By Kay Kipling

The closing weekend of the Sarasota Film Festival gave festival goers plenty of opportunities for stargazing, moviegoing, partying and cheering live music from a legend. It also provided something the festival’s never offered before: a staged reading of a screenplay in progress by Academy Award nominee Owen Moverman.

That reading, Moverman’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ heavily autobiographical work, Queer, took place at Florida Studio Theatre’s Gompertz Theatre Friday night, with actors Steve Buscemi, Stanley Tucci, Lisa Joyce, Ben Foster and John Ventimiglia voicing a variety of characters, from Burroughs himself (played by Ventimiglia) to his “stand-in,” Lee, a hard-drinking writer living in Mexico in the 1950s with his drug-taking wife (Joyce) and their two children. In a bit of a surprise to the audience, musician-writer-artist Patti Smith, who knew Burroughs well and appears in the festival film about him (William S. Burroughs: A Man Within), introduced the evening with a little reminiscence of the man.
 

John Ventimiglia

It was a rather odd experience to listen to the reading; you quickly realize how much of a film does NOT consist of dialogue. (Tucci bore the job of reading all of the script’s directions). Perhaps partly for that reason, the evening seemed to go on rather long. But Burroughs fans and others may very well find that a final film version of this work could be provocative and compelling.

No doubt many of the audience members as well as the filmmakers headed over to Michael On East’s afterwards for the traditional Night of 1,000 Stars, where the entertainment included two bands and plenty of food and drink were to be had. I heard that more than 700 people attended, but there didn’t seem to be as much human gridlock as I’ve often noticed in the courtyard in the past—nor was the weather quite as humid as it is often is for this celebration, which went on well into the wee small hours.
 

Actor Ben Foster

The next afternoon welcomed actress Patricia Clarkson to the Gompertz in a “Conversation With” film critic (and frequent Turner Classic Movies interviewer) Elvis Mitchell. Clad in a light pink blouse and white skirt, Clarkson appeared relaxed and engaging as she talked about her career, from her days at Yale’s drama school to more recent work with directors Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese.

That career really took off just nine months out of Yale, when she played on Broadway in a revival of John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves. “It was just glorious,” recalls Clarkson of that experience. “And I’m still friends with Guare, who lives in my neighborhood.”

Mitchell asked Clarkson about her remarkable year at the Sundance FIlm Festival in 2003, where she appeared in no fewer than four films, a probable record for any independent film actress. And he asked her about her role in the film High Art, where she played a German lesbian heroin addict.

“That changed my career completely,” she said. Prior to that Clarkson might have been cast more in “wife roles,” as she was in her first film, The Untouchables, and on television’s Murder One. Her performance in High Art helped lead to a greater diversity of roles in independent films from The Station Agent to Pieces of April, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Those two films, she said, were made for under $1 million combined.

Lately Clarkson’s been starring in bigger-budget movies, including Whatever Works for director Woody Allen (“I had to be the most prepared ever for him, because he doesn’t like to stop a scene, even if it’s eight minutes long”) to Shutter Island for Martin Scorsese. “He told me I had a scene with Leonardo DiCaprio, and I prayed, ‘Please, let me be naked.’ Imagine when I read the script and saw that it took place in a cave and I was dirty with a horrible sort of tunic and stringy hair.”
 

Patricia Clarkson arrives at the Opera House.

Clarkson also played pivotal roles in two efforts with Sarasota connections: Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under and Nancy Oliver’s Lars and the Real Girl. (Both Ball and Oliver used to live in Sarasota). For the former, she won two Emmys. But Clarkson says she doesn’t want to do TV any more now; she just loves “becoming someone else...entertaining a radically different space. I want to travel through all these people, this time and this space.” Coming up soon for the New Orleans-born actress: a film called Learning to Drive, based on a short story by Katha Pollitt.

Guests attending Saturday evening’s Filmmaker Tribute at the Sarasota Opera House already knew that the honoree, director John Landis, would not be able to be there in person (that pesky Icelandic volcano had kept him grounded in London). But after a montage (introduced by actor Vincent D’Onofrio) showing his work, from Animal House to The Blues Brothers to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the audience did get to see and hear Landis, courtesy of the technology of Skype.

Festival artistic director Tom Hall asked Landis about his start as a director (“I made a movie called Schlock for $60,000, $30,000 of which was my life savings. I lost it all,” the director said) and how one learns to become a director in the first place. “There are no rules,” said Landis. “You just need someone to give you the money.”

