THE L.A. FILM FESTIVAL

Country-fair air, blue-ribbon films
Saturday, 9:52 p.m.

Racing pigs. Rats in love. Tarantulas and a black spider. Oh, yes, and a batch of short films. They all took center stage, sort of, Saturday as the Los Angeles Film Festival began winding down on its final weekend.

At the Majestic Crest theater in Westwood, a computer animated film about two rats that fall in love captivated the mid-afternoon audience. It was called "One Rat Short," or, as writer-director Alex Weil puts it, "animation noir."

The film begins in the grime and grit of the New York City subway system, where a rat gives chase to a nearly empty Cheetos bag drifting in the wind and accidentally stumbles into a futuristic laboratory housing dozens of white rats undergoing scientific experiments. The street rat is attracted to one of the lab rats, but their budding love is doomed before they can escape.

"I think it has to do with self image and how one sees oneself, and then one sees something that is more beautiful and someone of desire and gets distracted by other things," Weil said after the screening. "I tried to make it poignant so that we leave with something. It's about how difficult it is to connect and how everybody wants to connect."

A similar theme about connecting and loneliness -- only with human relationships -- can be found in British filmmaker Daniel Outram's short film "A Supermarket Love Song," which also screened Saturday.

It tells the story of a teenage girl who, while doing community service for committing a crime, helps an elderly man shop for food. The ending is moving as it is disturbing. As she leaves, the old man asks the girl if he could touch her skin. He then runs his fingers down her cheek and feels her hand. She then leaves, flummoxed, as he closes the door and returns to his lonely life.

"To me, the whole film is about that moment--the skin moment," Outram said. "It's about the complexity of loneliness. It's about people coming together. There's that kind of tragedy in the fact that people want to get together but they don't. But it's also, obviously, about aging and what you leave behind and a sense of loss."

Outram said he financed the film using money he made doing a beer commercial in Lithuania. Cedar Sherbert was also on hand at the Majestic Crest Saturday to discuss his short film "Gesture Down (I Don't Sing)" which he adapted from the poem "Gesture Down to Guatemala" by James Welch. It tells about a Native American man who reclaims his heritage.

Sherbert said the film, shot on the Kumeyaay reservation about an hour southeast of Ensenada, was a personally driven project. His mother is native Kumeyaay.

"It's really about my relationship with that tribe, with that village, and with those people. I've been going there since I was a little boy. One of the first times I went there was actually to bury my grandfather. So, that place means a lot to me," Sherbert said. "It really came from a very personal place within the context of those people and who am I within the context of their culture. I'm from there, but I'm not from there."

Among the other shorts screening Saturday afternoon were "Diet Leibovich" by Israeli filmmaker Avishag Leibovich, who humorously chronicles her family's dieting efforts; "Gnome" by Jenny Bicks, bittersweet comedy about a suburban housewife who accepts a ride with a trio of inner-city female impersonators; and, "Side Walls" by Gustavo Taretto, a touching story set in the high-rises of Buenos Aires about a young man and young woman who have difficulty meeting the person of his or her dreams.

Now, back to the pigs.

Broxton Avenue, christened "Popcorn Alley" during the festival, had one parking lot transformed into a makeshift county fair.

A boy named Joel Zachary was standing in the pen petting some of the piglets. "Wilbur is his favorite pig," said his dad, Mark Zachary, of Rancho Park. When asked which one Wilbur was, the father replied for his son: "I think they're all Wilbur." Not far away were four 250-to-300-pound Yorkshire pigs named Spot, Betty, Susie and Charlie.

Children, who were seated on bales of hay ringing the racetrack, went hog-wild when the Westwood Pig Race was staged. Spot, Betty, Susie and Charlie didn't seem like they wanted to run at first, but put food in front of their snouts and look at them bolt from the pen. Charlie was the first to plunge into his victory meal and was named the official winner.

Of course, the pigs were there for a reason: they were hyping Paramount Pictures' year-end family movie "Charlotte's Web." In fact, the parking lot for the pig race was splattered with advertising for not only that film, but Paramount's animated film "Barnyard," which debuts Aug. 4. And there was a nearby toilet seat race to remind everyone that DreamWorks has a film called "Flushed Away" coming out Nov. 3.

Tamara Andrews, a trainer for Gentle Jungle in Lebec, which trains animals for movies and TV, said these four porkers are "studio pigs." Charlie, for instance, has been in Japanese commercials. And although pigs aren't allowed to have SAG cards, they learn how to follow directions, much like actors.

"We teach them to sit, lay down, to look in different directions... ," Andrews said. "They don't make residuals. Their reward is a job well done and a good feeding at night."

Since "Charlotte's Web" is about a spider who befriends a pig, it was natural that the film's promoters had a spider handler on duty showing off a table lined with an assortment of tarantulas, a black widow spider, and even a brown rat, in glass cages. While the tarantulas look menacing, "most of them are actually pretty kicked back," said trainer Josh Ruffell of Brockett's Film Fauna in Westlake.

