Merrick here…

Sheldrake sent this from the first day of Tribeca (yesterday).

This article is about two disparate subjects: it’s a review of BACKSTAGE (which is competing in the International Narrative Competition), and a discussion of his emotional journey ramping up to a screening of UNITED 93.

To be clear, this isn’t Sheldrake’s review of U93 (yet) – this is simply about the thoughts, apprehensions, memories, uncertainty, and emotions he is experiencing...as a New Yorker...upon the film's release.

Here’s Sheldrake…

Tribeca Film Festival
April 25th 2006
Day One

Sheldrake here, reporting live from the Triangle Below Canal Street, Tribeca and the Tribeca Film Festival. This festival, born famously in the ashes of 9/11 and thrown together in 120 days by Robert DiNiro and Jane Rosenthal, now shows movies on 22 downtown screens over a ten day period. I got the catalog this morning and I am simply overwhelmed. So is everyone else: the volunteers, the PR people, the food people, the ticket takers, the press office – they’re all scrambling to make it happen, and happening it is.

Things changed this year: a lot more movies, a lot more screens. The TFF people moved the ticket office over to the Tribeca Cinemas building, which makes sense. Looks like they may have bought the building. The energy feels different this year, too. Every year it becomes clearer that, after Sundance and it’s Hollywood slant, this is THE film festival that’s taken up the slack for the independent market.

I spoke this morning with a development person for Fox who comes here to look for writers and directors for the network, and as far as she’s concerned, you hit Sundance and cover the Hollywood stuff, then come to Tribeca to get the independent stuff, and you’re done. No need to look anywhere else. There isn’t anywhere else.

There’s a lot of stuff to look forward to at Tribeca this year: e.g. DAVID DUCHOVNY’S TV SET, JOHN MALKOVICH”S COLOR ME KUBRICK, my friend PETER COHN’S GOLDEN VENTURE narrated by TIM ROBBINS, and the three blockbusters, POSEIDON, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: III…

…and tonight, of course, looming darkly over Gotham, the movie it took two towers, four planes and over 3500 murders to make, UNITED 93.

UNITED 93 – THE PRE-REVIEW

So now I’m going to say the things that everyone is bending over backwards not to say. And I’m going to say them now and get them out of the way before I see the movie.

Yes, I’m going to see it, because it’s what I do. And no, I don’t want to see it. And no, I don’t think they should have made it yet.

It’s too soon.

Make that, it’s WAY too soon.

But here it is, and I can’t make it go away, and I’ll go and see it and give it a fair review. But I am dreading seeing this…thing. I still remember turning on the radio in the morning, hearing the static on the radio, on every station, thinking my God, it’s happened, we’ve been nuked, but then thinking, no that couldn’t have been what happened…getting on the bus to cross town to work anyway, then a woman on the bus screaming, the WTC’s been hit by a plane, and we all think Cessna, just like the Empire State, no biggie, familiar, a New York Post headline,…getting off the train downtown and passing three guys at a hot dog cart, listening to the radio, hearing the accouncer, “Holy SHIT! One of the towers is collapsing…” … and running, running towards my office and towards the white cloud far downtown that grew and grew in front of my eyes…then the streams of people covered with ash running in herds uptown, some crying, some stunned, some enraged…then later the photographs of the lost on every vertical surface in town, have you seen him? Have you seen her? If so call this number…the way the web died that day, no newspaper online could handle the traffic…all of it comes back in an instant.

And I’m going to see this movie and I’m thinking, I must be out of my mind to put myself through this. Again. The first time, I didn’t have a choice. Came with living in New York in September 2001.

So let’s ask all the questions, all at once...

So, how do I look at the picture. Is it a good movie? Is that the measure I’m supposed to apply?

Was it made by a good man, by an honest man who appreciates what happened…an artist who will treat the characters well and with sensitivity…

…well, what if it was. Who cares?

How long did it take for the first Lincoln joke?

How much money will Hollywood make from making a film about this atrocity? And is that a fair question? People gotta eat, and, beyond that, pursue success and careers and wealth, right? The world doesn’t stop because some people died, ever. Not 3500, or 6 million. Ever.

Will my memory and imagination of what happened be replaced by these images, by someone else’s take on what happened.? How dare they?

Will a story with too many loose-ends be truncated and elided so it fits into the couple of hours a Hollywood movie takes from you?

Will the thing become a political weapon wielded by men for their own purposes? Well, yes. Sure. Duh.

What the hell is this movie supposed to do? Entertain me? Give me a new take on what happened? Hagiograph the people murdered on the flight? Why? Because it’s the one place we can look to find heroes in this mess? Wow, are we that desperate for heroes, that we have to sift through the pile of victims murdered on that day?

Maybe the truth is there were no heroes and—get ready to be really afraid—we were taken down by predators smart enough and ruthless enough and determined enough and flat out crazy enough to beat us. And maybe, because of that, and because of their explosive populations, the cartoon-haters will win all the marbles down the road.

