SUNDANCE, ‘98. DAY VIII. 1/22...
In December of last year I got an e-mail from a cat named Joe Carnahan in Sacramento. I guess we had crossed wires a couple of times in an America Online chat room, The Hollywood Cafe. Carnahan informed me that he was screening a rough cut of a film he had made on a shoestring in a friend’s condo in Park City during Sundance. Would I come? Admiring his rogue spirit, I agreed to view his film. Once in Park City, I called Carnahan, but did not hear back from him. Eight or nine months passed, and I received another e-mail.
Joe Carnahan (ShrtFus321@aol.com) wanted to send me a dub of his film this time. I accepted -- no CODs. The Fedex package arrived the next day, and, curious, I popped a cut of "Blood Guts Bullets & Octane" into my VCR. What I saw on tape that afternoon blew my mind. For $7300.00 and change, this 26 year old working class kid with a wife, a kid, and a baby on the way, had written, directed, starred in and edited a brilliant slice of shoot ‘em up stuff that makes a career (let alone a dream) come true. I fired off notes, inviting him to pull superlative quotes using my name c/o Spy Magazine to use for P&A, and wished him the best. Columnist, Lisa Derrick (LsaDerrick@aol.com) saw a bootleg dub and ran a glowing piece in her City Of Night column in New Times, and then I then made a few calls to agents and such. This film had to be seen.
Meanwhile, another AOL denizen, erstwhile Director of Acquisitions at the Sam Goldwyn Company, Patrick Lynn (Tucker66@aol.com) caught a peek at Carnahan’s carcass strewn piece of blood soaked celluloid. He jumped on board as producer and kicked this film on the festival fast track, dumping it into IFFM in New York where it caught the critical eye of Amy Taubin of the Village Voice and IndieWire. Taubin dubbed BGB&O "better than The Usual Suspects," and in small short order, big things began to happen: Carnahan signed with the William Morris Agency; Lynn got finishing funds from a new company called Next Wave in affiliation with the Independent Film Channel, and -- from a creative seed planted with a prayer in Sacramento -- BGB&O caught a buzz that guided it all the way to the Park City at Midnight section of Sundance, ‘98.
The Blood Guts Bullets & Octane cast and crew (made up of mostly friends and family) showed up in Park City on day one of the fest, embracing the Sundance spirit of old that cell phones and Starbucks have sadly replaced. These grateful, mostly goateed guys strutted up and down Main Street in their custom embroidered snow parkas until the film bowed on Wednesday to a packed house of hooting and hollering hellions fully primed for a fresh print to unspool, and blood to spill. Suffice it to say that the body count satisfied.
BGB&O is a totally original heist film starring Carnahan and Dan Leis as a couple of abused used car dealers. At the end of their rope, unexpected cash infused salvation comes towards their grasp by way of a mysterious 1963 Pontiac LeMans that need only sit on their lot untouched towards a pay day that will bail them out of bankruptcy. Well, one of the Seven Deadly Sins kicks in (hint: it begins with a "g") and driven by delectably diabolical plotting and action fueled by hi-testosterone dialogue things get beautifully ugly. No need to spoil more of the plot, because this film will surface out of the snow banks soon. Be there. Midnight. At an art house near you. BANG!
Another Park City At Midnight film to note for ‘98 is comedian Louis C.K.’s "Tomorrow Night." It clocks in and out at the same tight 87 minutes as BGB&O, but the similarities end there. If the substance of a film is going to be all wrong, nothing better be right, and in that, director/screenwriter/producer C.K. succeeds. Paul Koestner’s black and white jazz-age soundtracked cinematography introduces us to what appears to be Pittsburgh in the Twenties. Oddly modern day graffiti smears the tenements the camera pans, and from then on, utter senselessness makes perfect sense to the midnight viewer.
"Tomorrow Night" is a magic trick flick; a love story sans love, a comedy as dark as the day is long. Our main character’s (played by Chuck Sklar) only trait besides nastiness bordering on sheer cruelty towards any oddball character he confronts, is a sex drive reserved for ice cream up his ass and porcelain poodles in a tidy apartment inhabited by an frumpy woman (Martha Greenhouse) old enough to be his grandmother. Granny becomes his lover, and things get weirder. How weird? In a staged "clip" from "Late Night With Conan O’Brian" (another nonsense scene making perfect sense), O’Brian takes the stage for a monologue scene that opens and closes thus: "Welcome to the show! Before we get started, did you hear what happened to the President today? Boy, is he in trouble!"
Only at midnight, folks. Park City style. Whoever programs these late-night films deserves an award for taking chances on the type of talent that, god willing might be running a studio one day. Stranger things have happened. Look at who we elected President. Which reminds me... In 48 hours the Sundance awards voting begins. In the meantime...
"Click here" tomorrow for a ski report or something...