The collection included a cobalt blue tarantula from Asia, an orange knee tarantula from Mexico, a pink-toed tarantula from South America, a baboon tarantula from Africa, and a Goliath bird-eating tarantula from the Amazon [glad that one is kicked back].

"They're found all over the world," Ruffell said. "You wouldn't ordinarily find them all together.

He noted that the cobalt blue tarantula is one you probably don't want to mess with.

Under one row of tents, children got to pose with some of their favorite Disney characters, pound cow bells and drums, watch educational videos, play puzzle games, and color pictures with crayons, which are then laminated for them.

"They're all having fun," said Dawn Rager, a volunteer working the tents. "They're all swarming to the music and the beat of the drums. They're having a ball."

Meanwhile, Carl Williams of Los Angeles was watching his 3-year-old daughter, Sierra, make her way toward Mickey Mouse. "She's played with the spiders, played with the pigs, had her picture taken with [Little] Einstein, and went back for more music," Williams said.

As he talked, Sierra began dancing with Mickey Mouse, even though Mickey had been posing for a photo with another little girl.

"I guess she can't wait her turn," the father laughed, flashing a smile a country mile wide.

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Rookies make their own rules
Saturday, 9:42 a.m.

As directors of countless commercials, the husband-and-wife filmmaking team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris have always known for whom they were working: the client. As the directors recounted in Friday's final Lunch Talk at the Los Angeles Film Festival, making their first feature, "Little Miss Sunshine," was a different experience.

When Dayton and Faris finished a shot in their comedy, they didn't need to look over their shoulders to get a nod of approval from the advertising agency or its client. They didn't need to story board every camera shot, so that some higher-up could sign off on all of their ideas. If something worked for Dayton and Faris in the moment, it was good enough for the movie.

Clearly, their judgment was worthy. Sold for a record $10.5 million at this year's Sundance Film Festival, "Little Miss Sunshine" also was selected as Sunday's closing night film of the festival. The film opens July 26.

As rookie directors, Dayton and Faris didn't have an established rule book to follow. So rather than pull their actors aside and coach them as to how family rivalries might reveal themselves, the directors had their cast (led by Steve Carrell, Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear) play a real game of dodge ball before production began. Dayton and Faris said they've never had more fun than in working on "Little Miss Sunshine." In a few weeks, audiences can share in the enjoyment.

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A small budget, a little luck and one big party
Thursday, 5:55 p.m.

"Quinceañera" is a movie about many things -- family, class, neighborhoods and, above all else, unconditional love. But it's also a movie about a big party, and when filmmaker Wash Westmoreland was making his ultra-low budget drama, one of his greatest worries was whether he could pull off the big party.

Set and filmed in Echo Park, "Quinceañera" focuses on a young girl and a young boy thrown out of their homes for different reasons. Magdalena is pregnant; Carlos is gay. The upheaval in their lives coincides with Magdalena's imminent 15th birthday party, and the traditional ceremony and fiesta commemorating the milestone.

With a production budget under $400,000 and less than three weeks to make his movie, Westmoreland feared his film's central event would either have only a handful of partygoers ("That really says indie film," Westmoreland said in his Thursday Lunch Talk at the Los Angeles Film Festival) or be rained out.

Westmoreland and his filmmaking and life partner Richard Glatzer were initially drawn into the world of quinceañeras when they were asked by a neighbor to photograph their daughter's big day. Westmoreland and Glatzer donated their services, and the kindness paid off: When the day came to film the big party, the skies cleared and neighborhood kids filled the set, even dancing a waltz. The centerpiece premiere of the festival, "Quinceañera" has enjoyed that kind of luck all along.

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Backstage with Jake Kasdan's 'TV Set'
Thursday, 10:55 a.m.

You know you're at an industry screening when audience members tote copies of Bill Carter's "Desperate Executives" and cram diligently as they await the curtain rising for "The TV Set," Jake Kasdan's satire about the life of one television pilot during pilot season. Actually, they were probably TV wannabes (those mentioned in the book have no doubt already read it) but that still translates into a boisterous, and packed house for the Los Angeles debut of the film on Wednesday.

For those who like "The Larry Sanders Show," and "Entourage," and are eagerly awaiting the fall TV debuts of Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" (about the backstage drama at a sketch comedy show) and Tina Fey's "30 Rock" (about the backstage comedy at a sketch comedy show), this is your movie, with enough verisimilitude for the TV industry, that participants in the Boob Tube beast might feel like popping some Xanax afterward.

This is a movie charting how the sausages are made in the sausage factory. It tracks the journey of a sitcom, from casting, through shooting, testing and, ultimately, presentation to a bevy of journalists and media buyers at the upfronts. The sitcom's hapless creator is played by David Duchovny, with Judy Greer as his manager, Ioan Gruffudd as a British TV executive in the process of selling his soul, and Sigourney Weaver as the sociopathic lady devil who runs the network.

Unlike her East Coast counterpart -- Meryl Streep's chilly editrix in "The Devil Wears Prada" -- Weaver's creation is a cheerful vulgarian in an expensive pantsuit, who relies religiously on the creative input of her 14-year-old daughter, and makes sunny pronouncements like, "Originality scares me." When evaluating actresses trying out for the lead of the sitcom, she muses that one candidate "doesn't let her cuteness get in the way of her hotness…" while the other "has fake breasts, and in the life of a series, the audience can feel it."

