When my sometimes-collaborator, Joe Basile, invited me to New Jersey to check out the Garden State Film Festival last weekend, I was there. Since we’re in the run-up to the Maryland Film Festival, I figured it would constitute a sort of series. Now in its ninth year, the GSFF is a four-day event screening features, docs, shorts, music videos, student films, and trailers. There were something like 175 titles, screened in multiple venues around the downtown and beachfront of Asbury Park. What makes it more than a garden-variety film fest is the strong sense of place: a hometown, retro vibe in a storied beach city between decay and revitalization. The music and arts scene is happening (BTW Putty Hill screened in AP at the ShowRoom in March). Parts of town are still sketchy, but it’s all rich in character. (Starbucks, Gap, and their ilk are not welcome.) In fact, Asbury Park was full of characters, including Joe’s associate (the lovely Michelle Hurley) and a host of NJ filmmaker and actor denizens. The locals are more interesting and colorful than the Sopranos/ Jersey Shore media exaggerations. The name “Bruce” is often whispered.
I missed fest opener EXPECTING MARY (with Elliot Gould, Lainie Kazan, Cybill Shepard), but I did see a few films: JUST AROUND THE CORNER is a doc spotlighting the Light of Day Foundation’s rock & roll fight against Parkinson’s disease. The doc features great music excerpts and lots of talking heads (Michael J. Fox is interviewed exhaustively) and the Boss is, as always in AP, a constant presence. While its heart is in the right place, the doc feels brutally long and repetitious at a hundred and six minutes.
On Saturday night, at the amazing vintage beachfront Paramount Theater, I saw a sort-of doc, WHO DO I THINK I AM. The one-liner for this film is “Clarence Clemons goes on a spiritual journey across China after a long tour.” Clemons gives us wall-to-wall navel-gazing voice over and tourist-quality video as he makes the usual tourist stops. You barely get to enjoy the exotic sights of China because the editor’s finger seems to be stuck on the slow dissolve button from start to finish. Bruce did make an appearance at the after-party though.
Things picked up in the docudrama and fiction categories. SPLIT DECISION: THE BOBBY CZYZ STORY is a long short about true-life boxing champ Bobby and his epic love/hate relationship with a brutally abusive father. The movie is good, but hearing Bobby (one of those NJ characters I’m talking about) do Q & A was even better. And then there was SUPERTRAMP, basically a gonzo extended hyper-violent fight sequence. Cool.
Among the shorts showcasing in the quest for funding, standouts included EAT ME, a zombie movie that does for zombies what True Blood does for vampires, potentially, and Joe Basile’s WEST END. WEST END is old-school the way we like it: cops and criminals as human beings, navigating the moral labyrinth of family loyalty, Jersey style. WEST END won the “Best Trailer” award.
At the classic 17-room boardwalk hotel (the Laingdon, very reasonable) in Ocean Grove, I ran into some unexpected filmmakers. The ladies in question are the great choreographer/ dancer/ actor Anne Reinking, a paramour of Bob Fosse, and charming Brenda Siemer Scheider, widow of Roy Scheider (star of ALL THAT JAZZ). They are respectively the exec-producer and co-director/ producer of “IN MY HANDS: THE STORY OF MARFAN SYNDROME.” What is Marfan Syndrome? Well, that’s the point. Anyway, I am a huge fan of Fosse and ALL THAT JAZZ, so I was much more excited about meeting these gals than I was about any encounter with the Boss.
David Warfield
