Hello Gorgeous!--Day One TCM Classic Film Festival 2013

Even though I had stopped by TCMFF headquarters on Wednesday, it didn't feel like the film festival really started until Thursday the 25th; the day I had been waiting for since April of last year!  I started the day off with a trip to Old Navy to get a free tote, like you do.  I then made my way over to Club TCM to wrestle with the idea of buying a larger sized tote bag, I didn't end up getting the tote, instead I got a pen, a pin, a shirt and the old fashioned flight bag.  I should've just bought the tote and saved myself the trouble.  I don't know what it is about tote bags, I guess I just love to tote.  Here's a picture including the T-shirt and flight bag, totally overboard on my part, I admit it:

After essentially buying everything at the TCM boutique I spied Raquel from Out of the Past and @QuelleLove fame.  We said a quick hello, mostly because I was nervous and embarrassed (as I am in 90% of social interaction).  But it was really wonderful to meet her and put a face to the online identity.  I wish I had been more sociable, but even at 30 I let my self consciousness get the better of me.  I then scurried outside to check my phone (no reception inside) and then sat in on the Meet TCM Panel.  It was very informative and fun to see the people and faces behind the network that I love so much. The panel was emceed by Scott McGee (@BBunny1940 on twitter) and included Charlie Tabesh, Sean Cameron, Tom Brown, Jeff Gregor, Pola Changnon and

Richard Steiner.  Each member of the panel had something insightful and interesting to share with the crowd.  They also handled themselves so professionally while also infusing humor into their responses to questions.  The panel began with a discussion regarding brand passion analysis.  It was determined that fans of TCM are as passionate as NFL or Simpsons fans and the only brand that beat TCM was Apple.  That is very easy to believe especially since I have often considered getting a TCM tattoo since I love what they do for classic film so very much.  They then discussed programming and what is taken into consideration deciding on the programming.

Jeff Gregor, Pola Changnon, Richard Steiner

They mentioned things like the rights to movies and deals that they can make with studios.  And in regards to programming the festival they need to be able to find a print and find the appropriate format.  Pola Changnon who is in charge of set design talked about creating sets for both Ben and Robert.  She talked about some of the recent changes and what goes through her mind and the hosts minds while working on the set.  For Ben, she said that he imagines living in that space and for Robert, who she called a "handsome devil"they wanted to make his space social and welcoming.

Sean Cameron, Tom Brown, Charlie Tabesh

Sean then talked about the new program called, Friday Night Spotlight (I'm already a month late on this) which was inspired by Cher.  It's to be hosted by a different classic film fan celeb and each month will feature a different theme.  This program offers more perspectives on film and different voices at the network.  Here are the upcoming Friday Night Spotlights:
Illeana Douglas- Second Chance Films (this one has come and gone, but it was wonderful)  She selected a lot of great movies and was also on twitter discussing the movies with #TCMParty and fans.  I have them all recorded on my DVR and need to find the time to watch them.

From TCM.com

Bill Hader- In October he'll be doing Friday night Horror nights.  I keep missing him on Essentials Jr. but I do enjoy him immensely and love that he's a part of the TCM family.
Eddie Mueller- His spotlight will focus on Noir Writers, I believe this is the spotlight they're doing this month and I've dutifully recorded all the films from the last 2 weeks.
Then in my notes I wrote down David Edelstein....but I didn't write down the theme of his Friday Night Spotlight, so we'll all have to stay tuned for that :)

Jeff Gregor

This then led to a discussion about how they're able to secure talent for events like this and how they find celebrities who are classic film fans.  It was revealed that they work hard to maintain great relationships with classic film fan celebs and that they keep a database indicating which celebrities are fans.  If someone mentions classic film in an interview or elsewhere they get added to the database.
They then opened the panel up for questions from the audience.  Some of them were interesting, while others were cripplingly embarrassing.  One woman asked if they could make it clear in the Now Playing guide that a film will have closed captions so she won't miss the dialogue when she leaves the room to go to the bathroom or make a snack.  Other questions did result in hearing some interesting info, for example when asked about using a Digital copy or a film print for festival screenings they will always chose the one that is better quality, but recently they have been under more pressure to go with the digital restorations over film prints.  Someone also asked why 'The Exorcist' was pulled from the line-up, it was insinuated that William Friedkin had a lot to do with that, he was unhappy with the print they were going to screen, so instead of fighting with him they opted for 'Three Days of the Condor' instead.  There also a few questions about planning themes and what makes a classic a classic.  The panel stated a number of times that there isn't a cut-off date for a classic film and they often try to work within a theme or with a particular actor in mind.