And the answer is simple. It’s pop culture. People will pay to go see this movie, so it got made. And the media eye, which was never shy and retreating, is now relentless. Orwell got it right, in the new world there will be nothing left unseen. And it’s not one bit less frightening than he thought. It’s just that we’ve gotten used to being afraid all the time.

Are we there because we hope to identify with their pain and become better because of it? Do we hope that the kinsmen-in-politics of their murderers see it and finally, finally realize they murdered human beings? I wouldn’t count on that. Do we hope we’ll identify with their courage and become more courageous?

Are we hoping that it will hurt so much that it will feel really good when it stops?

Am I supposed to feel cool and smug that I have the clout to see it early?

Who makes this movie and for what purpose? Is the answer simple enough, it was made because it could be made? The machinery kicked into gear and took on a life of its own and there you go, kiddo, you got yourself a blockbuster.

Will this movie be used by George W. Bush and his Administration to sell the American War in Iraq?

Every question is a handle you can use to pick this movie up and look at it. And no matter which I handle I use to pick it up, I feel dirty when I pick it up.

All these questions to be asked, and none of them powerful enough to stop Hollywood, the director, producers, actors and crew from making the movie they want to make. They’re clearly made of sterner stuff.

These are all the navel-contemplating ruminations that go on when I’m absolutely terrified. Because that’s what it comes down to. I am frightened out of my mind to see this movie because there are certain feelings I never want to feel again in my life. And if I see this I’m going to feel them, only orchestrated with setups and payoffs so they’ll hurt worse than before. It’s ok, I assure myself—and maybe you—they’ll be aestheticized, sublimated. Right?

Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?

If we’re going to see this movie, and we’re going to move past these questions, let us, for the sake of our humanity, wrestle a moment or two from eternity and our busy schedules and spend it living with them—our simple human doubts— before we pony up for that large bucket of popcorn and super-sized Coke and a nice evening of entertainment.

Thought I’d get all this off my chest now, before I review the movie. It’s my little word memorial to the people who never imagined such a movie would be made, and that it would be made about them, and that they would never see it—and to their children. Here’s to J.’s son, who goes to school with my friend A. Your father deserved his life, and any other death.

Here’s my first review for the Tribeca Film Festival…

BACKSTAGE
French
Director by Emmanuelle Bercot
Written by Emmanuelle Bercot and Jerome Tonnerre
Tribeca Category: International Narrative Competition.

I came into BACKSTAGE a few minutes late, and the first thing I saw onscreen was a teenage girl in what looks like her home. She’s crying—and there’s a crew filming her. And there’s ethereal pop soprano singing in the background. The girl can hear it.

Then, through French doors, a woman materializes—she’s the one singing. She’s 40ish, glamorously dressed in a long white gown, icily beautiful, looking for all the world like Debby Harry about 10 years ago. There are cameras on her, too. She comes into the house through French doors and embraces the girl as the cameras roll. The girl is now sobbing out of control onto the woman’s shoulder. The woman whisper’s into the girl’s ear: Don’t cry for them. Don’t give them that.

I didn’t know what to make of what I was seeing—was the woman real only in the girl’s mind? Why was the girl crying? What was with the cameras? Why did the woman materialize? I had the impression that I was watching a girl’s nervous breakdown and the woman was part of some vision she was having as she went mad. Maybe she was the only one who could see the woman! Maybe the film crew was imaginary! Cool!

Unfortunately, the movie’s real story wasn’t anything quite that interesting. It turns out this movie is a take on reality shows, and BACKSTAGE, the place where real people live and real emotions happen, is the girl’s home. A pop star is making a guest appearance in the home of one of her fans. The girl is wrought with emotion because her idol has come into her home, and so the tears. As the woman-celebrity-pop singer leaves the girl’s house, the filming complete, she and the girl share a moment where, it seems, the older woman may feel something too.

This small nibble of emotion is enough to send the needy fan-girl on an obsessive quest for the true love of her idol, which, of course, she can never really possess. And so the story becomes one of an abusive relationship: the beloved who doesn’t feel much towards the one who worships her, and we see borne out the truism that relationships are always controlled by the one who feels the least. The pop star’s insurmountable emotional distance finally drives the girl to take extreme measures to get her love—and attention.

BACKSTAGE is a movie that operates as a dissection, or a parsing of dichotomies: the private home and the public stage, the performance space and backstage, the artificial and the real, the erotic surface and the romantic depths, the pop star and the fan. I felt rather distant from the film while I was watching it, which probably wasn’t helped by the abysmal print and the timecode still ticking off at the top of screen.

Even so, leaving the film, I couldn’t help thinking how much more interesting it would have been with an over-the-top gay male cast, because the Oscar Wilde-ean tongue-in-cheek would have fit the overly schematic material better than the operatic emotional spectrum of a teenage girl, and the white noise emotional non-range of an ice-queen pop princess. Look, I love French cinema and philosophy better than most of the people you know—I am currently re-reading Henri Bergon’s LAUGHTER— but unless you’re reading Sarte for the first time in college, give this one a miss.

Mr. Sheldrake
NY, NY
April 2006
Day One of Tribeca Film Festival