Watching (UK): Stellar! If it wasn’t a short, you’d think you paid admission just for this flick. Completely worth it. A sense of urgency, challenge, and redemption. It was tough not to vote for this one. I’m betting it got most of the votes, though. If it wins, I’ll consider it deserving. This was a complete storyline as a short. I’d love to own the DVD.

Underground (Mexico) and Party (Croatia): I know they each made a point, and I know these are shorts, but I need more than this. You’ve got to sew it up in the end, and make the point explicit, if you want your point to stick. Just my take.

Madagascar (France): Incredible blend of every conceivable kind of animation (right down to the credits). Really wowed the audience.

The Pool (Ireland): Was kind of a Shyamalan flick. I liked it. It won’t likely win, because US audiences don’t dig that, for the most part. But I still really liked it. Reminds me of the kind of stories I used to publish a lot of, when I ran a magazine. Spooky and unexplained in the end.

Push Bike (Australia): Hot. Someone will criticize me for saying it, but it was, and anyone who watched it knew it – people are stupid about sex, so I don’t really care what they think. It was hot. It was also deeply scary and unnerving. I think most people are idiots, sex aside, and filmgoers are a subsection of most people. It’s just what I think. And so a number of people laughed when this poor woman lost her clothes and had to flee in the night with nothing but a shower curtain, trying to make it safely home. One or two kept laughing as she was pursued by little thugs. People are idiots. They’d laugh at the Central Park jogger if  you gave them a comfortable chair and a full belly to see it over. Anyway good flick, spoiled by a bunch of mooks in the audience.

A Little Inconvenience (Canada): Not my cup of tea. Sort of Alice in Wonderland cute. Got a lot of laughs from the audience. I’m a hard sell on comedy. Just wasn’t my thing. The point, in the end, was interesting but didn’t grab me as particularly profound.

Echo (Poland): My vote went to this one. I wanted to strangle the guy in the back of the theatre who laughed at the immense, immense pain and suffering, because he’s never seen grief before. He was a complete, fucking asshole. But that’s why I voted for this one. It was realistic and gritty right up to the end and, in the end, gave us such a dose of genuine anguish that I’d refer to this film if anyone asked me to show them what grief looks like as a short order.

12 Years (Germany): This was funny. I smirked most of the way through it. I don’t think gore is funny, so I pretty much lost interest at the punch line, which almost had the audience standing. Suffering is never cute to me, no matter what, so no attempt at comedy in that vein is going to do it for me. But the situation leading up to it was funny.

War (Italy): Absorbing, right up until you get the US soldier intervening in a local affair. They were boy scouts of course, where these days they’d just shoot all the civilians, rape some of them, plant some AK’s and call them insurgents, and their bosses back on base would support it right up the chain. This one failed for me, because of the timing. Prior to Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, I might have felt differently about it. The part that didn’t involve US soliders was pretty engrossing.

One thing the festival reminds us is that these are the kinds of films you’re NOT getting to see in your local area, in most cases. Albeit, they’re shorts. But they make the point, nonetheless. [see finalists] It just kills me that films like The Last Train Home are probably not going to show here.

In the end, I’d much rather see and vote for these things without the audience. The people who don’t realize that art is not about what you have to say – it’s about shutting up, and listening to what the art has to say. Movie talkers. In another place and time, they’d be jailed and sent to filmgoing reeducation camps. Worse are the sillies. The tittering fools who have but one response to any stimulus, such is their shallowness. There’s never a serious moment they don’t ruin by finding some quirk amusing. Rape, torture, incest – they like it all. If I was creating a cultural definition of ‘insane’, I’d put these guys up as the poster children for it. But what are you going to do. Until we get it all going on Netflix and Youtube, and get to vote securely from home, I’ve got to go out and endure the bumpkinism, kidultness, and general idiocy. It beats never seeing this stuff, though. If I can endure the mundane savants that came to opening night of LOTR, and their kids, I can endure some of the dumbasses that show up at the museum and talk over films, and cackle for all of us during the intense parts.

I’m planning to see Kwaidan, next. Yep, the Kobayashi flick. Good Lord, what kind of audience will be at that one? I can just hear the howls when someone loses an arm. God, what perpetual infantiles.

