Maybe I’m just tired and grumpy after long days of festival but today just wasn’t a peak day at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
I didn’t go at all yesterday because of professional obligations so I was looking forward to today.
The first film I saw started the day right although they held the press out until the very last because the showing was sold out. “Accidental Icon: The Real Gidget Story” is a short (60 minutes) documentary based on a book written by novelist Fredrick Kohner who was the father of the real girl called Gidget by the boy surfers in the late-50's. Gidget (Girl mIDGET) was/is Kathy Kohner (Zuckerman) who at about the time of her fourteenth birthday wanted to surf and hang out with the boys at Malibu.
Some might put a cynical slant to this and say Kohner was just boy crazy and the surf boys wanted to take advantage of a cute, young girl. And maybe she was and maybe they did but honestly, watching the documentary you get the feeling that she really wanted to be “just one of the boys” and those boys saw her primarily as a little sister.
Cute as a puppy, athletic, forward, Kohner would go down to the beach and trade her lunch for surf lessons. Her father, enamored of the nascent youth surf culture, would talk to his daughter about the particulars, and about the specific language they used - kook, shoobies, aloha spirit, etc. Kohner convinced her father, a writer, to detail it all. Hollywood found the book after it became a national best seller and the rest was film and cultural history. Sandra Dee, the first film Gidget, won the hearts and minds of the youth of the time turning surfing and the culture into a
national obsession.
Moondoggie, Kahuna and rest - real surf dudes - were made famous and infamous by the silly surf movies of the sixties. Malibu became crowded with kids trying to capture that wild innocence. Shortly afterward, Sally Field in the iconic television series, and the Beach Boys, with perhaps the most infectious pop music of all time, sealed the deal . It was surprising to me how many modern female surfers still identify with Gidget and feel that she represents them.
All real? Who knew?
This is a fantastic documentary narrated by actress Jorja Fox (“CSI”.) Not knowing spit about this I had a lot of pure fun discovering that all the legendary film and television was based on these actual characters. Hearing them talk about their life and times was some of the best parts of this movie. They verified some of the movie and television details but laughed at others. Kahuna's grass shack, for example was real; the romance between Gidget and Moondoggie was not.
James Darren, Cliff Robertson, Sally Field and other celebs and many world-class surfers were interviewed by the director. I am in awe of the access the director had to all these people who recounted their recollections about their part of the Gidget legend.
Kohner-Zuckerman was there for a Q&A with a rowdy, enthusiastic audience. I was mightily tempted to go to the after-party at Muldoons. But silly me, I wanted to see another film that started immediately afterwards - wrong decision - but more on that later.
At 60 minutes, the film was just right. It’s light, fun and informative. No dark places here; no drug habits or alcoholic car wrecks or suiciding off cliffs - maybe the filmmakers chose not to show the darkness (if there was any) but Kohner-Zuckerman’s life seemed as idyllic as the California beaches in those innocent and kowabunga-driven 60's.
See it. Trust me, you’ll smile through the whole damned thing.
From the sublime to the ridiculous. Ugh. I really hate to disdain anyone’s film. It is so hard to get one made and so much work that I really admire anyone who accomplishes that task. But “Shoot The Hero ” was just a miserable sit. In fact, after about 35 minutes I did something I probably have only done once or twice in my lifetime - I walked.
I have no idea how this film got made. It’s actually three separate short films - two unrelated segments that are tied together by the third. I guess the filmmaker thought “Well, Tarantino did it ("Pulp Fiction") so can I.” But after the first one and a half segments, I and the person I was with couldn’t take it. We both independently decided to leave and went to the shorts showing next door.
I did come back and catch the Q&A - mainly because I left my tablet in the theater and also because I left the shorts showing after 2.5 of them - but mainly because of scheduling, although I was truly happy to get out of that screening also.
The Q&A for this was about what you’d expect and I’m going to be political and leave it at that. But let me just say that there were some people who were very self-congratulatory about this effort and they were the only ones who didn’t seem to notice that they were simply puffing themselves up.
You may like “Shoot The Hero” - I obviously did not.
A quick note on the 2.5 shorts I saw (I came in late to the first one.) Is no one telling stories anymore? Or stories that make sense? I have beginning film students who write better material than this. Hey, aspiring filmmakers - a word, please? Just because you have an idea and storyline doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue to develop it. The story about the handyman who helps a mermaid fix a lighthouse was a cute idea. Now tweak it. Scenes of them talking in front of the big light and riding a bike through a quaint town is not enough. There's a dramatic structure here that has to acknowledged and you did not.
The film about an agoraphobic who communicates with a girl next door through a hole in the wall is again, a cute idea - now add some dramatic tension and build into it. Start the hole out small, make it increasingly larger - build it - make me believe that this guy will eventually break that wall out to get to the girl at the end. Symbolism isn’t enough - you need story too.
I was really disappointed in general at the level of short films I’ve seen all through this festival. Not because they weren’t technically well-done; rather because the stories limped along without regard to basic storytelling techniques. If anyone wants to see really good short films, go to YouTube, find a company called BlueTongue Films and watch those.
After the Islands, I went over to the Regency South Coast Village Theater to catch the Irish Spotlight film “A Shine of Rainbows.” I expected the place to be packed and it wasn’t. Maybe everyone knew or sensed something that I didn’t. I wish I had gotten the memo.
The movie isn’t horrible. In fact, the acting, cinematography, and music were very good. The director obviously knows how to move a camera. But the story? Meh. Trite, predictable, melodramatic...who writes these things? I cannot imagine this film getting made in Hollywood. Lifetime, maybe - big maybe - but not a feature.
I’m hoping the book on which this was based was better told than this tear-jerker. I felt (sob) so used afterwards since the director constantly pushed and twiddled buttons that he knew no one could resist. I mean, they even had a freaking baby seal in this - a really cute baby seal who had been abandoned by its mother. And a
funny border collie. And a mom (the luminous Connie Nielsen) who was beautiful, sexy and soooo nice and cool - everyone’s dream mom (who dies, of course.) And a gruff, ruggedly handsome Aidan Quinn (who predictably becomes much less gruff.) And gorgeous vistas and Irish pub music, and...oh, well.
I was underwhelmed by this film and found it predictable and without a lot of depth but there is a lot of nice parts to it that may add up to a better experience for you. At least the scenery was beautiful. And the 10-yr-old actor, John Bell, who played the boy was an amazement. This was his first film and he just nailed it. His 
performance is almost worth the other tedious parts.
The Q&A afterwards was along similarly predictable lines. Stories about the shoot and the location and the cast. No one talked about the script and I know I should have brought some of that stuff up but the film had sucked the curious out of me and I just sat there and listened.
The producer mentioned that they were premiering the film at film festivals and then stage-releasing it in selected cities in the areas they were premiering. It’s at the Westpark 8 in Irvine if you’re interested.
So...a really good film, a few bad ones and one that I could have easily lived without. The film festival experience in a nutshell.
One more day...
Sidenote: Thanks to Luanne, one of the volunteers at the door at the Island, for all her help and to all the volunteers who put up with me and the rest of attendees going to the wrong places, making too much noise, asking for special treatment and in general, pushing the limits of their patience.