While many industry satires opt to portray suits as hyper-aggressive, and in-your-face (the Jeremy Piven type), "The TV Set" presents a countervailing -- equally true vision of power plays sugarcoated in happy talk. Edicts are delivered with faux ego-soothing words. Everyone is always sunny in California, even as they wield scalpels.

The evolution of the sitcom is what you expect -- dumb to dumber to dumbest, but the acting is deft and dead-on, and makes an audience long for more amusing vehicles for a talent like Weaver's who seems to be disappearing from the screen as she creeps closer to the age-of-no-return for actresses.

After the screening, Kasdan, a pint-sized director in the J.J. Abrams mold, answered questions from the audience. He was joined by cast members Greer, Duchovny, Justine Bateman, Lindsay Sloane and Willie Garsin, who all seemed determined to speak as little as possible and kept passing the microphone between them like a hot potato.

Kasdan, who worked on the series "Freaks and Geeks" and directed the film "Orange County," said the movie was "not clearly autobiographical" because he'd had some nice experiences in the medium. He also noted that when making a TV pilot, "the Catch-22 is that the network is never really fully committed to the [show] until an unbelievable amount of success has happened."

Afterward, one audience member raised her hand, and stated, "I've worked in sitcoms for the last 10 years. Thanks to your movie, I think I quit."

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'Gretchen,' 'Deliver Us From Evil' honored
Thursday, 9:10 a.m.

The Los Angeles Film Festival bestowed top honors on writer-director Steve Collins and documentary filmmaker Amy Berg on Wednesday night.

Collins won for his narrative feature "Gretchen," a coming-of-age drama about a 17-year-old girl with boy problems, while Berg's "Deliver Us From Evil" delves into the ways the Catholic Church -- and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony -- responded to a pedophile priest in its midst.

Both awards carry a $50,000 cash prize from Target. They were announced at the festival's Spirit of Independence event honoring Charlize Theron.

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Coming to terms with horror
Wednesday, 8:55 a.m.

In a documentary world awash in Ken Burns knock-offs, with their reliance on old photographs and celebrity voice-overs, it is good to be reminded of what the camera can capture that no amount of narrative or analysis could ever hope to. In "Inheritance," which screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival on Tuesday at the Italian Cultural Center, director James Moll documents the story of Monika Hertwig, a German woman who in her early 60s finally comes to terms with her parents' participation in the Holocaust.

Born in 1945, Monika spent her early years believing that her father, like many German men, had died for his country during World War II. But when she was 11, a chance angry remark by her mother -- that Monika was just like her father and would die like him too -- forced Monika's grandmother to explain: Monika's father was Amon Goeth, the murderous commandant of Plaszow work camp in Poland. But having been raised in the truth-denying society of post-war Germany, it wasn't until she saw the movie "Schindler's List" (in which Goeth was played by Ralph Fiennes) that she truly began to understand what her father had been.

For years, she had wanted to meet one of the young girls who had "worked" for her parents during their 500 days at Plaszow. She had seen Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig interviewed about Oskar Schindler on German TV and had tried to contact her. When Moll and producer Christopher Paulick contacted Monika to get permission to use photographs of Goeth for a documentary on the making of "Schindler¹s List," Moll decided to facilitate the two women meeting at Monika's request.

Despite their wildly different experiences and understanding of the Holocaust, Monika and Helen share the rare ability to recount stories of horror and pathos in a clear-eyed, non-self-pitying way. Helen agrees to meet Monika at the monument that marks the ruins of Plaszow and to discuss what she knew of Goeth. So, her grown daughter in tow, Helen flies from her home in New Jersey back to Krakow, while Monika makes the same journey from her small German village. Watching the women prepare for the meeting is almost as heartbreaking as their life stories. Monika's fear is written clearly on her face, in one shot her hand shakes as she lights a cigarette before calling Helen to set up the meeting; when the two finally meet, it is Monika who weeps, who holds a hand in front of her face as if ashamed to be seen by one of her father's victims. (Monika decided not to attend the L.A. Film Festival because, Moll explained after the film, she believed "the Americans would not like her" because of who her father was.)

Though she had never returned to Poland, Helen, for her part, is seemingly more concerned with how the trip will effect her daughter than herself. Indeed, as they prepare to meet the horrific past -- Helen with her perfectly coiffed hair and pink twin set, her daughter all American from her New Jersey accent to her expensive running shoes -- it is difficult to reconcile the image with the mission. The camera captures precisely what a man in the audience, a man who identified himself as an Auschwitz survivor, called "the banality of evil, the proximity of the devil to everyday life." Arriving at Plaszow on a bright sunny day, Helen and her daughter could be tourists approaching any sort of war monument, until Helen begins telling Monika about her father. Of how he shot people for fun, how he whistled after he had done it, how she knew by which hat he chose each morning if he was going out to kill people.

