Movie Enthusiast Issue 33: Thoughts I have had while standing next to Alex Ross Perry in line to use the bathroom at a film festival
Two weekends ago I took the train up to Baltimore for the Maryland Film Festival! This was both my first medium-scale film festival (Film Fest DC is such a bare-bones operation that it doesn’t even qualify), and also my first time getting to significantly explore Baltimore on foot. Both highly recommended!
Less highly recommended: showing up 30 minutes late to the screening of one of the movies you had come up to see. (I had been dawdling after a panel discussion to talk to one of my favorite film critics so I’m choosing to count this as a net gain.) The movie in question was Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits, a Rohmer-esque tale of Brooklynites…just sort of…going about their lives…I think…but also having their routines upended by an Australian archivist played by Emily Browning…but not so much that their lives actually change in any meaningful way? Like I said, don’t show up 30 minutes late to a movie at a film festival. Chloë Sevigny is in this movie! She wears some nice jackets!
As faithful readers of this newsletter know, I love to love Rohmer and love to have conflicted-to-negative opinions of Alex Perry. Lo, who should be at the film festival to answer questions about his film after the screening than Alex Perry himself! He confirmed that the movie was, indeed, inspired by late-period Rohmer. He did not, however, explain what happened in the first 30 minutes of his film, so I ducked out and made my way over to my next screening.
After a nice stroll around the MICA part of Baltimore, I meandered into the Parkway Theater where, after claiming my seat for the sold-out Princess Cyd by Chicago-area filmmaker Stephen Cone, I stepped outside to use the facilities—and who should be out in the hallway waiting in line beside me but Alex Perry again?!
At this point several thoughts raced through my head as I pondered the age-old question known to have beset young cinephiles at their first film festival (I would imagine): “How should I introduce myself?”
“…Hello, Alex Perry! I just saw your film, except I missed the beginning so I can’t actually tell you what I thought of it?”
“…I figured out that Golden Exits was inspired by Rohmer because I had just watched Claire’s Knee?”
“…I think The Color Wheel is a loathsome piece of trash but now that I’ve met you in person I’m less offended by it because I can tell you’re just a low-key dude who likes making movies for kicks and giggles?”
“…I can tell you aren’t as intellectually or theologically rigorous a person as Rohmer was because Golden Exits didn’t display any of the qualities or insight that make Rohmer films actually, you know, good?”
“…Nice sneakers?”
But alas, there came a flushing from yonder bathroom door and Perry moseyed on in before I could open my mouth to say anything. Perhaps it’s all for the best. Until the next film festival!