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Punks
There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get any worse.
-- Quentin Crisp
Sunday, May 28, 2000
One year ago: Elvis and Marilyn
Two years ago: Dirty
Three years ago: The Genius of Memory
Another Secret Festival Sunday. I ended up sitting next to Ryan in the line. Several people had the good idea of pulling clean cardboard out of the dumpster and sitting on it. I did this, too. It's a matter of rotating the parts that get numb: feet, butt, legs.
Ryan talked with some of his buddies about various film projects he'd like to do relating to the festival. This sequed to talk about the films in this year's festival, so I chimed in every now and then. Ryan does interrupt sometimes, but I put it down to the "high-involvement" conversational style common in fandom. We talked about Anglicon with Jeff Stout (someone who I know, who doesn't know me). Apparently there were about two hundred people there, so the committee is thinking about scaling down next year. This made the two guys laugh: "Scaling down? Next year they can hold it in my living room, maybe." According to Ryan, part of the problem is that it's a very guest-driven con, even more so than most media cons. So if they don't get the a-list guests, not many folks come to the convention. That's part of why I'm not attracted to media cons -- guests, especially actors in movies or TV shows, aren't that interesting to me. Authors are another matter.
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The Secret Festival was undersold this year. Normally it's a sellout, with every seat filled, but they did some renovations on the theater this year and apparently gave the wrong number of available seats to the Cinema Seattle folks. Today the young director was as entertaining as the movie. I think he might have had some bad experiences on his most recent movie -- he talked about how his current project would be cheaper than the film that would be in the festival the last week.
I walked over to the Broadway Performance Hall, to tell A---- that I wouldn't be joining him there as previously arranged, but would meet up with him at the 6:30 show downtown. I decided I'd rather see the funny movie at the Egyptian. He was sitting alone in the upstairs lobby. I'm sure he was enjoying himself, reading sections from the Sunday paper in peace. I ran to get food from the Burger King, then ate it hastily while sitting in the park there.
- Punks
(IMDB page for this film) No, not about punk rock. This is actually just like those black romantic comedies that have been coming out the last few years. The change is that it's about black gay men. (I read this insight in some paper or mag; it's not original to me.) I liked this and found it funny. It's all about finding love. It did seem weird that the happy ending comes when a straight man falls in love with the hero. It reminded me of Quentin Crisp writing about how he didn't believe in happy love for homosexuals, because he believed that gay men wanted something he considered impossible: a straight man to fall in love with them.
It was such a pleasant afternoon, I didn't need to wait for a bus. I just walked down the hill to downtown. I do like walking in Seattle -- you see so much more.
- Herod's Law
(IMDB page for this film) This was a broad satire of Mexican politics, using the real names of political parties. It turned out much darker than I thought it would! The male lead (I certainly wouldn't call him the hero) goes from working at the dump, to mayor of a remote village. He's an appealing actor, so his bad actions disturbed me! I didn't stay for the Q and A with director and screenwriter Luis Estrada, so I don't know how he got away with this.
I waited for the bus, taking shelter under the awning and reading an Allison Lane regency romance, The Beleagured Earl.
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