Tom Brown

Some other questions were about holding a festival on the east coast, they responded as nicely as they could, but made it fairly clear that a 2nd festival won't be happening any time soon.  They said it was a tremendous amount of work to put together this festival (and for that we are all very grateful).  Oh one other very interesting tidbit was that they always try their hardest to get obscure or not often seen movies and one way that they do that is by negotiating for smaller films when they're securing or buying the rights to bigger movies and sometimes they're able to work out deals where they can screen a movie once a year.  Overall this was a wonderful panel that helped shed some light on the inner workings of TCM and also confirmed the fact that the people who work to provide all these wonderful programs, festivals, specials, etc. truly love and respect classic film and their fans!

Well that ended up being very long-winded, I've always been quite verbose.  Anyway, after the panel I decided to head back outside to get some air, text some friends and family, you know things you need cell reception for, and when I was walking back inside I bumped into (almost literally) a friend of mine who I've known since college.  We've managed to bump into each other pretty much every year at the film festival, but this year we decided to spend the rest of the day together and go to Funny Girl together and all that good stuff.  We also decided to enter the 'So You Think You Know Movies?' Trivia contest, together we became 'Dial teaM for Murder' and tackled the INSANELY difficult questions thrown our way by Film Forum programmer Bruce Goldstein.

James Karen

There were very many challenging and tricky questions.  My friend and I did not win, but we had some personal victories, like me determining that James Karen narrated a Buster Keaton documentary, since I had remembered that I celebrity spotted him at the screening of 'Cameraman' at the 2011 film festival and my friend pieced together that it was Lucille Ball in the brief clip of Top Hat, based on his knowledge of her being under contract at RKO at the time.  We figured that we probably got 8 out of 20 correct and based on the questions, that ain't bad.  As an added bonus 3 actors who were featured in questions showed up during the trivia contest.

Norman Lloyd

They included James Karen, Norman Lloyd! and Michael Badalucco.  They also presented the winning team with their prizes.  I tried to get a picture of Michael Badalucco as well, but they all came out very blurry, he's a man after my own heart gesturing like wild. Here are some of my pics, Norman Lloyd was so very confused, but was definitely a good sport.  Always nice to see him at these events.

After the trivia contest I scurried off to my car to change for the opening night movie.  I had planned on changing in a bathroom, but that was not in the cards for me and changing in the car just seemed to make the most sense.  All those years of changing in cars before and after soccer games as a youth really prepared me well for life.  I then grabbed a quick bite with my trivia contest bud at 24 Degrees and we then made our way over to Funny Girl. At this point I was still foolishly holding out hope that Babs herself and/or Omar would make an appearance, but I was very wrong.  And after hearing a not so flattering story about Omar Shariff with a fan at a convention I became grateful that he wasn't going to be in attendance.  Still, it would've been quite a coup for TCM to get Streisand herself, oh well.  Instead we got a letter from Barbra read by William Wyler's daughter which was heartfelt and sweet and a little convo before the picture between Robert Osborne and his 'Friday Night Girlfriend' Cher.  It was very cute to see them interacting in person. 

The movie was simply STUNNING.  I'll be honest and let you know this isn't one of my favorite classic films, I've only seen it one other time, but after seeing this restoration in Grauman's I fell in love with it.  I kept wondering what it must've been like for audiences to see this movie when it came out and have this be their first introduction to Barbra Streisand, I mean seriously! That hair, those nails!! That voice!  No wonder she won (well tied for) that Academy Award.  I was seriously blown away by the movie and promptly ordered the Blu-Ray restoration when it came out the following week, along with The Guilt Trip, come one you know I had to.  Anyway, amazing to see the film in all it's glory.  TCM always knows how to pick good opening night movies.  Oh and that reminds me at the panel someone asked if they intended to always do musicals for the opening night movie and Charlie Tabesh said it just kind of happened that way it wasn't always the plan.  I've really enjoyed all of the opening night red carpet movies from all of the film festivals, (A Star is Born, An American in Paris, Cabaret and Funny Girl).  They've been wonderful ways to kick off the festival and awe-inspiring to see at Grauman's (I refuse to call the theater TCL).  The red carpet staff were VERY similar to the first two years, in that they were pushy, rude and constantly saying "move along" or "keep moving" even when there were people in front of you, I can't walk through people, sorry.  I would've liked to have had a moment or two to enjoy walking the carpet and scoping out the celebs walking in with me.  I did grab a quick snapshot of Eva Marie Saint saying hi to Robert Osborne, I like to pretend that she's saluting him :)

After the movie I had the AMAZING luck of being able to go to the Vanity Fair party!  Thanks to my friend I got to tag along and experience the fancy shmancy-ness of it all.  In all the years of attending the festival I had never attended the party and felt very lucky to be able to check it out this year and kind of see what I've been missing.  It was very nice to check out the venue and do some celebrity spotting.  I saw Max Von Sydow, Tippi Hedren and Illeana Douglas walking around.  There was also a lovely performance by Lulu.  She sang, 'To Sir, With Love,' and! 'I Don't Wanna Fight No More, ' which I didn't realize she had written.  I had always just thought of it as a Tina Turner hit.  I didn't take that many pictures cause I was just trying to soak it all in, but here are a couple:

And! my mom emailed me saying that she spotted me in a picture on the TCM festival website, here it is:

From TCM.com

I'm the one sitting on the edge of the pool thingy about midway back, in the very colorful dress with the black sweater, I can't believe my mom found me in that picture, but that's how moms are sometimes.   After hanging out for a couple of hours we decided to take the shuttle back to TCM headquarters.  We ended up in a shuttle with TCM's Tom Brown! which was a nice surprise.

