Tears, it might not make sense, but it's pretty dead-on.

Next up was, My Man Godfrey. Both Too Late For Tears and My Man Godfrey were Jasmine's picks. My approach to picking films was to try to go with ones I knew Jasmine would like, but anytime I was having a tough time making a decision, I narrowed the field a bit, had her read the descriptions, and make the call. There is kind of a funny story about how we ended up going to My Man Godfrey (see Going to See My Man Godfrey Because My Daughter Likes Ninjas).

We had some time, before My Man Godfrey, so we wrangled one of the other Social Media Producers Kristen (@salesonfilm) and took her down to the spot we found to do another video. She was doing reports on film locations near the festival area. Her video is here:




When we got into line, the queue number thing hadn't quite caught on at that point. We had fairly low numbers and got in line about where we thought we needed to be, but then noticed there were people with higher numbers ahead of us and lower numbers behind us. I wasn't worried because I knew that this was a big theater, and we would get in okay. Just an opening night glitch that was corrected by the next day.

Now, I have to say that My Man Godfrey is not a huge favorite. I love William Powell, and both he and Eugene Pallette are brilliant. My problem is that Carole Lombard's character is way too much of a ditz for my taste. I have similar feelings about Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, only more so. Still, I went in with an open mind and absolutely loved it. It definitely benefits from being seen with an audience, almost fall out of your chair funny. Jasmine loved it as well. 

Jasmine's #TCMFF15YO twitter review of My Man Godfrey:

Can Godfrey be my spirit animal

So, yeah, I think she liked it.

I was still a little concerned about the videos. Noralil had wanted us to do six videos a day. We had done only three and had one turn out to be unusable. I tried to make up for it by being active on Twitter, retweeting and responding to others' #TCMFF tweets. One of my favorites was a comment that Jasmine made about what I thought was a funny Tweet from Trevor (@tpjost): 

Jasmine's response was, Wow, the new Avengers film looks awesome.

Roosevelt Hotel at night. Photographer: Adam Rose

TM & © 2015 Turner Classic Movies. A 

Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. 

Used with permission.

We headed back to the hotel. I asked Jazzy if she wanted to get something to eat, but she was done. I wasn't surprised. She is a very early riser, and it's rare that she's not in bed by 10:00. Back at the hotel, I put her on the elevator and hung out in the lobby. I was a little too hyped to go to sleep. Plus, I had uploaded the first video and not the second one, so I wanted to get that done as well. By this time, Club TCM had closed for the evening, but the bar was still open. I noticed Theresa, sitting at the bar. I'm pretty sure we had met last year, but if memory serves me we hadn't spoken for very long. I sat next to her and ordered a beer. In addition to that relaying incredible observation about Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea in Too Late for Tears, she told me about how her evening began with The Sound of Music, a film she had never seen before and always looked down her nose at. Seeing it that night changed all of that. Read her story about The Sound of Music here.

After a while, Ed, the partner of one of the other Social Media Producers, Jeff (@jlundenberger), came up. He was wearing a tux for the opening night festivities and looked very dapper. The three of us talked for quite a while. I seem to remember it being about 2:30 by the time I rolled into my room and collapsed. 

• TCMFF 2015 – Day 0 [Wednesday] post
• TCMFF 2015 – Day 2 post

TCMFF 2015 – Day 0 [Wednesday]

[Note: I did something stupid with this post and I had to recover/re-create from a draft, so if you have been here before and it reads different, that would be why.]

I'm going to start my Day 1 coverage by talking about the night before.

Note to self, no. 1: Don't wait until the night before you leave to pack.

I decided that I needed a garment bag for the festival, because I was bringing a white dinner jacket and other nice clothes. We had one at the house, but it wasn't a very good one, so I decided to run out in get one. I went out at 8 o'clock at night to a Target was close to my house. Unfortunately, it was kind of a ghetto Target. 

The Target was in what had been an ordinary mall when I was a kid, but by the mid-80s, all of the stores on the inside of the mall had gone away.  Now it's sort of like a mall turned inside out, big box stores on the outside, and nothing on the inside. Anyway I was looking for a garment bag, Target had nothing. I tried the Ross next door; nothing again.

I tried the Kohls, this time they had a Samsonite garment bag for $469, but I couldn't imagine paying almost $500 for a single piece of luggage. They did have a second one for about $200, but even that seemed a bit high. 