She does not pull any punches and it is hard to say which is more difficult to witness -- the horrible truth coming out of Helen's lip-sticked mouth or the look on Monika's face as she visibly ages with each horrible detail. And once she has taken in the enormity of her father's actions, she must face, perhaps for the first time, her mother's complicity, her ability to sunbathe and lounge in the bath while mass murder was taking place outside her window.

The meeting was clearly not scripted in any way; occasionally the women misunderstand each other or experience emotional overlap. Moll said later that once the meeting began, he refused to stop them. When they had to change film, the filmmakers just lost what they lost; it was more important to preserve the intimacy. And it is that raw, unfiltered, uneasy, uncomfortable intimacy that makes this, as one audience member later remarked, much more than just another Holocaust movie. Here, in these women's tears and twisted smiles, in their attempt to make sense of events beyond comprehension are the living wounds of history -- terminal and undeniable.

Given the nature of the story, it is not surprising that there are many moments in the film that evoke tears and gasps and even horrified laughter (the film ends with footage of Goeth's execution -- it took three attempts to hang him before he finally died.) But two stand out as images only a camera could catch. In one long interview, Monika explains how even as a child she hated the children of Nazi perpetrators. The children feel badly, she says, and they should. "I never have felt pity for the children of the perpetrators," she says, her very pretty face ravaged by time and truth and grief. "And I never will." In another, Helen prepares to leave her hotel room to meet Monika; gathering her purse and sundry from the bed with busy little gestures familiar to anyone with a mother, she says in a quiet aside to her daughter: "It was very selfish of him to have a child."

Such an understatement leaves you breathless. But words cannot describe it, or much of the two women's journey. That you have to see for yourself.

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Does Film Have a Role in Real Life?
Wednesday, 8:45 a.m.

It was fitting then, that a few minutes after "Inheritance" ended and just across the street at the W, a pool-side chat was gathering to discuss "Global Crisis: Can Films Save the World?" Filmmakers as diverse as Hany Abu-Assad ("Paradise Now"), Harry Thomason ("The Hunting of the President"), Chris Paine and Dean Devlin ("Who Killed the Electric Car"), Meena Nanji ("View from a Grain of Sand") and Jason Reitman ("Thank You for Not Smoking") discussed the ability of film to educate, inflame and otherwise change the hearts and minds of American audiences with varying degrees of optimism and a surprisingly wide range of philosophies.

Thomason claimed that the little film he and his wife did called "A Man From Hope" did change the world -- in 1992 before it was aired, Bill Clinton led the presidential race by 1%, Tomason says; after, he led by 8%. The film certainly changed television network policy, which now states that either all the candidates will have their shot at docu-dramas or none will.

Palestinian Abu-Assad, surprisingly, claimed he does not make films to change anyone's politics because not only is that, in his opinion, impossible, it is undesirable. "For me to try to change your mind, that is saying I am right and you are wrong. I would rather say, I am here and this is my opinion." So why did he get into filmmaking? "Because I fell in love with someone and she didn¹t love me and I think if I make movies she will regret this."

"Did it work?" asked Thomason.

"No," said Abu-Assad sadly.

Reitman, a self-proclaimed libertarian, claimed the best day he had after "Thank You" came out was when he got two requests on his blog -- one from a lung association congratulating him on the message of his film and inviting him to speak at a fundraiser and another from a pro-smokers group saying essentially the same thing. Nanji considers herself a more traditional documentarian -- "View from a Grain of Sand" she says is an attempt to record a history of Afghan women and girls that is being disappeared. "Just because these people do not have a voice does not mean they are not people." Devlin dutifully fielded questions about studio interference -- "I really understood the political impact a film could make when I made 'Godzilla,'" he deadpanned. While he and Paine explained that they had started out to make a funny film about a group of Hollywood lefties bemoaning the disappearance of their electric cars, "but making a documentary is a bit like building Frankenstein," says Paine. "You have to be willing to let it unspool. And when this unspoiled it wasn¹t so funny anymore."

Though the participants each had their own insights it was one of those topics that, given the time limit (one hour) and the setting (overlooking the hotel pool) lends itself more easily to humor than real discussion. In fact, it was a member of the audience who answered the original question most effectively. "Of course, we know that film can change the world," a young man said. "Look at 'Jaws.' Everyone's scared of the water now."

And perhaps the most telling moment came at the end when the predictable question -- "What film changed your view of the world" -- left all the participants save Reitman speechless. "Strangelove," he said quickly.

"Because it taught me that if you could make the bomb funny, you could make anything funny." After a moment of awkward silence shared by the rest of the filmmakers, it was decided. "I think we'll all go with 'Strangelove,'" said Paine. "Thank God someone here prepared," added Devlin.

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Wanted: Good Home for Film
Tuesday, 5:45 p.m.

She has spent the last year working 24/7 -- writing, producing and starring in "Ira and Abby." The romantic comedy has enjoyed two standing-room-only screenings at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Her Barry Sonnenfeld-produced situation comedy, "Notes from the Underbelly," debuts this fall. So why is Jennifer Westfeldt so troubled she hasn't slept in days?