Actually, Landis said he worked on the crew for some 70 or 80 movies before he ever directed, and it wasn’t until he’d directed a number of films that he realized “I could cut in line” at the catering site and no one would yell at him. He revealed the moment he decided he wanted to direct. “I was eight years old and saw The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, by Ray Harryhausen. I went nuts. And I asked my mother, ‘Who does that?’ She said, ‘the director.” And that was it for me.”

Hall also asked Landis if he had anything to say to would-be directors. “Good luck,” Landis quipped, before adding, more seriously. “I do have some advice—read books!”

The night wasn’t over when the Skype screen shut down, as the After Party, held down the street at Ceviche restaurant, welcomed Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Patti Smith and longtime colleague Lenny Kaye to the stage. The place was packed with fans who gathered to hear hits like Because the Night, People Have the Power and Gloria. Smith, who had also signed copies of her new book, Just Kids, at Media on Main in the afternoon and appeared at the intimate President’s Dinner on the Opera House stage earlier in the evening, was a powerful force onstage, but she also seemed a gentle one off, winning over new fans as well as pleasing older ones who remember her as the Godmother of Punk.
 

Rocker Patti Smith

Next year’s festival dates: April 8-17. And for a complete list of other filmmaker awards presented Saturday night, go to sarasotafilmfestival.com.

 

Cinema Tropicale

Sarasota Yacht Club was the star of the festival’s salute to Florida film.

by Pam Daniel

Wednesday night’s Cinema Tropicale Celebration was a colorful salute to Florida films, which the Sarasota Film Festival is featuring in a big way this year. But the real star of the show was the setting—the striking new Sarasota Yacht Club on Lido Key. The monumental building has clean, modern lines—architect Mark Sultana calls it “coastal contemporary”—and an interior that feels like a luxury liner, with lots of wood, cascading modern chandeliers and sparkling water views from just about every angle.
 

The crowd around the SYC pool.

Guests, most of them dressed in casual Caribbean-inspired attire, agreed it was a sensational place for a party. They were a real Sarasota cross-section, from million-dollar benefactress Ulla Searing to film commissioner Jeanne Corcoran and attorney Brenda Patten. Some perched by the big Neptune Bar or wandered over to the smaller Porthole Bar, but most ended up outside, where a tropical wind and the big-city view of downtown Sarasota, ablaze with lights, made it feel like “South Beach,” said Vanessa Finelli of Taste Magazine.
 

Steve Hutchinson and Brenda Patten.

Jeanne Corcoran

A buffet offered tropical fare like conch fritters, fish tacos and cold shrimp, and a Latin band played by the big new pool, which shone like an ice-blue jewel. The Hula Monsters and Outward Spiral put on a show with neon-lit hula hoops while party-goers—including salsa fans from 15 South—took to the floor.
 

Two festival movies where music matters.

By Kay Kipling

It’s always challenging to see as many movies during the Sarasota Film Festival as one wants to, especially while juggling the duties of everyday life. I found time on Monday to sneak into two. At first they might seem to be totally different (one, a high-budget movie centering on two famous figures, you’re bound to see in movie theaters soon; the other, a documentary set in Afghanistan, may be harder to find). But they both have something to say about the power of art, especially music.

The first, Afghan Star, is showing at the festival as part of UNIFEM’s Through Women’s Eyes series. It centers on four contestants on the Afghan TV show of the title, an American Idol imitation, but it also reveals the importance of music to the country at large, since it was deprived of any music or television viewing during the years of Taliban rule.

At first it’s just fun and interesting to watch those four contestants, two young men and two young women from different parts of the country and different ethnic backgrounds, as they and their fans and friends are interviewed and as we get a glimpse of Afghani life today. But then the movie takes a darker turn, as one of the young female contestants “dances” (it’s really more just a bit of gentle swaying) during her final performance. This is shocking, even to those who might have supported her singing alone; and her life is put into some danger, reminding us that there’s a long way to go before Afghanistan can be considered “free.” In the meantime, voting for their favorite Afghan Star contestants by mobile phone is an experiment in democracy for the country—a full one-third of which tuned in, in whatever public spaces they could find televisions—for the show’s finale.

The second movie, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, will make a much bigger splash, simply by virtue of those two big names. At the time the movie opens, in 1913, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was just scandalizing Paris audiences, and Chanel, herself already a successful fashion designer, was intrigued by the man and his music. Seven years later, whey they finally meet, she makes an offer to him of her home for himself and his family, so that he can compose in suitable surroundings. According to the film, and the book from which it’s derived, it wasn’t long before Chanel, who always went after anything she wanted, began an intimate relationship with the composer, even though his wife was living in the same residence.

