9-8-2002: DAY THREE (Pt. 1)

There are a few things I need to get out of the way right off the bat today, and they are as follows:

1. Holy CRAP it's hot here! Filmgoers are wilting in the sun and are going from scorching hot outside temperatures to freezing cold inside temperatures to scorching hot outside temperatures...you get the idea.

2. Someone actually stepped out of line to smoke today! Yay!

3. New rule: dear mouth-breathers, pop a breath mint if you're going to exhale your noxious, just-had-a-coffee-and-a-cigarette-and-lord-knows-what-else breath in my direction while you sit next to me in the theater.

4. Another new rule: seat hogs, please look up the definition of "personal space" and get your arm, shoulder and leg out of my designated seat area. The armrest was invented for a reason, and it wasn't so that you could use it to lean on while you slide over my way. Geez!

5. I think the annoying new press-conference Moderator Vickie Can't Stand just introduced Kate Hudson as Kate Jackson. I'm adding that faux-pas (true or not) to my ever-growing list of reasons I don't like him.

I kicked off the day with Frida, the Salma Hayek drama about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo which she, and director Julie Taymor, would like everyone to know is NOT a "biopic." That was a sore point at their press conference yesterday, so I figured it merited mentioning. The movie was good - very visually dramatic and with unique little elements added in for flavor (like the artist morphing into, and out of, her own paintings). No one showed for the screening, and they didn't even bother with an introduction.

I sprinted from that screening to one for Spun, a frenetic, kinetic, twisted and totally messed up flick about a meth addict (Jason Schwartzman) and a bizarre array of equally tweaked-out characters (played by the likes of Mena Suvari, Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo and Deborah Harry). Think Trainspotting meets Requiem For a Dream... only greasier and dirtier. Literally. I felt like I needed to take a shower when it was over. I can, however, now tell the world that I *voluntarily* watched a movie that featured Mickey Rourke, Ron Jeremy (!) AND Eric Roberts and did not flee the theater screaming for mercy. The screenwriter, on whose experiences and addiction the film is based, arrived for a post-screening Q&A and appeared to be still riding the, ahem, "high" from last night's launch party. I was quietly grateful that Mr. Rourke, who IS in town to promote the film, opted to find something else to do this afternoon and did not attend.

Next up, Morvern Callar, a curious sort of travelogue and personal-liberation/discovery film about the titular young woman (Samantha Morton), who gets an unsettlingly ideal opportunity to reinvent herself after her writer boyfriend commits suicide and leaves her with his finished, but unpublished, novel. Kathleen McDermott, who works as a waitress and barber in Glasglow and kind of wound up in the film by accident, co-stars as Morvern's best friend and just might be Gwyneth Paltrow's long-lost Scottish identical twin... she looks THAT much like her. At the film's core lies music, and one of the most memorable moments of my moviegoing life occurred during this film. During a scene at a club, the audio in the theater was cranked SO high that the seats and the floors shook. It was SO COOL!!

Next...

— Vickie