BEFORE: Happy New Year 2023! I've been working diligently behind the scenes to get my 2022 Wrap-up post done, and also to figure out my new chain - I've got it figured out until St. Patrick's Day, which is something, and I guess I'll work on Easter next. Picking the starting point for January depends completely on the starting point for February, so the important thing to know about tonight's film is that I KNOW I can get from here to "Licorice Pizza" in exactly 31 steps. That's comforting, I can sleep at night knowing that I'm not just jumping into the linking abyss.
But the other great thing about this film is that it appears to be a "one-linkable" film, namely that with the information I have from the IMDB, it links to only ONE other film on my list, and that means it's the kind of film I'm looking for to start off the year. Since I start a new chain each year, I could only watch a "one-linkable" on either the first day or the last day. Well, the last day's often ends up being a Christmas movie, so this seems like an ideal spot for "Narrowsburg".
Last year I started with "Nomadland", which only linked to other movies via one link, through Frances McDormand. The year before that started with "Parasite", which was full of Korean actors, and only linked to one other film, "Okja" from the same director. Both of those movies were Best Picture winners, and I would have preferred to continue that trend by watching "CODA", but it's only available on Apple TV+, which I don't subscribe to. Yes, I joined that service twice, to watch "On the Rocks" and "Swan Song", but I cancelled the service immediately after watching those films. Could I pull that off a third time? Maybe, but in principle I really hate these "exclusive" streaming deals, it feels like blackmail to make people sign up, and then before you know it, you've got 18 streaming service subscriptions and all those monthly fees. So, I'm drawing a line in the sand, and NOT watching "CODA", which I hope I can still get to someday, somehow. Guess I'll put in on my list and pull the "subscribe & cancel" scam again in a few months.
Oh, yeah, I usually announce my long-distance dead-ication here on Jan. 1 - and man, there's a LOT to choose from. I went through a list of famous people who died during 2022, and it was extensive, but it just made me sad, too. And it looks like Pope Benedict and Barbara Walters made a last-ditch effort to make the 2022 list, like Betty White did last time. Who do I pick, Queen Elizabeth, who appeared in 5 films I watched last year, or Ray Liotta, who appeared in 3? Bob Saget, Anne Heche, Jerry Lee Lewis? Coolio, Kirstie Alley or Sesame Street's Bob McGrath? Too many choices. But I've been working lately on a list of famous people I've met or seen in person over the years, I wanted to get a record of all that before I start forgetting things. So there are two people who I saw from a distance in the past who passed away in 2022 - Meat Loaf (in concert) and Gilbert Gottfried (across a crowded theater lobby). So that's my choice, I'm splitting the dedication like I did last year for Betty White and Fred Willard.
THE PLOT: The stranger-than-fiction story of a French film producer and her mafioso-turned-actor husband who attempted to turn a tiny town into the "Sundance of the East".
AFTER: You're probably thinking, "What the heck is Narrowsburg", I've never heard of this film before!" But let me try and explain how a copy of this DVD ended up in my possession, and therefore on my list. I work for an animator and I'm often in charge of entering his films in festivals, and I also work at a theater, so I know a bit about the different screening venues around NYC. So I supported a Kickstarter campaign a few years back, it was being run by a guy named Dan Nuxoll of Rooftop Films, which is an organization that screens films on top of NYC buildings, I think it's kind of a floating performance space kind of deal. But I read the plotline for the film being made and I thought, "Yeah, that's something I can get behind, I know a thing or two about festivals, and that seems like the kind of documentary I'd like to watch." So I pledged at the level that would get me a DVD of the film down the road - I honestly don't remember what year I made this donation, I kind of forgot about it and moved on, until one day I got contacted about making sure my mailing address was updated, because the DVDs would be shipping out soon.
