11/9/22
Newletter153
The Crack of Dawn
The worst film festival I’ve ever attended was the São Paulo Film Festival in Brazil. São Paulo is the 4th largest city in the world (after Tokyo, Delhi, and Shanghai), with a population of 22,000,000 people. As we flew in it looked like about five Manhattans smashed together. Crime is ridiculous and at many hotels or office buildings they have soldiers armed with automatic weapons stationed at the doors. The hotel where I was staying was the size of Toledo.
After about a ten-hour flight, I arrived at dawn at a shabby, dirty airport where nobody spoke English, the ATM wouldn’t recognize my card, and the currency exchange was closed. Then, unlike every other festival where I was picked up by a festival staff member, sometimes in a limo, in São Paulo I was not picked up at all. This was before cell phones, and of course I had no Brazilian money so I couldn’t use a pay phone. I stood in front of the airport for several hours in a deep quandary. Finally, I heard the blessed sound English being spoken. Two friendly British men took pity on me and drove me into the Latin American megalopolis of São Paulo. Luckily, I had the address of the festival headquarters. It was about 10:00 AM when I was dropped off at a small office building on the outskirts of town that was closed. These assholes had a major international film festival beginning that day and nobody was at work at 10:00? Or bothered to pick up one of their main attractions at the airport?
No screening started anywhere close to on time and the projection was a disaster for every film, so I don’t feel like they specifically picked on me. They had assured me that they had a video subtitling system that worked great, since they only speak Portuguese in Brazil, so every film they showed needed subtitling. I don’t know if it worked or not because I never saw it. My first screening was in the basement of an office building where there was oddly a 100-seat screening room. It was full, so that was good. As I said, no subtitling system, nobody speaks English, oh well. So much for my witty dialogue. The lights went down, the film started, and within five minutes someone began pounding on the metal door to be let out – we were locked in. A weary security guard let the person out, then closed and locked the door. Every time someone had to go to the bathroom they had to pound on the door to be let out, which was every couple of minutes.
Projected motion pictures had these things called “change-overs,” where the projectionist had to change reels of film, switching from one projector to another. It’s not hard and I’ve done it, but you have to pay attention. I sat through the screening, knowing they couldn’t understand the dialogue, folks pounding on the door every few minutes, then us being locked back in the room until the person noisily returned and the metal door was slammed shut, that there wasn’t a chance on earth this Brazilian projectionist was going to pull off this change-over. The marks appeared in the upper right corner of the picture, indicating that it was time to change reels, and . . . flap, flap, flap, the take-up reel spun, and no change-over occurred. The audience quickly grew angry and began to yell. I began to yell, “Change reels. Change reels! Change the fucking reels you stupid fucking asshole!” which was drown out by Portuguese cursing. It was ten minutes before the reels were changed. Even still, the audience was appreciative and gave me a round of applause, but I think it was honestly congratulating me for actually having come all the way to Brazil, then putting up with this horseshit.
The festival was run by an attractive husband and wife, who had never introduced themselves. I ended up standing in front of the hotel – soldiers in green uniforms armed with Uzis stationed outside – and the couple stepped up beside me, both smiling, obviously having a blast; stars rapidly using up their fifteen minutes. They made the complete error of asking me, “So, how’s it going?” And I let them have it there in front of that hotel: every goddamn thing that had gone wrong, starting with the airport, ending with people banging on a locked metal door the night before, and what should I be expecting tonight?
And do you know what that couple said to me? Why would I bother making this up? They looked at each other, looked back at me and said, and I quote, “Fuck you!”
I was gob smacked. They got in a car and were driven away.
And with that I wish you a good day.