August 21, 1999

I took a train out to the Huntington Film Festival today, just to get a feel for the event. The festival takes place at the Cinema Arts Centre, a triplex that's been showing art films for 26 years; I was quite surprised at how busy the place was, and at the median age of the audiences, which must be a good twenty years higher than at the Angelika, and ten years higher than at the Lincoln Plaza. Vic Skolnick and Charlotte Sky, who run the art theater and the festival, seem to be really nice, down-to-earth people, and they made a big fuss about how much they liked HONEYMOON. After a while I started to feel as if I'd entered an alternate universe where my film was a smash success in the suburbs. I hung around until evening, saw a few films (some of which I liked, all of which were at least a little offbeat), and met a few of the other filmmakers, including my old UCLA film school pal Tom Musca. I don't think there's any industry presence here; some of the filmmakers seem to be in business mode just in case, but at this point I can't be bothered.

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