Note to self no. 2: If you're looking for a garment bag, don't go to the ghetto mall.

I had one more option, Walmart. They had a very simple one for $40, now, we're talking. I decided that garment bags must be made out of either gold of lead.

While I was in Walmart, I got the following text from my 15-year-old daughter, Jasmine, saying

Mom cheated on you with firemen, btw.

I thought about what the proper response should be. I toyed with the idea of saying, "That's okay, I cheated on her with a policeman." But I decided that that might break my little girl's pschye. I switched it to paramedic, so  that at least she could infer the proper gender on my part. I still may have damaged her, but that might taken off the sting a little bit. We live on E Street, and it turns out that someone had called the Fire Department for the same number as our address on B Street, so my wife goes to the door and there are, for lack of a better term, a bunch of hot-ass firemen. Of course, my wife sees a bunch of hot firemen, and she is all, Well alrighty, then. This prompted my daughter's text. I just don't think she was prepared for what I sent back to her. But in the words of the immortal Samuel L. Jackson, If you don't like my answers, you should cease asking scary questions.

I got home some time after 9 o:clock and started packing. It was about midnight by the time I finished. I couple of weeks before TCMFF, I posted a Survival Guide Blog post on attending the Festival. Among other things I recommended emptying out the storage on your phone and camera. Well, I forgot to do that, so after packing, I still had to empty out my camera and phone. I knew I was in trouble when I started moving files and the first one said 45 minutes remaining. 

Note to self no. 3: Don't wait until the night before you leave to empty your camera; see also note to self no. 1.

The end result was that I knew I was going to an event where sleep deficit was an issue, and I was staying up until 1:30 in the morning, the night before I left. Not a good idea. 

Taken from the train on the way to L.A.

Thus, we get to Day 0 (Wednesday).  Jasmine and I were taking the train up from San Diego. It should be an easy drive from San Diego, operative phrase there being, should be. But with the chance of hitting traffic in both San Diego and Orange Counties, and pretty much a guarantee of bad traffic the last 20 miles or so into Hollywood, the train to Union Station and L.A. Metro to Hollywood is about the same travel time. Plus, there's a section, from North San Diego to South Orange County that's right on the coast and really pretty.

Easily the strangest thing that happened on the trip up was the ride on the Metro from Union Station to Hollywood. A young woman and her boyfriend got on. Now, she looked more or less normal, but the boyfriend, he was wearing vampire fangs. Not plastic ones, mind you, but real sharpened tooth caps, and roughly 12 noon. I just remember thinking I hope he's wearing sunscreen when he comes out of the station.

Jasmine in our room on an odd piece 

of furniture she called a butt foof

We got to The Roosevelt and our room was ready so we were able to check in right away. We had a very nice room, a minisuite, at the Roosevelt, that was way more expensive than I would normally pay for a room. I had wanted to stay at the Roosevelt this year and had waited until about 5:30 Pacific time the day they announced the 2015 dates to book. By that time, all of the lesser expensive rooms were gone, so the option was really expensive room with a balcony, or $80 more for a mini-suite. When I booked, I hadn't intended to bring my daughter because I thought she would have to miss too much school. Still it just seemed to make sense to go for the better room, since I was already spending a lot of money anyway. As it turned out, it was perfect for the two of us, I had a separate room with a king bed, and she had the living area with a fold out bed in the couch. 

Now my daughter and I were acting as Social Media Producers for TCMFF. This meant different things for different people. For my daughter and I, we were doing video interviews of people attending the festival, and she was doing reviews of all the films we saw on twitter with as much insight and snark as would fit in 140 characters. I did the following video explaining it:

See also this post about Jasmine's film review tweets: Look for #TCMFF15YO Hashtag at 2015 TCMFF

Since we were doing the Social Media Producers thing, we had the opportunity to go to Wednesday afternoon Press Conference. It seemed like it covered a lot of the same ground as the Meet TCM panel on Thursday, but I can see that. A lot of the media people in attendance were bloggers and at heart classic movie fans in general and specifically TCM fans, so their concerns echoed those of the TCMFF attendees. I found it interesting that Charlie Tabesh (SVP of Programming of TCM) said that there was really no time period for a classic. I don't think there is anyone at TCM who wants to convert to showing newer films, but if there is a reason to look at newer films in the context of Classic Film, they will do so. I think the example he used was that if you had Katherine Hepburn as the star of the month, you would want to show, Love Affair, her last theatrical film.