I just checked - the campaign ran in 2012, and the estimated delivery for the DVD was March 2013 - and at the time the name of the film was "The Mystery of Marie Jocelyne". I guess it took a few extra years to make the film, because it played at a festival called DOC NYC in 2019 (coincidentally at the theater where I now work) and I got my DVD in 2020. Well, better late than never, I guess, I know I've run Kickstarter campaigns that didn't meet their deadlines, and I know that backers can get very frustrated and angry over that. Me, I just kind of forgot that I supported the film that eventually became "Narrowsburg", but when I got the DVD in the mail I put it on the living room table, right under my monthly rotating pile of DVDs that I'm getting ready to watch. So every month for 2 years I've been switching out the DVDs on top of this one, but never watching the one on the bottom of the pile - but at least each month I made a mental reminder to TRY to get to it.
Then something else happened, in November 2020, right after the Presidential election, we decided to go upstate for a small road-trip, and we chose Monticello because there's a casino there. The pandemic lockdown was still in effect, so technically we weren't supposed to leave the state, plus Atlantic City hadn't really re-opened yet, so we headed north. And after gambling in Monticello and accidentally finding the Woodstock concert grounds in Bethel, we took a drive around Sullivan County, went antiquing in Wurtsboro and visited a brewpub in Calicoon - very quiet, peaceful towns. While looking around the maps, I spotted the village of Narrowsburg and said, "Hmm, where have I seen that name before? Isn't that the name of that movie about the scam film festival?" And sure enough, that was the same place. So I doubled my efforts to watch the film that I backed, but with linking being what it is, that took me over two years to find a way to get to it.
I'm working the festival beat now for a different animator, and things are going well - but once in a while she'll forward me an e-mail she got from a festival that wants her to submit her film, and right away, my scam sensors go off, because most well-known festivals don't need to send directors an e-mail with a promo code for 65% off the entry fee (which was probably overpriced by 70% to begin with) and some of those festivals I could only find on the FilmFreeway platform by following the link in the e-mail, the entry pages were not available to all. Hmmm.... Look, a few years back somebody broke the code and realized that even the Sundance Festival is a form of a scam, if you add up the number of entries that Sundance gets each year and divide by the number of people they have watching submissions, you'll realize that there's simply no possible way for them to watch all of the potential entries in the time-frame for entry, they'd need ten times more people screening films just to watch them all. So they don't watch all of the films, but they do accept thousands of entry fees from filmmakers who have no shot of getting their film in. By rights they should refund the fees collected for films that don't make the cut, right?
And there are THOUSANDS of film festivals now, you could go broke just paying entry fees and never getting one acceptance - but it helps to know which festivals are legit and worth entering, and that's where my experience comes in. If a festival says it's their first year, or the rules don't explicitly state when and where the screenings are going to be, well, those are red flags. It seems my efforts are paying off, because this animated short has been accepted into 12 festivals (so far) that I've heard of, and it's won two awards. But since about 50 festivals have also turned the film down, I suppose in the end it's just a numbers game - and if your film gets one acceptance for every five entries, you're probably doing well. OK, so Telluride and Sundance and Toronto took a pass, it's just not their kind of film - and if the Chicago Film Festival says no, there's always the Chicago Independent Film Festival or the Chicago Short Film Festival. I'll keep trying until there's a screening in Chicago, I'm funny that way.
Anyway, there was a Narrowsburg Film Festival, back in the year 2000. Jocelyne Castaldo had come to town a few months prior with her actor husband, Richie Castellano, whose biggest acting credit was a role in the De Niro film "Analyze This". Together they opened a film production office in this small New York village, and began production on a film titled "Four Deadly Reasons", directed by Paul Borghese. Many residents of the town were used as extras during the shoot, some others had production jobs, and still others took acting classes that were being taught by Mr. Castellano. Later it was revealed that several local residents had invested money in the production, or loaned money to the producers, and never received any loan repayments or dividends on their investments.
At the same time, plans for the Narrowsburg Film Festival were taking shape, and "Four Deadly Reasons" was a lock for one of the screenings, only it came to pass that the film wasn't ready in time for the festival, and only about ten minutes of excerpts were screened, instead of the entire film. Well, sure, as I said before, things happen and setbacks take place, and before you know it, deadlines are being missed. And then one day someone noticed that the film's production office wasn't open, and nobody had seen Richie or Jocelyne in a while, and well, that might have seemed to be the end of that, except for a bunch of angry residents who lost their money and never got to see the finished film.