That’s Winnebago, not Wendigo, any other similarities aside. I went to this film showing, which is sort of an extension of Dead Center, long after the festival per se, but part of what they’re sponsoring in independent film in Oklahoma City. It was a single showing at the Oklahoma Museum of Art which, incidentally, hosts a helluva nice set of independent film. It’s not the Living Room Theater in Portland, Oregon, but it’s pretty cool, even if you can’t get a cappuccino in there.

So, the crowd was sizeable, and the film starts off with lots of the video clips, and we laugh. Mostly. After a while, I didn’t think it was still funny. Just saying “fuck” in and of itself, or “shit” or “damn” doesn’t particularly make me titter. True, I’m a hard sell on comedy, but I kind of stopped thinking that was funny for its own sake when I was a kid – didn’t you, Beavis? So it wore on. I use the word “wore” intentionally. And then the audience is given a rollercoaster ride. I won’t reveal why, because it’ll ruin the film for you. But when it comes down to it, we realize that Jack (Winnebago Man) is actually kind of sad. He doesn’t like being laughed at. In fact, you watch the filmmaker patronizing him, trying to convince him that this is his chance to “get his message out”. Using him. Quite clearly. The filmmaker wants to make a film, and Jack doesn’t want to cooperate. I think there’s a certain narcissism in some young filmmakers that fancy themselves journalists, and it’s written large in this piece.

Eventually, after he has gone blind, they talk him into going to “see” his fans. Which is interesting, because he can’t see them at all. He won’t be able to tell if they’re laughing with him or at him. If they respect him, or see him as the organ grinder’s monkey. So much of the “funniest home videos” culture is like that, isn’t it? You can laugh at a guy getting set on fire, the way dickless adolescents and kidults laugh at blood spattering in video games. And sure enough, that’s what most of the audience is laughing at in the city by the Bay, when he’s waiting outside to make his appearance. They rush him in, give him a cheesy award, remove any real opportunity for him to talk or field questions, and hobble him off the stage like Mister Magoo. I could swear I see in his eyes that he knows. He likes some of what the fans are about, but not for reasons the filmmaker appreciates (like thinking Dick Cheney is a huge dick) – that was something he got taken to task for when he tried to talk about it earlier in the biopic. Clearly, he’s supposed to perform how we want him to perform, but the audience gets it better than the filmmaker.

They saw he was a little bit human, and Jack saw (with his inner eyes) that they aren’t taking him nearly as seriously as he was promised, and he seems both gratified for the one thing and sad and ashamed for the other. Frankly, I think it would have been better if, instead of poking the bear, and lying to him about his supposed “legacy” to get him to dance, they’d left him the fuck alone. The clips will last, the film won’t – not in the same way. But Jack’s a big guy – only he knows if he really feels better off having been tracked down, dragged around, and filmed for our endless curiosity. He can make his own decisions – it’s up to me to say what I think it means as film.

The resulting web presence, though, is as pathetic as the attempt to eek out a point to it all. Don’t get me wrong, the filmmaker did a nice job of bringing the film to an end, but just a more significant job of missing the point of his own catastrophe. If you ever wanted to pull Clint Eastwood out of that freeze frame at the end of one his Westerns, and watch him take a dump, complete with sound effects, to pick and poke at him and ask him about his pattern baldness (not literally, of course), this is your kind of film. If you like him riding off in the sunset, and think that, whether it represents him in toto or not, it’s a damned sight better than asking him to create a life philosophy out of A Few Dollars More, or please hold still and let us watch snot drip out of his nose (no, not literally), then you’ll prefer to let this film lie and move on.

Worth the price of admission for me, but mainly because it lets me think about the above issues. The filmmaker should turn the camera on himself, and ask meaningful questions about the shallowness of filmmakers. But if he couldn’t get a reasonable film out of that, why would he think his version of the Winnebago Man would be much better? That’s what I think. By the way, I also thought this was like watching “Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth” part two. What’s the difference? Is that it? We like seeing men age in a crotchety, if decrepit, way, because somehow it means death doesn’t just take us easily? So we’re really that afraid? I think that explains the adolescent laughter, and the need to prolong it, clip after clip. I actually think that’s what’s behind a lot of the little humorous clips we watch, where someone gets hurts. It’s a way of using the other person, like a voodoo doll, to offload fear. So in the end, old men become the object of laughter because, laughing at them, we can feel less afraid about becoming them not long from now. And it’s not long. If you’re 30, it’s 1/2 over buddy. What have you done with it, that first half? Time’s almost up; better get crackin. There’s a Winnebago in your future. Yeah, this film is why kids throw pebbles at old men in the park, not that it reveals that in any profound way. Again, that’s what I think.

