Virginia Film Festival - Day Four

All good things must come to an end and unfortunately for me, this was the fourth and final day of the film festival. If you've read my reports from the previous days then you know I was having a blast. Entire days spent hobnobbing with movie people and watching cool movies is pretty much my idea of heaven. For a film geek it just doesn't get much better.

The day started off with the final session of Ebert's shot by shot analysis of The Birds. I was willing to bet money before hand that we didn't stand a chance in hell of actually finishing the movie. There was a lot more discussion going on than movie watching at these meetings. Miraculously we did finish with a couple minutes to spare. Ebert took the opportunity to talk about recent movies a bit before wrapping up.

From there it was a quick walk to the Vinegar Hill theater for the documentary Chuck Jones: Extremes and In Betweens. This was its first screening. It will premiere November 24 on PBS. You may not know the name but you most certainly know his work. Chuck Jones was responsible for directing all those brilliant Looney Tunes cartoons. He invented the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. He didn't invent Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck but he made them into the characters we've come to know over the years. Chuck Jones is a god.

I've gone on about how cool Stan Winston and Anthony Hopkins are. But neither of them hold a candle to the impact that Chuck Jones had on my life. I was absolutely addicted to his cartoons as a kid. In Bugs Bunny I saw my hero. He's brash and a wise ass. He thinks circles around his enemies. And he's completely insane. I can't think of someone I'd rather emulate than Bugs. To this day I can't surf past Cartoon Network without getting stuck watching one of Chuck Jones' cartoons.

The documentary follows his career from its beginnings working for Ub Iwerks at Disney to moving over to Warner Bros. to start directing his own cartoons. His early work imitated the Disney style, conservative and overly cute. But eventually he directed a cartoon that went for laughs instead of cuteness and he was off in a direction all his own. The documentary features interviews with many famous folks gushing about Jones like Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Matt Groening and John Lassiter.

What makes the cartoons so good isn't just the great jokes or the attitude. What makes them great are the small moments. Things like the pause where Wile E. Coyote just floats in air before he realizes that he is going to fall. The documentary knows that it has pure gold to work with and makes sure to punctuate all its points with a clip from a cartoon. It looks at all phases of the cartooning process. It looks at the later stages where Jones moves on to other projects like his brilliant adaptation of the Dr. Seuss book How the Grinch Stole Christmas. They even talked to Ron Howard about his own Grinch project. For the first time I started to feel better about the movie version of the story. Howard states that he couldn't hope to remake Jones' version as it is pretty much perfect. So instead he had to make his own version and not try and do the same thing. It's easier to accept the project when I know it will be it's own story and not an attempt to rehash perfection.

In the discussion that followed the documentary I heard easily the most depressing thing I would hear at the festival. They had come within a hair of getting Chuck Jones to attend the festival. He was excited to attend but his health is failing and he simply couldn't make the trip. I really hope he gets better. A world without Chuck Jones is one greatly diminished. The thought that I almost got to meet him made it that much worse. So if he actually manages to find this and reads it, let me just say thank you.

The documentary was fairly short so I actually had a little time to grab lunch. Not exactly news, I know, but this was the first meal I had found time to eat in three days. Who knew that festivals were great for losing weight? I'm thinking of starting a whole new weight loss plan based on film festivals. It worked for me, I lost four pounds. They won't be missed.

A short hike across town brought me to the final event, a showing of the 1968 classic Planet of the Apes. If you ask me, I'll tell you that I've always loved this movie. If you ask my parents you'll get a story. They have delight for much of my life in telling how freaked out I was by the apes as a child. Apparently I became convinced that my room was infested with apes that were going to get me when the lights went out. My dad, one smart guy, installed an ape killer in my room and I never worried about them again. For the parents out there, an ape killer is available in the lawn and garden section of most department stores. Most people use them to wrap their garden hoses around while not in use.

For all I know my parents are making this up as I don't remember any of that. All I know is that I think the ape movies are cool. The best of the series was the original and this was going to be my first chance to see it on the big screen. Kind of. It was announced before the movie started that the copy sent to the festival was in sorry shape. Part of the beginning was shown and sure enough it looked awful. The picture was faded and badly scratched and scarred. So we got to watch the movie on DVD but still projected on the big screen. Now I mentioned that during The Birds analysis it became apparent that DVDs are simply not meant to be projected this large. The color fades out and detail is lost. Despite that, it was still better than the film copy.

The movie serves as a message on race relations and the Cold War. At least that's how it was meant at the time it was made. In today's climate, the audience found all new meanings hidden in it. During the discussion after, it was suggested that it was possibly a commentary on the animal rights movement or possibly a statement on vegetarianism. Ummm... yeah, sure.

I certainly don't subscribe to such notions. I will say that the movie holds up well over time. Charlton Heston is very cool and way over the top. The ape makeup is still pretty impressive, even thirty years later. I wonder why we need a remake of it.

It was finally time to go home. I was tired and hungry but about as happy as I could be. I haven't been to any other cities' festivals, so I can't make any comparisons. But I imagine many of them don't come off as well as this one. Sure, the really big ones are no doubt better but for a small city like Charlottesville to put together such an event is pretty remarkable. Is it too early for me to order tickets for next year?

- John Shea