So that does it for the day one update, it was a lengthy one, I know, but it was such a great day and such a wonderful experience I'll try to update about day two sometime in the near future and I'd love to be able to update about the 2012 fest, sometime soon!  Thanks my faithful readers :)

TCM Classic Film Festival- (Part 4 of probably many)

My sincerest apologies for the delay in posting about Day 4, but I was finishing up some online seminars for school that I needed to finish before midnight tonight.  I successfully completed 3 of the 4 that I needed to complete and the 4th one will have to be completed at a later date and time.  I'm a little peeved but I've altered Meatloaf's song 2 out of 3 ain't bad to fit my situation and that somehow makes me feel better about it so... 3 outta 4 ain't bad. :)

Anyway, that's probably not why you stopped by my blog you want the scoop on Day 4 of the TCM film festival, right?  Well here we go....Day 4, April 25th, 2010 began with a 9:30 screening of Damn Yankees at the Grauman's Chinese 6.  I was very excited to see this fun musical, directed by Stanley Donen, starring Tab Hunter and Gwen Vernon and! featuring a dance with none other than Bob Fosse!  I was definitely looking forward to this.

It was introduced by Leonard Maltin who gave some history regarding the transition of Broadway musicals into films and how more often than not much of the cast from the Broadway show didn't make it into the film and that many songs were cut because Broadway shows are innately longer than the usual running time of a movie.  He told us that Damn Yankees was a bit different, in this situation almost the entire case of the Broadway show, which included Maureen Stapleton and Gwen Verdon, was in the movie and the only Hollywood addition was Tab Hunter.  In fact, Jack Warner purchased this play FOR Tab Hunter.  So that was an interesting bit of trivia. 

The movie was amazing to see in a theater (much like all the other movies I saw during the film festival) and afterwards Tab Hunter was interviewed by Ben Mankiewicz.  He talked about what it was like to be part of the studio system and when Ben asked him about being a heartthrob he said that he tried to separate himself from that and focus more on his family, friends and his horses (he seemed to have a great affinity for horses).  He, like all the other speakers, was very gracious and candid about his experiences.  He said that he had an interesting time assimilating into the Broadway cast while filming and that eventually they all got along very well and that the most important thing to remember is that you can't go into things with preconceived notions; that doesn't help anything.

After the interview Ben was approached by some people for autographs so I decided to join the group and he was nice enough to take the time to meet me and give an autograph.  I then left the theater and was surprised to see that Tab Hunter was in the lobby surrounded by a bunch of movie-goers and they were posing with him for pictures and he was giving autographs.  I, again, decided to jump on that band wagon and got his autograph and lent my green pen to another film fan so he could get an autograph too.

    

         
Here's the autograph ---------------------------->

And here's my green pen in action :)








After all that excitement I decided to take a little break and I was planning on grabbing lunch with a friend, but it ended up not working out so I did some more tourist-y site seeing and decided to grab lunch by myself and then head over to the Roosevelt Hotel.  I originally had planned on just sitting in the lobby and relaxing until I went to see Saboteur around 3:30ish.

But I then remembered that Tony Curtis was going to be signing his books at Club TCM, so I decided to wait in line for that.  It seemed like a good opportunity to meet Tony Curtis and seemed like a better use of my time.  I ended up in line behind a woman who was also named Diane, she had come all the way from Detroit with her husband to the festival.  The line took quite awhile, but everyone was very nice, one of the people on the staff went and got water for everyone in line!  I thought that was very nice.  After about an hour and a half I made it up to the front of the line.  While waiting I kept going back and forth about whether or not to buy a book or just have him sign my little spiral notebook.  The book was quite costly, I was already running out of space in my suitcase.  But, by the time I made it to the front I just decided to go for it, when was I going to get another opportunity to have Tony Curtis sign a book for me.  I guess I got swept up in the excitement.  I decided to get his book called: The Making Some Like it Hot.  The whole thing was set-up very nicely; they had a lot of Tony's artwork and pictures of him from his various films. 