Like so many filmmakers determined (and lucky) enough to actually get a movie made, Westfeldt now has entered acquisitions purgatory. A step up from development hell, it's that period of waiting, waiting, waiting for a distributor to step up and say it wants to buy your film. "Ira and Abby," a story of a neurotic, commitment-phobic man and the almost impossibly cool woman he meets and promptly marries, will likely find a buyer. But during a festival Lunch Talk about her film on Tuesday, Westfeldt shared worries about the film's future.

The co-writer and star of 2001's indie hit "Kissing Jessica Stein," Westfeldt struggled to come up with an idea for a follow-up film. But after attending wedding after wedding of countless friends, Westfeldt began to realize that many of these marriages were lasting only a few years. And yet the newly divorced would soon remarry again, repeating the same until-death-do-us-part vows as if they were empty boilerplate, not a meaningful pledge.

Westfeldt kicked around her reaction to this serial marrying, and, many months later, "Ira and Abby" was done. Now, if it can only enjoy a theatrical honeymoon, all will be OK, and Westfeldt can catch up on her sleep.

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Feeling the Heat, and the Buzz
Tuesday, 8:55 a.m.

By 4 p.m. Monday, things were picking up. People with maps held in front of them stalked the streets, dutifully queuing up in front of the various participating theaters. One of the longest lines was for the second showing of "Ira and Abby," quickly become a festival favorite despite the fact that a technical difficulty at the Crest kept crowds sweating under a sweltering sky for 45 minutes. People in line fanned themselves, debated the wisdom of trying to get into another film at the last minute and discussed the success of the festival thus far.

"I don't feel the buzz that I did in Park City last year," said one woman, an ob/gyn who kindly fanned the over-heated pregnant woman standing beside her. "I think maybe the streets are too wide here, it feels so spread out." The man in front of her had taken a day off work to attend but he agreed it was hard to get excited when there were so many festivals in Los Angeles and so many venues through which to view new movies. "I usually just go to the SAG screenings."

But this may have been the heat speaking; the film received much applause and as everyone exited the theater, it was clear good humor had been restored. "I thought you were really great," said one young man to his companion who had a small part in the film. "No, no," he added when his friend demurred. "You weren't on screen a lot but you really brought something."

With an ocean breeze kicking up in the rising twilight, the crowds already gathering for the next round of screenings radiated a more positive attitude; perhaps this is why so many of the screenings are scheduled late in the day. "Everyone's talking about 'Mario's Story,'" said a woman to her friend as they hurried along Westwood Boulevard. "Or what about 'Lather Effect'? Have you heard anything about that?"

Men in suits appeared from nowhere, talking into BlackBerrys and hand-helds as they strode through the litter of fallen jacaranda blooms. Looking a bit out of place among the halter-tops and cargo shorts worn by even the filmmakers themselves, these were clearly Industry guys. "I can't sign a guy to representation who I can't read," said one man and it was not clear if he was speaking to his cellphone or the man walking next to him. "How can I score with this guy anyway?"

Meanwhile, up on Hildegard at the W Hotel Los Angeles, preparations were being made for the filmmakers reception, hosted by Harrison Ford. (Note to product placement department: The W Hotel New York figured prominently in 'Ira and Abby' while W L.A. has hosted many festival events. Coincidence?) It was a casual affair -- no red carpet, no limo line (though there were an iordinate number of black SUVs, but then this is Westwood.) The soiree was to start at 7:30. By 7:10, the line at the West Garden entrance wound halfway down the block. While an open bar and a chance to meet Harrison Ford are both exciting prospects, it must be pointed out that if one hopes to become a successful filmmaker, one had better get used to being an hour late, not a half-hour early.

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Another career launched--inadvertently--by UCLA
Monday, 4:15 p.m.

As long as representatives from UCLA's nearby work placement office weren't listening, director Chris Gorak's fledgling filmmaking career should still be in very good shape.

In the Los Angeles Film Festival's inaugural Lunch Talks on Monday, Gorak discussed his new movie, the dirty bomb drama "Right at Your Door," while several dozen festival visitors grazed organic mesclun salads and nibbled at whole wheat rolls.

A production designer and art director (his credits include "Minority Report" and "Fight Club") turned writer-director, Gorak got his first industry job thanks to an unauthorized visit to UCLA's job board. After sneaking into the school's placement office, the Tulane alumnus spotted a position available in the art department for 1992's "Lawnmower Man." Gorak got the internship and later capitalized on the contacts he met working on the film.

With "Right at Your Door," Gorak has made his first feature, a look at how a terrorist bombing of Los Angeles affects one married couple in Echo Park. With little money and time (he shot the film in a mere 19 days), Gorak took advantage of his Rolodex to make every penny count: The film's special effects are the work of a visual effects artist Gorak met on the set of "Blade: Trinity." But perhaps the most unusual place for advice about low-budget filmmaking came from Steven Spielberg, Gorak's boss on "Minority Report."

It was Spielberg, Gorak said, who helped teach him that if you limit yourself to three choices rather than 3,000, you'll be able to make decisions rather than stumble in a maze of what-ifs. Excuse me, I'm looking for a festival
Monday, 3:45 p.m.

