Editor’s column/daily commentary welcoming feedback and opinions.
Let’s face it, there is a lottery aspect to all of this, except YOU have quite a bit of influence over who gets that big-ass check. I feel like I am saying the same thing over and over again here, but the fact is that the culmination is a genuinely affecting moment that sweeps every single person involved up into it. And THAT is the magic of Film Prize.
Irene Cho was a fucking force of nature, an unstoppable, and indefatigable hustling bowling ball of energy that made things happen, that stitched shit together, that produced and promoted both officially and unofficially. She was the real deal.
And meanwhile great film and entertainment journalists and critics like Steve Dollar, Susan King, and Ed Douglas aren’t getting raised on a pedestal by the people who employ them. Or frankly, not employed nearly as much as they should be. These are pros. People that do this stuff the right way. I don’t remember one of them having issues reading through the first fucking paragraph in a press release.
I obviously have a fond and emotional connection to the video store culture as it was back in the day. And I know that the city of Dallas will miss having Premiere Video around to serve as a one-stop go-to place to find something you’re dying to see but couldn’t find elsewhere or to just load up on films for a couple nights.
He, more or less, hired me because I was a theatre kid that had a warehouse of movie knowledge in my head and California State Law pretty much required someone with my career ambitions to work in a video store at some point as they attempted to get their SAG card or sell their first script.
that attention to detail and/or the prioritization as to where that attention to detail should be focused routinely comes from the top. And this is where I have to give a big nod to Executive Director David Schillhammer, Programming Director Matthew Curtis, and Programming Coordinator Tim Anderson. Those positions are fraught with epic headache-inducing crises and tough judgment calls, and thankless task after thankless task. And David, Matthew, and Tim, managed to both do whatever they had to do to command their film festival ship and heard the cats that are the filmmakers, jury members, patrons, sponsors, film fans, etc. quite obviously have good film programming chops, and also display poise befitting Mr. Roarke from “Fantasy Island.”
And let me tell you, it is very hard to convince a famous director or movie star, etc. to leave their home in New York City or Beverly Hills or wherever to come spend a couple days at a film festival in Oxford, Mississippi, or Wichita, Kansas, or Birmingham, Alabama, or Dallas, Texas, so they can have film fans make a big deal over them, talk about a film or films they made 10 or 20 years ago, and receive a cool award and endless praise. It’s even harder to convince a personal publicist, or agent, or manager.
The Funny LIVES in Dallas and Artistic Director Maggie Rieth Austin creates it at the
While discussing the films in XX, praise was evenly distributed among THE BOX, BIRTHDAY PARTY, and HER ONLY LIVING SON for various reasons, but the biggest laugh of the night came from the diminutive Niki Pence, when she explained her preference of DON’T FALL by explaining that the film connected with her since throughout her life, she has been “full of rage.”
If you look him up on IMDb, you’ll see the biography that I wrote for him five years ago. It’s a bio pushing how much promise he had, with The Ben Stiller Show appearances, a Tom Arnold series, and a ton of commercials in a short period of time. It talks about the two short films he directed which both won a lot of awards in film fests in the San Diego area (he wasn’t that savvy about the film fest circuit to take them farther). And that’s where it pretty much ends.
