And then comes Bad For Business, (see fig. j) the story of Magillicutty & Associates, a company specializing in helping people get over their exes by inserting Jerry into their lives. Jerry is seemingly the ideal boyfriend, kind, considerate--until he gets stalkerish. And in this world, that happens before the end of the first date. When clients realize they're being stalked, they feel better about themselves and its "mission accomplished" for Magillicutty & Associates. This movie loses me at the beginning and slowly brings me back, though rather begrudgingly. It begins on one of Jerry's dates, so we only see a poor setup, bad acting and an uncertain plot. Ten minutes in, when the film is still stuck in this relationship hell, so am I. Then the terrible date ends and the plot begins. Slowly the quirky characters, barely held together by Derek Lindeman's quite good performance, begin to grow on me. Lindeman is easily the best thing this film has going for it, recalling a young Michael Keaton, and he's front and center the entire time. Even as a microbudget filmmaker myself, there isn't much excuse for sloppiness with lighting or locations. If you can only film a restaurant scene in your basement or the coffee house on someone's back porch, you should rethink if those locations are necessary rather than shoot there and have it drag the audience out of the movie, which it did for me immediately. An overall MEH for the film, but a decent effort. I would be curious to see what else they've got. Oh, and the name Magillicutty itself should not be treated as funny. It hasn't been funny since I Love Lucy.
Mike slipped into the classroom just after the date sequence at the beginning of the film and I leaned over and whispered “It's not very good...” before becoming suddenly aware that the filmmakers were likely in that very auditorium. It got better, just not as much as I wanted it to. Looking back though, this film had the most memorable line from the festival: “No eating at the Y.” Think about it. It’s about girls. And...you know... Ask the "Why We Wax" girls, they'll tell ya.
As we leave the converted classroom that was our first screening room, I massage my tail-bone for it has not experienced classroom seating like that in quite a few years. Painful. We agree that there’s always time to see Chemistry of Dating later since it’s either in Mike’s or Jeff Greene’s (our casting director) possession. I’ll have to hit him up. A quick scan of the second slot’s options show several heavy theme movies. I’m really sick of hearing about hurricane Katrina and there are two films at this festival alone about either Katrina or FEMA. We settle on Last Stop for Paul which, while sounding depressing, at least has a small thumbnail of a people sitting in front of the Sphinx and pyramids. Honest to God pyramids! (see fig. k)
Settling into the next screening room, a real theater, is glorious when compared to the previous. There’s even a balcony, which Mike and I quickly grab seats in. This is also the room that we’ll be watching White Out in tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock. Now I’m even more nervous, there’s no way in hell we’ll even come close to filling this bad boy. Mike tells me to take a deep breath. I tell him that he’s a cigarette. He laughs because he knows what that means. We do the finger-nose-gay thing from Kiss-Kiss, Bang-Bang and realize what huge movie geeks we are. Luckily there’s no one else in the row to see us. “You’ll love the ‘Nintendo Office’ short,” I tell Mike, then proceed to build it up beyond its ability to live up to the hype. Mike nods politely and looks over the Saturday Films I've circled to see how many screenings he can attend without me, already bound by producerhood to join me at the two White Out screenings. Then he chuckles at “Nintendo Office” while I do the thing. You know, the thing where you find something funny and you want to see if the person you’re watching it with finds it funny too, so you constantly look at them for their reactions after a joke. That annoying thing.
I do that a lot.