Call it a commuter film festival. On Monday, as on most weekdays at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the majority of the film screenings begin around 4. Today, the only exception is "The House of Sand," which began at 2. So at quarter to 2, Westwood looks like it does pretty much any day that school is out. Same pretty young things sucking dutifully on their high-whipped-cream-ration coffee drinks, same parental units blinking as they hit the sidewalk after a couple of hours over a chicken Caesar and the snapper special.

Yes, there are powder blue signs indicating the various festival venues everywhere and people on cell phones walk by them, chatting about ratings and projects, but this is L.A. after all. That's 24/7. Meanwhile, the mini photo-op red carpets that dot the sidewalk in front of various theaters are littered with leaves and cigarette butts and the perky blue, yellow and white sofas and logo-emblazoned cafe tables set up by Pop Secret along Broxton's Pop Corn Alley are empty. Even the Target Red Room (not to be confused with "The Shining's" "Redrum") is fairly empty, despite the copious free and high-end snacks. Of course, the bar, sponsored by Absolut (Absolutly) doesn't open until 6.

Upstairs, filmmakers participating in Kodak Speed Dating are talking hard. At 10 tables sit Industry types -- agents, producers, lawyers. Each filmmaker gets 10 minutes to pitch a project, show a trailer on a laptop or just ask questions. Then they move on to the next. This year, 100 filmmakers will meet 100 industry insiders. Some may walk away with deals or representation or the precarious possibility of "doing lunch."

And not all will walk away willingly. "We had a lot of filmmakers ask to participate on more than one day," said Adrienne Bernier, one of the event's producers. "So we had to wait-list them."



Overheard at the fest
Sunday, 11:09 p.m.

It was, in all likelihood, one of the most depressing panel discussions to be held at this year's Los Angeles Film Festival - or any film festival, for that matter.

The seven-member panel had come to the Hammer Museum in Westwood Sunday to discuss "Unshown Cinema: Inside the World of 'The Films that Got Away,'" but it was clear from the outset that what really distressed many of the panelists was the ever-shrinking audience for independent movies, specifically foreign films screening in America.

Moderator Robert Koehler, a film critic at Variety and Cinemascope magazine, got the ball rolling, asking why so many significant films and filmmakers have such hard time getting their movies released in L.A.

The premise of that question brought a strong rebuttal from Paul Federbush, senior vice president of production and acquisition at Warner Independent Films.

"I must say I'm a little puzzled at the subject matter," Federbush replied. "I don't think that there are a lot of good films that get away. I dare say most people don't see want to go see the films that I see. Every year, there probably are films, primarily foreign language films, that are fantastic and don't get distribution, but foreign language films just don't do a lot of business in this country, I'm afraid to say. It's not like there's a fixed agenda that we have of what we want to show you. If foreign language films made more money we would buy them."

That brought this response from Marie-Therese Guirgis, a veteran distributor who has attended many film festivals over the years: "L.A. is particularly a tough market for foreign films. I mean, we consider it to be a second market and we open films here at the same time as New York, but there is a significantly weaker [box office]. Even in New York, the decline has been visible. I think people don't care about directors anymore."

She said that other than Steven Spielberg in America and perhaps Pedro Almodóvar overseas, Americans hardly follow filmmakers anymore.

"I think the culture is changing," she said. "I think we live in a pretty awful moment, in general."


Exhibitor Greg Laemmle, who runs the oldest family-operated art house theater chain in L.A., noted that "Duck Season" was one of the best foreign films he has seen in recent years, but audiences simply wouldn't go for it.

"As an exhibitor, I knew this film, I loved this film, I knew they put together a terrific marketing campaign for this film and the critics came out with wonderful reviews," he said, "[but] the audience was completely and totally out of it."


Another great foreign film that L.A. audiences have probably never seen, panelists noted, is "The Death of Mister Lazarescu" by Romanian writer and director Cristi Puiu. It tells the last two hours in a man's life as he is shuttled between Bucharest hospitals.

"You couldn't pay to have better press than that movie had," said Scott Foundas, film editor and chief film critic of L.A. Weekly. "It had rave reviews in every major outlet that reviewed it. It had terrific buzzing coming off of festivals. We gave it a huge spread in the L.A. Weekly. I think...it made something like $2,300 it's first weekend over at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills. Three hundred people or something went to see the movie."


After hearing this, director and panelist Monte Hellman ("Two-Lane Blacktop") deadpanned: "I'm really sorry I came today. I'm very depressed."


The tone wasn't much cheerier across Westwood at the Geffen Playhouse, where three directors-Terry Zwigoff and Nicole Holofcener were holding forth at a festival "coffee talk" with moderator David Gordon Green ("George Washington") about the difficulty they've faced getting their films made.

Zwigoff ("Bad Santa," "Ghost World") said he has just walked away from a film because the studio was demanding that he cast actors they think are more commercial, but he wanted to cast actors who he thought would be "the most appropriate" for the roles.

