Altitude sickness
Fran Magazine: Issue #167
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Red eyes
A little before midnight on Tuesday, I boarded a plane in Salt Lake City to fly not directly back to New York — because my non-stop had been cancelled — but to Tampa from which I would then take a flight to New York. I wondered, briefly, if any celebs who had been at Sundance would have been punted onto the Florida detour. The answer was yes, in that there was someone who had been involved in a Sundance movie on my flight who was, perhaps, the only person attending the fest who did not deserve any more inconveniences for the rest of their life.
As was the case on my flight out to Utah, there was an open seat between me and the person in my row. I put on my Airpods, took off my baseball hat, put on my eye mask, and tightened my hood over my head for maximum sensory deprivation, only to then feel a tap on my shoulder. I pushed my eyemask up, and the man sitting by the window said something to me. It took three attempts — he was quiet, planes are loud, I had pods in — before I understood his question:
“Are you a content creator?”
I laughed, because how else are you supposed to respond to a question like that, said, “kind of,” and then tried, in vain, to fall asleep.
By the time I got back to New York on Wednesday morning, I was so tired I wanted to cry. The rest of the work day was easy — no one needed much of me for anything — but I could not overcome the heaviness of exhaustion. I asked Phil to make spaghetti for dinner, not in a Bon Appetit tomato sauce from scratch type of way, but the way I had it growing up: noodles, sauce, Kraft green canister of cheese, fin. The meal was nostalgic and perfect — the antidote to a week of mostly takeout and free appetizers and Celcius for breakfast.
It was an immense privilege to go to Sundance again, because even when the movies are just okay, there’s a thrill and a pleasure to being at a film festival with people you know and like and respect. This year I saw the exact same number of films (fifteen) and did approximately eight times the number of interviews (maybe not fifteen… but something that felt like fifteen). Most of those interviews live online and most of them were not as intimidating as this.
Doing interviews is always a game of adrenaline. I am terrified, typically, not because I am starstruck but because I am being recorded — on video, on audio, whatever. I’m more used to it now than ever before, but it’s still an intense feeling to know that any and all fuckups could live in perpetuity. As the person asking questions, it’s your responsibility to maintain a healthy, open energy which is easy when it’s your friends and harder when it’s people you’ve just met, people who might be in any possible mood, people who do not live especially normal lives. I am not especially shy and I do not get easily starstruck — the most starstruck I have been in years was documented here. I am overwhelmed with second-hand embarrassment when I watch or read interviews where it’s clear to me that the person asking questions is far more concerned with being liked than anything else. I want to be liked, of course, but the best way to do that is mostly to be as normal as possible. I mostly don’t engage with interview subjects outside of the framework of an interview unless there is some actual connection I have to them and/or their work,1 and even then, I’m more inclined to just let their memory of me be twenty minutes of questions then moving on with their lives.
Of films I saw at Sundance, there were four promising debuts: Adam Meeks’s Union County, Vera Miao’s Rock Springs, Louis Paxton’s The Incomer, and John Wilson’s The History of Concrete. Sam wrote more eloquently than I ever could about Union County, which struck a nerve like none other. Rock Springs is the type of horror movie — or ghost story, really — that I really get something out of versus watching behind a pillow. Light on scares and shocks, heavy on what a dead thing is and can be. Not unlike Union County, it is a painfully relevant film. The Incomer is a modern take on Local Hero (“Local Hero by way of The Wicker Man” is what the director told me — which I’m inclined to believe because it is also a musically-inclined film, though certainly less dependent on horror tropes). I have quite a low tolerance for whimsy, of which there was a lot this year, but The Incomer fell right into my sweet spot of what is both enjoyable and light-hearted. The History of Concrete is such a marvelous encapsulation of what Wilson’s work can be at its very best. Watching his work I feel the way I do when I watch something by Weerasethakul or Zhangke: I have no clue how time is passing, it doesn’t matter how time is passing, I am able to relinquish control over my senses until the experience is over.
The biggest film of the festival before it began was The Moment. I thought it was fine: competent and stylish (no one can deny that Aidan Zamiri has a knack for this kind of thing) but weighed down by a sort of self-seriousness the whole movie is built around making fun of. There are jokes, sure, but not enough of them. I have great affection for Charli XCX’s music, but part of the appeal of brat — and the subsequent remix album — was that it was a piece of music that really spoke for itself. Now we’re on month, what, 19? of explaining what brat is and was and could be. Let’s wrap it up and get to what is sure to be a horrible Harry Styles album. The biggest film of the festival now is Josephine, the sophomore feature from Beth de Araújo, starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan as parents of a child who witnesses a violent sexual assault and grapple with the aftermath of how to deal with such a thing — legally, emotionally, psychologically. The film is not quite artful or abstract enough to be an image-driven work of impressionism, nor is it quite smart or humble enough in its seriousness to be a harrowing work of social reckoning. People say this all the time, but the thing that makes Kenneth Lonergan movies good is that they are kinda funny. Trying to tackle a subject this miserable and scary and upsetting without even a hint of irony or levity actually feels more absurd and inappropriate.
The best time I had at the movies at the festival was at the premiere of David Wain’s Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. I’m surprised at how divisive it’s been between critics; to me, it is a perfect return to form. I love to laugh and smile and to look at Ken Marino on screen. The best time I had watching a TV show was the pilot adaptation of Alexandra Tanner’s Worry called Worried — directed by Nicole Holofcener, starring Gideon Adlon, Rachel Kaly, and Devin Bostick, in a script by Alex and Leslie Arfin. Again: I love to laugh and smile. This show doesn’t have Ken Marino in it (yet?) but I’m not holding it against anyone.
I got a bit of extra time towards the end of my stint in Utah to see friends: some in from New York, some in from LA, others now local Utah. I have felt surprisingly emotional since coming back, crying on Thursday night and Saturday night for reasons that never warranted tears in the first place. Exhaustion, maybe, and some latent stress, but also gratitude. It is nice to have a respite where I can talk about new things, new people, and new ideas during a time of year where everything feels the same kind of stale it did at the end of last year. I owe people emails and I’m behind on journaling, but today the sun was out when I woke up — just as bright and golden as it was when I arrived in Utah last week.
Do you have questions about my “Sundance experience”? Brand activations? The Chase Sapphire Lounge? (I didn’t go this year.) I kind of liked the Gregg Araki movie to my surprise. What have you been watching and reading? Do you think I will ever get around to seeing Frankenstein?
Ideally it is an literal connection — like a friend or acquaintance in common, or we’ve met previously doing an interview — though a connection to their art — have I seen them on stage? are they in one of my actual favorite movies of all time? — is also loosely valid enough for me to break through the barrier of professionalism.
How did war and peace reading go during all this…I can’t imagine there was much time for ol’ Ghrostov
salute for doing 15 interviews 🫡. i read a couple books this week that made me think harder about how to tell modern ghost stories (Helen Oyeyemi’s The Opposite House, M. John Harrison’s Empty Space) so your description of Rock Springs intrigues me. i should also probably finish Enys Men in this vein.