The Circuit

by Stephen Garrett
Intrepid moviegoers traded crisp air, golden sunlight and blazing foliage for cinema this past weekend as the Hamptons International Film Festival drew to a close. The great outdoors were hard to ignore during the event, since the main venue in East Hampton, the United Artists multiplex, was merely the hub of activity for a screening schedule that included one theater to the east, in Montauk; two to the north, in Sag Harbor; and a multiplex to the west, in Southampton.

Film fans navigated the 20-mile perimeter either by free, twice-hourly shuttle service (courtesy the Hampton Jitney) or in their own cars, which meant padding arrival times to compensate for the pumpkin pickers on the farm-strewn fields that bottlenecked Route 27. 

Geography affected the experience greatly, as Montauk and Southampton’s quiet streets made their theaters feel isolated, while Sag Harbor’s many shops were bustling. East Hampton felt downright urban, with dense lines snaking outside the movie house, stretch limos idling nearby, locals like Christie Brinkley taking in a film and late-night stores such as BookHampton (where Naomi Wolf autographed her paperbacks) and Starbucks doing brisk business.

Awards were announced on Sunday afternoon, with the top winners in narrative and documentary also nabbing their respective audience prizes. Erik Poppe’s (pictured with Alec Baldwin) “Troubled Water,” a Norwegian-Swedish co-production about a man coming to terms with being a wrongly convicted child murderer, capped a strong year for Scandinavian films. (Six played the festival, including “Arn, the Knight Templar,” the most expensive production in their region’s history; supporting actress and longtime Bergman muse Bibi Andersson was even on hand to greet the audience.)

Receiving the Documentary Award was “Herb and Dorothy,” Megumi Sasaki’s look at the titular Vogels and their lifelong passion as first-rate collectors of modern art—despite their modest salaries as a postal worker and librarian. Its success was welcome but not surprising, as word-of-mouth increased among audience members from screening to screening.

Frances McDormand (pictured above) held court on Saturday at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, as she and Elvis Mitchell chatted about her career. “I’m all woman!” she cried at the start, parroting a just-shown clip from “Burn After Reading” as she took the stage—and then, while standing firm in sneakers and jeans, she flexed her bicep and fingered her arm fat. The audience ate it up.

Over the course of an hour, the 51-year- old Academy Award winner pontificated about balancing her career with the demands of “housewifery,” the demerits of Sarah Palin (“Have you noticed that her outfits are getting tighter?”) and the demands of her Oscar-nominated role in “North Country,” the role for which she did the most preparation. “I don’t usually do research,” she explained. “I was taught to pretend. It’s easier just to put a wig on.”

Later that afternoon, the festival christened its new annual spotlight, “The Artist’s Eye,” the first of which was devoted to the work of photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber. The program drew from his commercial work, which includes campaigns for Banana Republic, Abercrombie and Fitch, JC Penny and Polo, as well as music videos for the Pet Shop Boys, short films and an extended trailer for his upcoming documentary on Robert Mitchum.

His signature use of chiseled young men and sexy women, set to lyrical jazz music, all bathed in deliriously hand-held B&W cinematography and shot with uncompromisingly cornball optimism, made for a suitably glamorous inaugural subject.

Weber himself was graciously candid in the Q&A afterwards, and even talked briefly about the influence of his Newfoundland dogs (which make occasional cameos in his films).  “I learn a lot from animals—their body language, the way they show affection—and I try to put that in my films,” he explained. “When I first met Bob Mitchum, I really thought of him as a little dog.”

That night was the sold-out premiere of Kristy de Gans’ warts-and-all documentary “Dominick Dunne: After the Party,” which chronicled in unflinching detail the Hollywood-producer-turned-journalist’s thirst for glamorous social climbing, neglect of his children and dissolution of his marriage before reinventing himself first as a novelist and then, after the murder of his daughter, as a Vanity Fair reporter specializing in the criminal behavior of the rich and famous.

De Gans’ octogenarian subject joined the filmmaker at the front of the auditorium to give his thoughts on today’s celebrity culture (“I’m utterly confused by Paris Hilton”) and the latest O.J. Simpson trial (“A cheesy, cheap crime.”). The older-skewering audience was enthralled, especially when Dunne gave his own self- assessment. “I didn’t come into my own until I was 50,” he said. “So nobody give up hope.”