He won't say what the film is, but he noted: "They sent me a list of 10 actors - and it's the same 10 actors, you know: Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt. If those guys aren't appropriate for it, you're going to have a hard time to get the funding. It's very frustrating."

On "Bad Santa," Zwigoff recalled the fights he had with Bob Weinstein at Miramax.

Although he says "I love Bob," he noted, "There was a certain point where Bob Weinstein said to me, 'If you stick with your version of the film, I'm going to open it on two screens. If you want to go with my version of the film, I'll open on 3,500.' '[I said] open it on two screens. What the hell do I care?' We're both stubborn people. It was a nightmare battle. To this day, my version of the film has never come out."

Zwigoff said he was more ticked off at his lawyer than Weinstein because he learned that despite having "final cut" in his contract, it meant nothing because "you can't enforce it" because it would cost too much to fight Miramax in court.

Holofcener said there was a short period of time when she showed "Friends with Money" and people would ask her "Where's the last reel?" She said she told them, "'Um, you saw it.' A lot of people like it, and a lot of people don't, but I like it," she said of the ending.

Zwigoff said test screenings are a "horrible, horrible experience."

"Personally, I want to please myself first," he said. " I'd rather I liked the film and everybody else hated it. In a couple films like 'Bad Santa," people at test screenings said, 'Ah, I don't like the ending' and you sit there listening to people arguing about what they think the ending should be. I say, you know what? Make your own [expletive] movie."


Standing on a Westwood sidewalk, actor Sajen Corona was handing out fliers for his new movie, "Gettin' It" which is written and directed by Nick Gaitatjis.

"I'm up here pitching a movie that I'm in ... it went to Cannes, France. The director told me they're trying to get a distribution deal. It's about a young kid who's trying to lose his virginity. So, he goes out and buys a condom He ends up getting the wrong size, they're HUGE. He's embarrassed. He throws them in the toilet. His mom finds them She spreads the rumor around town." Corona said he plays the Mexican cook who offers guidance to the young man.

Corona is hoping filmmakers or other Hollywood movers and shakers will notice him at the festival and hire him. "I've been doing this 4-1/2 years. As an actor, you have to get in front of as many producers and directors as possible. So, when they see that I have a reel, a real reel, with a real film company, and a real film company that is on IMDB with a real script supervisor and craft service, not peanut butter and popcorn, [they'll see that I'm for real]. Being Latino, it's so hard to get work in this town."


Composer Thomas Newman ("American Beauty," "The Shawshank Redemption"), brought laughs to a festival audience when asked what he found different about working on small, indie films as opposed to big studio films.

"I used to think that working on independent movies was going to be easier because people would be just so grateful that you'd be working - but I found out that's not the case."

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Want to feel good? Act.
Sunday, 1:06 p.m.

Director Rodrigo Garcia ("Nine Lives") moderated a coffee talk at midday Sunday at the Geffen Playhouse about the craft of acting. On the panel: Christina Applegate ("Anchorman," "Married with Children"), Kathy Baker ("Nine Lives," "Nip/Tuck") and Joe Mantegna ("Nine Lives," "House of Games").

The actors talked about the feeling of elation that follows a stage performance, and contrasted that with the sheer exhaustion and feeling of depletion that can often follow a long day on a TV or movie set.

"It's true," Garcia remarked, "if you visit actors behind stage after a play, they're floating."

"Even if it didn't go that great," Mantegna injected, drawing laughter from the crowd of about 100 people.

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A pedophile priest, and those he hurt
Sunday, 10:15 a.m.

When it comes to movie premieres, I'll take the documentary crowd any day. No red carpet. No stars to speak of. No paparazzi. Just one lone guy with a video camera hovering outside the Majestic Crest theater on Saturday night for the premiere of "Deliver Us From Evil," one of the documentaries in competition at this year's Los Angeles Film Festival. The model-thin, with their towering platforms and shorts and shrugs were there, of course, but they were the ones who seemed out of place.

More typical was Cheryl Revkin, the president of the Silver Lake Chamber of Commerce, who you might think of as an early adopter, someone who wants to be on the front-end of the wave of those seeing socially relevant films. But tonight she found herself in the stand-by line just hoping to get in to the sold-out show.

"This is the second venue tonight that's been sold out," she said. Revkin had tried to get tickets online to "Deliver Us," and A Leonard Cohen Evening, but was directed to the box-office instead only to find there were no tickets to be had. "I guess that means the festival's doing well."

Inside, it was director Amy Berg's night. In a diaphanous latte-colored tea-length confection, she beamed and hugged friends and in general seemed truly surprised and grateful that so many had turned out to see her film.

Sobs, groans and uncomfortable laughter punctuated the screening of "Deliver Us," the story of Oliver O'Grady, a former priest and now convicted pedophile, and the 20 years he spent being bounced from one Northern California parish to another. Videotaped depositions by officials of the Roman Catholic Church, including Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, drew the strongest response as derisive snickering rippled through the hall.

The film closed to a standing ovation from most of the crowd, and when Berg stepped to the microphone for a Q&A session afterward, one voice from the back of the theater shouted out, "Thank you." But all that paled to the reception given to the survivors who joined Berg.