Ben Mankiewicz during the press conference Photographer:

Edward T. Pio Roda ™ & © 2015 Turner Classic Movies.

A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Used with

permission.

My favorite thing at the press conference was that something that Ben Mankiewicz said in response to a question about how people at the press conference came to work at TCM. He explained that he had been working on a news show, before getting hired to be a host on TCM. He said that as a news broadcaster, he got a chance to interview a lot of famous people, but he never became friends with any of them. Once he came to TCM and started interviewing classic film people, that was when he started to become friends with the people he interviewed.

Jasmine liked the press conference. I think she imagined it would by like a Comic-Con meeting of which she has attended many. Don't get me wrong, Comic-Con is a fun event. The planning meetings, not so much.

Our first view of the Egyptian

We hung out for a little while after the press conference talking in the lobby of the TCL Chinese. After a while, we headed back toward The Roosevelt, using Will McKinley's (@willmckinley) back way in and out of the Hollywood and Highland mall. I had figured out part of this, but there was a key piece of the puzzle I was missing, a stairway that takes you to real close to the main entrance of the theater. When we got back to Hollywood Blvd, Jasmine and I split off from the rest. There was a bookstore Hollywood Book and Poster I wanted to go to. Also I did want to go to Musso and Frank's, but we'd had a snack right before the press conference so neither of us were hungry.

We ended up going past the Egyptian, and eventually made it to Hollywood Book and Poster, only to find it wasn't open. It was hard to tell whether it was just closed or out of business. There was a solid metal grate in front of the storefront. Of course, it not being open at 3 o:clock on a Wednesday afternoon was not a good sign. We continued on and ran into Beesknees, one of the #TCMParty regulars who along with her mother were attending TCMFF for the first time. We had never met, but she stopped me on the sidewalk and asked, if I was Chris. You tell people that you're a bald guy with a big white mustache who will be with a teenager with lots and lots of hair, and people recognize you. Go figure. They were headed to The Roosevelt, and we were going the opposite direction, so after chatting a while we went off our separate ways. 

Joan Blondell's star, had to get it.

We kept going east on Hollywood Blvd. To me, it seems like it gets nicer and less cheesy as you go that direction. I do have to say Jasmine was let down by Hollywood. She expected it to be glamorous, not cheesy. I had a similar reaction to Hollywood my first time back in the late-1980s, but the discrepancy between the fantasy and the reality has probably widened since then. We made it all the way to Vine, crossed the street, and came back down Hollywood Blvd. on the other side of the street.

We ultimately made our way back to Musso and Frank's. It was about 4 o:clock by the time we got there, so we were able to get in right away. I didn't get the waiter's name, but it was the same guy that Ben Mankiewicz interviewed when TCM did their piece on Hollywood landmarks. The one thing that was unusual was that as we sat there looking at the menu. The waiter stood about four feet away facing the other direction. As soon as we put down our menus, he turned and took our orders. Now, I've had good service before, but I have never seen that. I ordered what quite possibly was the best pastrami sandwich I have ever had in my life. 

Looking back at the Egyptian from Musso and Frank's,

another Hollywood landmark, the Pig'n'Whistle is on the right 

At about 5 o:clock there was a meet and greet for the Going to TCMFF Facebook group. I'm pretty sure that I had met Kelly who runs the Facebook group last year. Even I'm not super active on Facebook, I was pretty sure I would know a lot of people there and of course I did. I mostly just caught with the people I already knew. Jasmine quickly got bored and retreated to a corner to mess around online on her phone, which is probably what she would have been doing had she stayed in the room anyway. Kelly had made arrangements to have Cora Sue Collins, a former child actress, who among other things had played Greta Garbo's character as a child in Queen Christina. Unfortunately, it was not the optimum environment to have a sweet little old lady with a very soft voice speaking. Everyone gathered around, but I happened to be just far enough back to miss most of what she was saying. After a while, I just gave up.

