For the first full day of festival activities, it always feels like the first block of the day is always a tough one and this year was no exception. Today, we started out with The Postman Always Rings Twice, Merrily We Go to Hell, and The Clock all up against each other at the same time. There was also High Society over at The Legion Theater in Hollywood Post 43 of the American Legion, a new venue at the festival. I absolutely love The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Clock, and I was curious to give Merrily a re-watch, but I decided to go with High Society instead.
Out of everything playing during that block, High Society was the movie that it had been longest since I last watched. And after ending the previous day with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, I wanted to start the day off with something more lighthearted and fun. Most importantly, I wanted to be sure to check out the Legion Theater at least once during the festival and this seemed like my best opportunity to do so. Making a point to check out the theater was one of my best decisions of the festival because it was absolutely beautiful. The building itself is amazing with lots of very vintage touches, but the theater is just spectacular. The seats are comfortable, I had lots of legroom, and they have an excellent sound system. It was a wonderful theater to see a musical in.
Kate Flannery of The Office was there to introduce High Society and I really enjoyed her introduction. She talked about how she grew up in the same area that Grace Kelly was from and that made Grace a big symbol of hope for her. Kate’s parents were also very big fans of Grace’s and really admired the Kelly family in general. While she acknowledged that High Society lacks some of the qualities that made The Philadelphia Story so great, it was clearly a movie that means a lot to her and it was great to hear those very personal connections she has to it.
After High Society, I took a little bit of a break before heading over to the Chinese theater for Raiders of the Lost Ark. As much as I love Sunrise, which was also playing during the same block, the fact that Craig Barron and Ben Burtt were doing a presentation about the special effects in Raiders is what sold me on it. I’ve been hearing rave reviews about their presentations at the festival for years, but I’ve never managed to get to catch one of them before, so I was bound and determined to see at least one of the two they were doing this year.
When Barron and Burtt do their presentations during TCMFF, they usually discuss the effects in older movies that neither of them actually worked on, like The Adventures of Robin Hood or Gunga Din, dissecting the effects to figure out how exactly they were done. What made their presentation for Raiders unique was the fact that this was their first time doing a presentation about a movie both of them had actually worked on, so they came in with lots of inside stories about how certain visual and sound effects were achieved.
One thing they talked a lot about was how they perfected the gun-related sounds you hear in the movie. They went into a lot of detail about how different types of settings can make a big impact on how gunshots sound, how they tried different types of guns to get just the right sound, and how they got really good bullet ricochet sounds. The entire presentation was absolutely fascinating and anytime I watch Raiders of the Lost Ark from now on and I hear certain sound effects, I’m always going to remember exactly how they were created.
Once Raiders was over, I headed over to the multiplex for Day for Night, introduced by Eddie Muller and Jacqueline Bisset. When I heard Eddie Muller describing this as his dream event, I knew there was no way I could pass it up. He’s done so many incredible events over the years that if this was his big dream come true, I knew I had to check it out. It had been so long since I last saw Day for Night that it was like getting to see it for the first time all over again and of course, it was amazing to hear the conversation with Jacqueline Bisset.
If you were at TCMFF in 2018, you might remember that Jacqueline was scheduled to appear at a screening of Bullit, but had to cancel at the last minute. The first thing she did this year was explain and apologize for that. The day of the Bullit screening, she had injured her arm and felt awful about having to cancel, but she wanted to make sure we all knew she wasn’t in the habit of standing people up.
The conversation with Jacqueline Bisset went on for quite a while, covering not just her experiences working on Day for Night, but what it was like for her to work with the great George Cukor on Rich and Famous and a new project she was about to begin work on that she is very excited about, calling it one of the best roles of her career.
After Day for Night, my plans were pretty up in the air. Even though Road House was my initial choice, the longer I thought about everything else playing in that block, the harder it was for me to choose. In the end, though, I ended up choosing none of them because by that point in the day, I really needed a break to go get something to eat and relax a little bit. One of the best things you can do as a TCMFF attendee is learn to embrace the occasional breaks — especially if you plan on going all the way through to the midnight screenings. And that night’s midnight screening of Santo vs. the Evil Brain was one I definitely did not want to miss.
Before Santo vs. the Evil Brain began, one of the people giving the introduction made sure to make it clear to us that this is the kind of movie where audience participation is welcome and encouraged. And boy, did we ever participate with this one. This screening was an absolute blast. The movie was so perfectly suited for a midnight screening and the audience was completely into it. Was it an Oscar-caliber movie? Oh no. But after a long day of running around, a movie featuring a Mexican Luchador was exactly what I needed.