I suppose I should mention the Stella Artois (they sponsor this and a lot of arts things here) that was served, complimentarily, at the end. Normally, I don’t drink the yellow beer. I think a beer should be a meal. Guinness, for example. If it’s not dark, thick, and frothing at the mouth, it’s not for me. But still, free is another perfectly good way to drink a beer, and I have to say I liked the aftertaste of the Artois. I don’t know what it is, but I’d call is crisp and aromatic. It’s a lager, actually. A bottom fermented pilsner lager. Anyway, if I’m going to drink yellow beer, and certainly any time it’s free beer, I’ve no objection to yelling Stella.

Clearly the actors know it’s a crowd pleaser and are reveling in the applause, which is genuine. I met some of the actors today at Red Cup – they’re fun people.

[NewsOK Coverage]

See: NewsOK article & video and  Previous NewsOK article

At about the 4th number it starts to get interesting. We thought the female street urchins were talented.

Bring blanket or chair. Concessions are cheap, but it’s junk, and nothing’s open nearby at intermissions but a 7-Eleven, so bring your bananas and granola, box wine or beer, and it’s a show. If you don’t want outbursts to interrupt the play, sit away from families with children. Young couples are usually quieter. If you’re on a blanket, stake out a spot higher than stage level (or you won’t see over the chairs). Avoid the aisles, because people do use them to come and go, not waiting between numbers, unlike a theatre performance. There were no mosquitos – June bugs were plentiful but not a big deal (I liked simulating one at the back of the wife’s neck).

The performance was too familiar to the wife (me too) – that’s not their fault – we just know the story so well that there are no surprises.

One thing I’ve observed at nearly every play so far is that actors should practice more clarity doing their lines. The tendency to rush or breathe through syllables, popular in a texting culture, makes some things incomprehensible, especially for someone with an Oklahoma accent attempting a British one. We saw the same thing with Jekyl and Hyde. Enunciate the syllables, for goodness sake, or you’re throwing out half of what the writer created, and generating a lot of truly broken English.

The “Midnight Shorts” segment, unfortunately, was marred by a maturity deficit in the audience, and an excess of bumpkinism – it went from people cackling with enjoyment at blood and suffering (beginning with a film about a serial killer) to people shouting out their own narrations. Might as well have been opening night of any film with Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damme. Since it was ruining the venue, I ditched it.

Holy Rollers – about Hasidic Jews smuggling Extacy into NYC – was immense. The “X-Files” shorts segment had some killer vids – most of them, in fact, but To Be Remembered by Kelley Katzenmeyer should take the cake. It was about a girl (and others) whom people couldn’t remember for more than a moment – they were immune from memory.

In This Place by Amy Bench production values were high, the writing had depth, and she closed the deal with the audience, even if not everyone realized it. It wasn’t a laughing film, mostly, but it was great film. Only thing is, the venue shouldn’t call the segment of films “Kidfest” – people expect “kid” stuff to be cute. It’s student film if they must class it differently, or youth film if they can’t help tacking an age issue onto it, but kid stuff this film wasn’t.

Biker Fox was freaking fantastic. Frank DeLarzelere (BikerFox) is now officially one of my heroes. He takes and has taken a lot of undue crap, but I like him.

I hadn’t read the book (my wife had) or seen the play. It was quite good. The wife prefers musicals,  but I like it all. The actors were, understandably for this play, mostly young. Impressive performance by all.

We had coffee at Coffee Slingers – home of individually pressed kick-ass coffee (meaning, it’s strong), and some really bad food (no need to say where). Of course, we came home to find our house had suffered severe storm damage (broken glass, holes everywhere, etc.) that we had just missed. At least the car didn’t get hit.

The play was good – I liked the running theme, not just of the “essential twoness” (to use WEB Dubois’ term) of man’s character, but of the social elements of hypocrisy and “the fascade!” (as the continual refrain went). I thought the play had one or two quirks: The alternate love interest for Jekyll’s fiance never developed. I don’t think it was necessary to include his interest in her if it’s just to show that ‘no, she makes her own choices’ – I found that part preachy and trite, but I enjoyed the comedy of Jekyll’s response, which made up for it. Likewise, Lucy’s pimp (Spider) was trotted out a couple of times, once for a brief monologue, but without any further development there, either. Again, unnecessary, and probably better to leave him nebulous and enigmatic than offer a persona that doesn’t get to really live before we cease caring whether he’s going to become another victim or not. I was willing to take an interest in both characters and their desires, but then the writer must give us more. Don’t tease.

