Pieces of Telluride Film
MOVIES, PRISONERS, PIE, DRIVING...
It was 115 Degrees in Phoenix…
…but as I was only changing planes, I didn’t have to leave the terminal. I hate the heat. It was cooler in Durango where I rented a car though the license plate on my rental car purported otherwise.
I had no reservation, so I spent some time trying to find a place for the night close enough to the center of Durango so I could explore. After an online search wasted time, I settled on my usual fall back, the Holiday Inn Express
It was 9:00 at night when I looked for dinner and, it was not New York, there was little choice. Steamworks, a Craft Brewery. A decent menu and more homemade beers than I could imagine.
The main streets of Durango were deserted save a few college kids wandering. I didn’t know it was a college town.
There was a twenty foot high Indian figure that seemed derived from Wendover Will, the sixty- three foot cowboy with waving arm on Highway 80 in Wendover, Nevada. An icon impossible to forget.
Next morning by fortuitous chance, I called my friends Todd McCarthy and Sasha Alpert who I thought would be at Telluride. They were about to rent a car at Durango, so instead they met me at the hotel to drive over with me.
Todd, a prominent film critic, introduced me to the Telluride Festival years ago. I introduced he and Sasha to powder skiing at Alta.
I’m never in a driving hurry when there’s any interesting distraction. Sasha thought she knew of a small town along the way (They’re ALL small towns along this way) that had an interesting grocery store. We were hungry. Well, the Dolores Food Market had homemade pies and local peaches from Paonia, which was all I needed to give it high rating, though it was a step fall off after that.
I know pies pretty well, at least Apple and Strawberry Rhubarb. I bought three to bring to Larry Lasker who had invited me to stay at his Telluride home.
After I dropped Todd and Sasha off by the Sheridan Hotel, the epicenter of Festival social activity, I set out to find Larry’s condo. It was gray not brown as Google search had said. But Larry and Anita were already there having made their own much longer drive from Montana.
I’ve known Larry intermittently since my early Los Angeles film days. In fact we once flew in my Cessna from Telluride back to Los Angeles. We stopped near Grand Canyon where I took a whole lot of photographs of pretty much the same angle. I remember Larry asking me why I took so many pictures of the same thing. I didn’t have an answer. In fact I thought of William Eggleston’s answer to why HE only took one picture of each thing and he answered “If I take more, then I can never decide which I like best…”
The “Back Lot” theater is for off the grid films, usually interesting. It’s free. I stopped in to see one on my old North Beach neighborhood club, The Condor, where Carol Doda pioneered the San Francisco topless scene. It was an ancient history that I knew from my days there.
After Wim Wenders’ penetrating film on Anslem Kiefer, I was able to trade a few words with him, not on his film but on his book “ONCE”, an obsession of mine for several years. It’s a collection of photographs of his random adventures over the years, mostly of travels across America, with words not describing the palace but of his thoughts at the moment. I’ve been trying to do something like that.
Interesting that, at the festival,more than visuals, I recall particular words from the director’s’ discussion of their films:
.Alice Rohrwacher ( this years’ Silver Medalist )
“To film people in their real life is keeping them In prison, I wanted to free them into a fiction ,,”
“The effort to reach is worth it even if you don’t get it…”
“Over the course of the film, the character never changes, but the world changes around him”
“I may disagree with my critics, but I still agree with me.”
“… casting the child from dozens of locals, I picked the kid who was not interested in being in the film.”
Erroll Morris, re: John Le Carre
“He learned to take experience through the magical door into fiction”
“I’m unsure in my belief in God but I’m sure God believes in me”
“In interrogating suspects, begin by conveying that you are giving them something, that you are their only hope for freedom, that they are dependent on you.”
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Late on Sunday night I walked out to the distant Town Park outdoor screen, lay on the damp grass and watched Tehachapi, French filmmaker JR’s documentary of his photographing eighteen high security prisoners in that highest of security prisons. He photographed and talked with them, involved them in creating a prison yard mural of all their faces. These were potentially very dangerous men. It was a gratifying and remarkable project.
The next day I was at a small discussion group on criminal justice. JR was a part and he brought Kevin Walsh , one of the Tehachapi prisoners from his film, now released. In the film he had a swastika tattooed on his cheek – it was now removed. Afterward I talked to Kevin for quite a while. What emerged repeatedly was that in prison, there are two separate rules you have to follow, the official prison rules and the rules set by the leaders of the racial group you are inherently a part of. In the latter, there are frequent riots, usually interracial. You are expected to take part. It you don’t, your refusal can be fatal. You don’t refuse.
On a lighter note, he spoke optimistically of his future, returning to his old neighborhood.
This was an unexpected Festival experience.
On the last day I drove out of the town, up valley to the now abandoned mine. It was a time gone bye.
Then I left for Aspen.
Loved your wander~
once again a wonderful insightful journey through TFF....is almost seems that NOT haing a pass is the best way to navigate! Well written...Well done