mon.day 5: from dusk til dawn

• the movie was called sympathy for delicious. it was about a homeless guy in a wheelchair who used to do scratch turntables. he auditions to play with a wild rock band but is rejected. inexplicably, he is given the ability to heal people with his touch. he doesn't understand it, but the priest at the shelter encourages him to help other in the homeless community, while the band courts him to be a part of their act. the characters, the story were all great, and i was surprised to see a film at sundance that was optimistic about faith and religion. the language was as bad as you'd expect from an indie feature about rock and roll, so i can't recommend it, but the development of it all was excellent and some scenes were simply sublime. orlando bloom was spot on as a crazy front man, juliette lewis and mark ruffalo were solid, and chris was great as the central character. it was an interesting experience to be sitting next to the guy who wrote and starred in the movie i was watching, a guy who i had talked with for the last half hour.

note: a google image search for the movie yielded three pages of orlando with his shirt off....

• adding to my list of new experiences was being able to talk with the writer of a movie for an hour after seeing it. i spent the whole drive asking chris questions about where ideas came from, how plot points developed, his thoughts behind some scenes, and anything else i wondered about. i think it was safe to say that this was the best conversation i would have throughout the festival.

• here is where my night started to wilt. we got back to park city and the gang asked if i could take them to get a pizza first. we're only required to drive to and from venue screenings, but they were cool and i agreed. this soon became a treasure hunt around town, ending an hour later with only two domino's pizzas and half a minivan of tired people, finally dropping them off around midnight. and i checked in to find that i had a 7:30 pickup in the morning. add to that an hour's drive each way and that meant i would only be home for five and a half hours. i decided it would be best to stay at the drivers' house in town.

• i waited in the hotel room for a guy to take me to the house, since i wasn't sure where it was. i thought about staying in our bedless room at the marriott, pushing some chairs together and even ordering up a blanket and some pillows. but as i was getting comfortable, someone came in to do some work and my guide showed up, so i decided to go. i should have stayed. so should have stayed.

• we because the luxurious park city streets are narrow and the house parking lot was full of cars (very full), we had to park a quarter mile away at a park and walk under the clear cold sky. the house was surprisingly awake for it being almost 1 a.m. downstairs were some king-size mattresses laid out on the floor, with a few blankets scattered about. i was told that the blankets all belonged to people and that most of the spots on the mattresses were claimed, but i'd probably be ok on a spot. i didn't understand the culture of the house here but i just wanted to get as much sleep as i could before the morning, so i changed into my pajamas and tried to curl up under my leather jacket.

• around 1:45 i was jostled from my pseudo-sleep to a girl upstairs saying "[forget] those guys downstairs!", followed by eminem asking for the real slim shadey to please stand up. this went on for about an hour until they decided to play rock band, again throwing decibel consciousness completely out the window. amidst seeing red, i gathered that the drummer was our boss, thereby ruling out any feasibility of asking them to turn it down. the singing would have fit in well with the who, and, to make things almost criminal, the girl playing guitar was really, really bad and kept failing. excluding nights a few nights of violent illness, i couldn't think of a worse night in my life as the remaining minutes to sleep dissolved away. as i lay curled up on a bare mattress trying to stay warm under my jacket, i fantasized about finding the circuit box and flipping off the power to the whole house. i prayed that i would magically fall asleep, that i could calm down, or at least that i would not fall asleep tomorrow.

• in the end, i got about two and a half hours of lame-o sleep. my alarm was set early enough that when i was told my pickup was changed to 7:00, i was still there on time. ...even though my ride showed up at 7:40.

• my day could only get better. : )