The musical numbers were good, although I could do with just a slight few less of them, but then I’m a barbarian. I think when the same character has just finished one song, sits down, and starts another, it’s a bit thick. I thought the lyrics were inventive, though. I want to say almost ‘Matt Groenig like’ in their satirical appropriateness to the ‘fascade’ theme of Hyde’s genuineness (being truly what he was) over against society’s pretense (and that of his victims).

The performance was in a small theatre, but the vocals often didn’t achieve sufficient volume. I’d have liked the actors mic’ed wirelessly for amplification, but of course it’s a small college budget, so I don’t expect Madonna’s equipment. And I’d have liked to hear more of the actors’ actual voices in some cases, instead of trying so hard to sing in their ‘character voices’ (adding age, accent, and melodrama). The level of practice was evident though – these guys must have drilled all season, and often into the night.

Mary Beth Garrison (Lucy) was the standout female performer, in my mind. Her vocals were unstudied (as in natural, not unpracticed), and she put herself unselfconsciously into the burlesque scene (among others), with the other young female roles clearly having a  blast joining her. They were ‘smokin’. She succeeded in being a tragic figure, just as easily.

Eric Bradford (as John Utterson – Jekyll’s attorney) was, in my view, the most interesting male performer. I often forgot that he’s much younger than his role, or even that he was acting. Impressive young man. He displayed great comfort in his part, seemingly relaxed at all times, and ever reliable to inject the atmosphere of support required of Jekyll’s staunch friend. He succeeded so well, I wanted him for my own friend by show’s end.

The lead’s (Edward Dixon’s) best part was the song in which he switches back and forth repeatedly from Jekyl to Hyde. He clearly practiced the speed demanded by the score, which was managed with quite a bit of class by two musicians on their own. Again, though, I would have liked to have heard more of his true voice - I thought it cracked to a bit of a whine throughout the musical. But occasionally he let go, where the volume he wanted to project forced him back to how he really sounds – those were his best moments – somwhere between unselfconscious and confident, or at least surrendered to the vocal demands.

Many of the vocalists could focus more on clarity. I’d rather understand what they’re singing, without straining to comprehend, than for the ladies to sustain such high, operatic notes, or the men try to retain an accent and artificially deep tone. The goal is not to imitate someone else’s performance, but to make it your own. To do that, you have to trust your voice, even if it’s safer not to. One trademark of great performances is that the lyrics are just as important as what the voice can do as musical instrument – it must be a challenge to achieve balance, though, and one certainly can’t speak as though it were easy. It’s doubtful this group has had the length of time to polish one production that you’d expect on Broadway, so you can’t fault them for being merely good.

As I say, though, you could tell these are the double football practice tough guys (and gals) of theatre. The dedication was evident.

One final note on Chelsea Mayer (Emma – Jekyll’s fiance). I noticed that when she was focused on a lengthy or detailed number, she really forgot herself (exactly as needed) and lived out the emotional presence of her character. That (again) delightful unselfconsciousness, was purchased with some of what I already mentioned I’d prefer from the female vocals, but I gathered she’s capable of both.

There are too many players, hands, operators, and others to comment in detail upon them all. I saw something to be impressed about in each, however. The play dragged a bit in a couple of areas (that’s the writer, not the troupe’s issue), and I wished they’d have felt free to actually cut or just abbreviate a couple of (more?) numbers, but I’ll go back to see them again with another production.

The campus of NOC looked to share a common ancestry with the layout of OU. The circle drive led us exactly where we expected to go. We’re excited to learn that there are also large scale musical productions going on there, and look forward to visiting again.

Afterward, we ate at Gottigos in Tonkawa (it’s our custom to eat local mom & pop food when we visit another town – and whenever possible in our own). The pizza was a great value. The texture was just right. The crust was a little too artifical-buttery, but it made up for it in overall cheesy deliciousness.

Tonkawa was a quiet, little town, with one police car in front of the station, people who still dress out in cowboy hats and pointy boots on Sunday, a large family picnic happening in the park (in a lot of places, you wonder if the parks ever get used at all), and a lot of trucks in front of the pub. We were glad to enjoy a pleasant drive around downtown before going back.