Anyway...I finally made it to the front of the line, I told my first name to Tony's wife, who was very nice.  I felt kind of silly saying another Diane, but she wrote it down on a post-it, gave it to Tony and explained it was another Diane.  He then signed the book and we posed for a picture and he shook my hand and kissed it.  It was pretty exciting to get to meet someone like Tony Curtis and I think it was really nice that he took the time and energy to be part of the film festival.  It also kind of solidified my decision to see Some Like It Hot later that evening.  Here's a picture of him with a fan (not me) and his autograph:

I'm really glad I decided to wait in that line to get to meet Tony Curtis.  I hadn't planned on making that a part of my festival experience, but it worked out nicely.  It was nice to see that so many people turned out to meet him and that he took the time to take a picture with pretty much every person there and sign anything that they brought.  It also made me realize I hadn't really seen that many movies with Tony Curtis, I'd seen The Sweet Smell of Success, Some Like it Hot, Spartacus, and The Defiant Ones.  And I think that's it, since being back from the film festival I've tried to catch some more of his movies.  So far I've seen Who's that Lady?  Sex and the Single Girl and The Great Race (the last 2 were on Netflix Watch Instantly) and I've gotta say they were pretty fun movies.  I enjoyed them and I enjoyed him.  Anyway, back to the festival.

Next up was Saboteur at Grauman's Chinese 6.  I was looking forward to seeing another Hitchcock film on the big screen and this one did not disappoint.  I had seen this movie and for some reason I thought Dana Andrews was in it, I don't know why, but I was very surprised when he was not in it.  I still don't know why I thought he was in it.  But anyway the movie was great, very suspenseful.  It was a lot of fun to hear everyone gasp at all the right moments.

After the movie Norman Lloyd came out and was interviewed by Leonard Maltin.  He mostly talked about how movie making has changed over the course of his career.  It was very interesting to hear him speak.  I didn't think I knew him from anything other than Saboteur, but then he mentioned that he had been in In Her Shoes and that jogged my memory of him.  It's always interesting to hear people talking about working with people who are no longer around, in this case he talked about Hitch (Alfred Hitchcock) and how he had storyboarded almost every frame of the film before they began shooting.  I find that stuff interesting and he also talked about his stunt work and how they had made a true to size replica of the top of the Statue of Liberty (I'm trying not to give away any spoilers, hence the vague-ness).  But yeah he's a great speaker and seemed happy to be there.

I then made my way over to the Egyptian Theater for Some Like it Hot.  I had been conflicted all weekend over whether to see Metropolis with the new footage since it was the official final evening event or to enjoy Some Like it Hot where I knew I would laugh my butt off and have an amazing experience seeing it on the big screen with a crowd.  I've seen Metropolis and really liked it, but I just decided to go with Some Like it Hot.  I felt like I was lucky enough to be able to go to the opening night event (A Star is Born) and didn't want to push my luck.  It was a tough decision.

Before the movie Tony Curtis was introduced and interviewed by someone who worked at TCM (I don't remember his name) and who had known Tony Curtis for a number of years.  Tony gave a very, shall we say, colorful interview.  He shared some very funny stories and some of his experiences shooting Some Like it Hot.  He told a story about working with Marilyn Monroe.  Her line for the scene was "what is it?"  She had to point to a fish and ask, "what is it?"  She'd point, and stare, but wouldn't say the line, she then whispered to Tony, "what is it?" (meaning the line, what's the line?)  And he'd respond, "what is it?" (thinking he was giving her the line, but instead just confusing things further)  And this would repeat for a number of takes.

He also talked about how he and Jack Lemmon walked around the studio lot and went into women's bathrooms trying out their womanly ways and trying to blend in.  But it sounded like they were easy to identify.  He also told a story about a dress fitting with designer Orry Kelly for himself, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn.  At one point Orry pointed out that Tony had the nicest tush of the bunch and Marilyn retorted by opening her blouse and saying, "but I'll bet he doesn't have the nicest...well you can guess what :).

After the interview he sat in the audience; that was a pretty surreal experience to watch the movie with him in the audience.  The film was more amazing than I had remembered it, the audience applauded and laughed with such enthusiasm that it was intoxicating, it made me feel like I had never even seen the movie before.  Every joke seemed fresh and new.  At the end of the movie Tony received a standing ovation.  It was sincerely one of the most thrilling experiences of my life and ultimately a great way to end the festival.  Although if it were up to me the festival would've never ended.  I was quite sad to have to go back to the real world after all the excitement.

So there's the re-cap of Day 4!  I hope you enjoyed reading about my experience at the TCM Film Festival, I'm seriously counting down the days til next year's!  And really hoping that I can skip work again to go!!  I had the best time, and this was maybe one of the most phenomenal experiences of my entire life.  I met so many nice people, saw some amazing movies and got to be back in LA.  All in all a wonderful way to spend 4 days.