The director, however, persisted, and Mr. Borghese managed somehow to get the funding to finish "Four Deadly Reasons", which played in (or at least near) the Tribeca Film Festival back in 2002. And Jocelyne Castaldo popped up a few years later with a slightly different name, working with the Queens International Film Festival, only someone recognized her from her publicity photos as the brains behind the failed Narrowsburg Festival (and the failed Hollywood Film Festival before that) and then before you know it, the TV reporters showed up in Queens to ask that festival's director about the string of bad debts she always seemed to leave behind her. That's where the guy from Rooftop Films entered the story, he rented some equipment to her for use during the 2007 QIFF, and she never paid for it. A year later, he spoke to her again about the money she owed him, and he was again rebuffed, so he alerted the Queens District Attorney, and with the help of another filmmaker, began investigating the mystery of Jocelyne, aka Marie.
Then in 2010 she was arrested upstate for hoarding animals, but transferred back down to NYC via the prison system, to face charges of fraud, on top of the animal abuse. She ended up getting deported to France and perhaps returned to the island of Reunion, near Madagascar, where she (claimed to have) grew up. And her husband, Richard Castaldo, aka Castellano, served a year in jail for his scam to sell wanna-be actors SAG cards in exchange for money - it's unclear at what point he might have parted ways with Jocelyne, but since he died in 2015 it doesn't matter much.
Anyway, this film ends up hitting me at a very strange, but perhaps appropriate time - I kind of feel like I'm at a crossroads in my career, I've been working at the same animation studio for 30 years (as of this coming October) and maybe it's time for a change. I get stressed out just thinking about being out of work or job-hunting, but that also means that maybe I've gotten too comfortable where I am, and if I don't make a change, I'll be stuck there and unable to do anything else. But I get stressed out and anxious if I stay, also, because the company is always running out of money and always about two months away from closing, despite my best efforts to raise money through Kickstarter campaigns and art sales. If the landlord got pissed tomorrow about the back rent that's due and locked the doors, then I suppose I'd have to move on to something else. The job at the movie theater isn't enough of an income, because there are down times like now when it's closed for winter break and I'm not working. Sure, I could go work for a film festival, now that I have experience working screenings for DOC NYC and Tribeca Film Festival and others, but that work is largely seasonal, each festival is only operational and pays staff for a few months each year, so I'd need to work for three different festivals to get a viable income. Jeez, I don't know what to do with my life, and also I think I'm too old to be saying something like that.
Well, whatever else happens to me, I've started off Year 15, so now the chain rolls forward again, hopefully towards Christmas 2023, which is just 299 films away. I've got a map to get me part of the way there, but of course there are always unexpected turns and delays along the way. That's life, but at least I've got a full schedule of movies in January to keep me busy. And I watched this on DVD, but you can check the film out on Roku (free sign-up)
Starring Paul Borghese (last seen in "The Irishman"), Jocelyne Castaldo, Richard C. Castellano, Joe Dinki, Larry Revene, Zac Stuart-Pontier, Brian Vincent, Steve Agoston, Isil Bagdadi, Lurch Campfield, Rich Castaldo, Cecilia Coacci, Tom Coacci, John Conway, Richard Crandall, Ralph Huebner, Liz Krause, Frank Labuda, John Marchese, Tom Prendergast, Paul Salzberg, Michael Sergio
with archive footage of Billy Crystal (last seen in "Here Today", Max Casella (last seen in "Late Night"), Pat Cooper, Robert De Niro (last seen in "The War with Grandpa"), Shirley Jones, Chazz Palminteri (last seen in "Legend" (2015)), Robert Preston, Leo Rossi (last seen in "River's Edge"), Vinny Vella (also last seen in "The Irishman"), Joe Viterelli (last seen in "Shallow Hal"), Tracy Baxter, John J. Borg, Dawn Schob.
RATING: 6 out of 10 bounced checks
No comments:
Post a Comment