Charlie Chaplin door that faces sidewalk

outside of  The Jim Henson Company

Later that night, there was a Warner Archive/#TCMParty  gathering at the Formosa Cafe. I figured it being a bar, Jasmine wouldn't be able to get in, and she was fine with staying in the room and watching TV and calling it an early night. I later found out that the Formosa does sell food so it might have been okay to bring her. I'll have to keep that in mind for next year. I checked my phone, it looked like the Formosa, was about 12 blocks from the hotel, so I figured it would be as easy to walk there as to find a cab. I've lived in some pretty crappy neighborhoods in my life, so my tolerance for walking around Hollywood at night is probably a lot higher than most people's. Plus, it probably doesn't hurt that I look like a biker. The walk was kind of nice and took me passed The Jim Henson Company, which had originally been the home of Charlie Chaplin studios. There's a statue of Kermit the Frog dressed as Chaplin's tramp on the building near the gate. By the time I got to The Formosa, things were well underway. 

The Formosa at night, that truck must be going 150 mph

The Formosa Cafe is kind of a cool almost hole in the wall  kind of place. My only complaint was that it was very loud and a bit difficult to have a conversation. I knew a fair amount of the people there. Quite a few of the other TCM Social Media Producers, but at that point I hadn't yet put together names with faces with Twitter handles. That's probably one of the toughest things for me at TCMFF. First, I tend to be really bad with names, but since I spend so much time on Twitter, a lot of the people I run into, I already know from live tweeting TCM movies using the #TCMParty hashtag. But then, you end up meeting new people and have to try to associate a name with a face and a twitter handle that usually has nothing to do with the name. Still it was fun to just hang out and have some drinks before everything got really crazy. I ended up leaving at about a quarter to one.

Again, I decided to walk. I was really hungry, since I hadn't eaten since that pastrami sandwich at Musso and Frank's. Fortunately, In'N'Out Burgers was still open with a line out the door at about 1 am. I ended up getting a double protein style and a chocolate shake, and took it back to the room to eat.

Not a bad start.

TCMFF 2015 – Day 1 post

Pre-Code Blogathon [Late entry] – Little Giant

As Little Giant (1933) opens, it's November, 1932, and Franklin D. Roosevelt has just won the presidency by a landslide, James Cagney plays Bugs Ahern, the Beer Baron of Chicago, who has seen the writing on the wall that Prohibition is about to be repealed. Rather than fight the inevitable, he decides to  split the profits of his bootlegging empire with his gang, and he and his right-hand man move to the posh community of Santa Barbara, California, to retire. Of course, he doesn't fit in, but makes every effort to smooth off the rough edges. With the help of Mary Astor, he rents a huge estate and sets out buy his way into high society. I don't think I can go into any more details of the plot without spoiling things. 

As a pre-code movie, Little Giant is kind of tame. There is a fairly mild reference to cocaine that surely wouldn't have made it through the Hays censorship, and Cagney says that he got " trimmed by a lotta fags with handkerchiefs up their sleeves." I'm sure the f-word there wouldn't have made it either. The way they present Helen Vinson as a  gold-digger and a tramp, is probably a bit more blatant than they could have got away with a year or so later. In fact, the whole premise of the movie might not have made it. Under the Hays code, criminal activity had to be punished, and criminals were never to be portrayed as sympathetic. Possibly, this could have been sidestepped, because James Cagney was a retired criminal, and his criminal activity ended before the start of the film. 

Still, none of this is done purely to be salacious, it's mostly driven by the demands of the story. As such, it's not your typical pre-code film. It is, however, a very good film. It's great to see Cagney play a hoodlum, who's walking around on eggshells, trying to impress a bunch of rich people who ultimately turn out to be way more crooked than he ever was. Cagney is both funny and touching. Mary Astor is great as well as his secretary and later love interest.

Because it doesn't have nudity or extreme violence, Little Giant sort of gets lost in the shuffle of pre-code films, which is a shame for such a very good and funny movie. The ending where Cagney returns to his old ways to set things right is wonderful. This really a great movie, that rises above the din of scandal that dominates most pre-code films, making Little Giant a rare comedy gem.

####

This post is part of the Pre-Code Blogathon. Apologies for being late. I blame the TCM Film Festival and Wonder Con for being on back-to-back weekends, well, and my apparent inability to understand the inner workings of a calendar.  The Pre-Code Blogathon is hosted by:

• Danny of pre-code.com

• Karen of Shadows and Satin

Thanks for all of their hard work and another apology for my tardiness.