The film is handsomely mounted, with great period detail and attention to design. And the two stars, Mads Mikkelsen and Anna Mouglalis, are certainly capable of holding the screen. But after a while, I found the long, long gazes and apparently meaningful pauses without dialogue left me cold, perhaps because the two great creators remain so enigmatic. Obviously, the film makes the point that their time together helped each to complete a creative project (he, a final Rite of Spring, she a new perfume!). But when it comes to empathizing with a character, the one we relate to here is Stravinsky’s wife (Elena Morozova), suffering from both tuberculosis and betrayal. Surprisingly, of these two films, I actually preferred Afghan Star.

 

The Sarasota Film Fest's opening weekend.

The 12th annual Sarasota Film Festival got off to a promising start over the weekend, and one that was largely focused on actor Kevin Kline.

Kline was the star of the opening night film, The Extra Man, directed by Shari Stringer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who were also in attendance and on the red carpet for the screening April 9 at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. A full house attended the film, which also starred Paul Dano (from There Will Be Blood and Little Miss Sunshine), Marian Seldes, Celia Weston and John C. Reilly.

But while Dano is the young protagonist of the film (a would-be writer struggling to live in Manhattan with very little money), Kline’s character, Henry Harrison, dominates the screen whenever he’s on it. Harrison is an eccentric, over-the-top character, an aging man with secrets who has developed some outrageous ways of living a relatively good life with little money of his own: He escorts aging, wealthy women around town when needed, and soon Dano is following in his footsteps.

The Extra Man is derived from a novel by Jonathan Ames, whose parents were also in the hall for the screening. Filled with many funny scenes and good dialogue, the movie occasionally may overdose a bit on its quirkiness, since virtually every character has his or her oddities, and many are magnified. (Without giving away too much, those oddities range from a penchant for cross dressing on the part of Dano’s character to Reilly’s extreme hirsuteness and unexpectedly high-pitched voice.) But the opening night audience frequently responded with roars of laughter, and most stayed around for the question-and-answer period with Kline and the film’s directors afterward (as well as for a party offering Motown tunes, drinks, desserts and dancing afterwards).

Kline was also the center of attention for Saturday’s “A Conversation With,” where he answered questions from both festival artistic director Tom Hall and from the audience at Florida Studio Theatre’s Gompertz Theatre. Kline himself may not be quite as flamboyant a raconteur as Henry Harrison, but he told some good stories about the beginning of his career and various film roles.

Raised with a musical father, Kline originally thought music would be his own career. But, according to the Academy Award-winning actor, he never practiced enough to be a totally successful pianist. “I didn’t have the chops, really,” he said, adding that he also found the life of his fellow music students to be too solitary, preferring instead the more collaborative theater department. “I fell in with the Vest Pocket Players,” Kline explained, “and we did satirical revues. I was the accompanist for the group at first, and we took over a coffeehouse, building our own stage and lighting systems in Bloomington, Indiana. I sort of got hooked; it was ours, and it was just more fun than practicing music.”

His first auditions as he approached life after college didn’t go well. It wasn’t until he headed to New York, partly to visit actor friends, that he tried out for the theater school at Juilliard, where noted producer John Houseman was assembling a group of young talents that came to be known as the Acting Company. “It was partly being in the right place at the right time,” Kline said, “because he [Houseman] needed a leading man type; they already had enough character actors. At that point, I was a bit looser in my audition; I had learned that you have to both care and not care” about getting the job.

Interestingly, at that point in his life Kline, who’s turned in several notable Shakespearean performances, including Falstaff and Richard III, hated the bard. “Shakespeare was in the category of a foreign language to me,” he said. “That’s because of how it was taught in high school. But around that time Laurence Olivier was doing Othello, and I saw the movie and was just blown away.” He was soon doing Shakespeare himself with Joe Papp’s Public Theatre, where he also scored a success with Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance.

It was quite a leap from Pirates to Kline’s role as the dangerously mentally ill Nathan in the film Sophie’s Choice, but director Alan Pakula saw “a capacity for joy” in the former performance that he somehow felt would work in the latter. Kline’s work on movies such as The Big Chill and Silverado with director Lawrence Kasdan happened to lead to working with Monty Python alums John Cleese and Michael Palin on the riotous comedy A Fish Called Wanda, which Kline says he never really thought anyone would see. Of course, his role as the Italian-spouting would-be criminal mastermind in that movie would win him an Oscar.

What’s next for Kline? Sporting an admittedly scruffy beard for an upcoming role as a man who “herds goats,” Kline says he also has a cameo lined up in the next film by Ivan Reitman, with whom he worked on Dave. And he’s reading some plays for a possible return to the stage. What role would he most like to play? “I’ve always wanted to play Don Quixote,” Kline says, “and I’m at the age now where I could.”

 

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