For Ann Jyono, participating in the film became a way of healing, she said. "For me to go from being a child who was never going to say anything to anyone to being here in front of you, it's a major step forward," she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

When her father, Bob, took the microphone, he quickly broke down. "I did it for all the victims out there," he said finally. "I did it for all of them."

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Dance evolution — digital revolution
Friday, 5:12 p.m.

It's been seen by more than 25 million Internet users. It's been commented upon some 25,000 times. The latest "Superman Returns" trailer? The best Jon Stewart monologues? The worst World Cup soccer referees?

No, it's "Evolution of Dance," comedian Judson Laipply's incredibly low-tech (one-camera, no editing, muffled sound, shaky follow-spot) performance of every dance step, from Elvis Presley to Outkast, that Laipply knows how to perform. So is this oddly mesmerizing six-minute video (available on Youtube and at evolutionofdance.com) a glimpse into the future of entertainment distribution? Or a freak of web-based word-of-mouth marketing?

"Traditional middlemen are out of the middle," marketing consultant Peter Broderick said in the keynote address of the Los Angeles Film Festival's opening panel session, "The Revolution Will Be Digitized." Broderick's pronouncement may be true — filmmakers now can shoot everything on their HD cameras, sell DVDs out of their garages, and, like Laipply, post their shorts on the web, where more people watch than saw "Poseidon."

Panelists agreed times were indeed changing. The LAFF has its own middlemen, of course — programmers decide which movies get in and which don't. And studios and independent distributors still get to decide which few films will be released in theaters.

But Intel's Clickstar has backed director Brad Silberling's "10 Items or Less," which it hopes to distribute into PCs; Youtube is stuffed with an array of great original (and, it must be said, infringed) content, and the download site BitTorrent will soon launch a movie service. So the sands may be shifting — but then all theaters were supposed to be equipped with digital projectors by 2002, so we'll see what happens.

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Opening night glitz--no chains required
Friday, 6:18 a.m.

It might have lacked the old school glamour of Cannes and the high-altitude cachet of Sundance -- those other film festivals everybody knows and loves.

But opening night at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival kicked off Thursday night with a gala premiere for the Fox dramedy, "The Devil Wears Prada," in Westwood Village. And Broxton Avenue was transformed into a down-home block party -- albeit one with a trip-hop DJ, a fountain spewing microwave popcorn, an eclectic celebrity turnout and an obligatory visit by L.A.'s ubiquitous mayor -- celebrating the city's most notable export.

"For the last 12 years, this L.A. film festival has been a part of the fabric of L.A., the culture of L.A. and it's a big reason why L.A. is the entertainment culture capital," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said on the red carpet leading into the Mann Village theater. He added: "I go to movie premieres all the time. It's my job to promote this city. To sell the idea that L.A.'s not just a place. It's an idea."

"West Wing" cast member Allison Janney, a Los Angeles Film Festival veteran whose feature film "Our Very Own" was presented last year, was named honorary co-chair this year. She said she felt gratified to be a part of Hollywood's hometown film fest, an 11-day event expected to draw 80,000 attendees with a mixture of studio films with theatrical distribution and shoestring indies looking for buyers.

"It's exciting to get behind this festival and make it the hottest one in the United States," Janey said. Reminded that the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, holds that title, she said: "L.A.'s not the hottest one and there's no reason it shouldn't be, damn it. This is the film capital of the world!"

The cavalcade of bold-faced names made its way into the theater: Alicia Witt, director Vondie Curtis Hall, Nicole Richie, Jeff Goldblum, Jane Seymour, Robert Forster, "Baywatch's" Brande Roderick, Stanley Tucci and Ione Skye among them.

Although "Prada's" titular hell-spawn, played by Meryl Streep, missed the premiere (she was celebrating her birthday, director David Frankel explained) her co-star Anne Hathaway floated down the red carpet in a canary yellow strapless Prada dress.

She took a more philosophical approach to explain the local nonchalance toward the LAFF. "If you live in L.A., it's always a film festival. There's always movies shooting here and there's always a premiere happening," Hathaway said. "In other places, it becomes more of an event. In L.A., it's like, 'Oh, movies. Great. Fab. Never seen one of those before.'."

"Hollywood is a festival in and of itself," said Adrian Grenier, who plays Hathaway's character's long-suffering boyfriend in "Prada."

After the screening, guests walked across the street to "Popcorn Alley on Broxton" -- a vast open-air after-party spanning the length of Broxton Avenue that was sponsored by Pop Secret popcorn.

There, TOMMY! (no last name, all in capital letters, with an exclamation mark, thank you very much), director of the festival short "Angels?," clutched a cold beverage, taking in the scene while wearing a plastic gold crown, a chest-full of hip-hop-style golden medallions and black suit pants cut off below the knees.

"My wife's divorcing me and nothing makes me feel better than free liquor," he said. "Everyone here is treating me real nice. At the directors' luncheon today, they gave me hand sanitizer and body butter."

And there was no question in his mind where the best film festival was.

"Sundance is cold," TOMMY! said. "What kind of morons go to Utah in winter?"

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