You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Essentially a man of peace...

As promised, I will answer some common questions about my Festival schedule. But first, I mentioned to Jenni a personality test that was a list of questions that you were meant to answer 'true' or 'false' to. They may be familiar to people who've skimmed the unix fortune file, for which I apologise. Web research suggests that they may be from the North Dakota Null-Hypothesis Brain Inventory.

1. I think beavers work too hard.
   
2. I use shoe polish to excess.
   
3. God is love.
   
4. I like mannish children.
   
5. I have always been disturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears.
   
6. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools.
   
7. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye.
   
8. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs.
   
9. I believe I smell as good as most people.
   
10. Frantic screams make me nervous.
    
11. It's hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room full of mice.
    
12. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis.
    
13. A wide necktie is a sign of disease.
    
14. As a child I was deprived of licorice.
    
15. I would never shake hands with a gardener.
    
16. My eyes are always cold.
    
17. Cousins are not to be trusted.
    
18. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
    
19. I am never startled by a fish.
    
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
    

I'm not convinced that answering this series of questions from the point of view of a fictional or role-playing character will necessarily give you a better insight into that character; but imagining their likely reaction to being given such a test can be pretty funny.

Anyway... the three questions.

Won't the different films just blur together?

No, I'm pretty sure that they won't - I definitely didn't find that last year, when I went to about 75 or so. For example, I'm going to six films on the first day - but that's a Chinese martial arts/historical epic, a German ballet/class commentary documentary, a collection of British short animated films, a doco on eating McDonalds for a month, the Che Guevara biopic and a Korean mystery/thriller. It should be pretty difficult to confuse any of those.

There were one or two instances last year where I found films blended together, so that I wouldn't be able to tell you whether I got something from one film or another - but those were documentaries that covered overlapping areas, such as The Weather Underground's coverage of, say, the Black Panthers, and BaadAsssss Cinema's coverage of the same. For the most part, they're distinct and distinctive - that saved me from going to the film that described itself as similar to Blissfully Yours. :)

Going to so many films is a waste of money.

Well, first off, that's not a question. And even if it were - so? It's not a waste of your money, after all. :)

It's interesting, in a way, that I've had a number of disapproving responses - as if it is somehow less morally worthy to spend money on going to films for a couple of weeks than doing something more "normal" with it, such as spending an equivalent amount at bars over a month, or buying car improvement kits, or spending over a hundred dollars on a haircut or a piece of clothing. Then again, if you spend $160 on a pair of pants, you've got a really nice pair of pants. :) I guess there's also the valid "don't spend any money on anything" or "don't spend money, since you're going to buy a house" points of view - but not spending money I have on things I'll enjoy has never appealed to me as a strategy. (Not spending money I don't have, on the other hand, is a sensible and worthy position, and why I have nothing on hire-purchase. :)

I guess I don't see going to a whole bunch of movies at once as being very much different from reading - if I'm enjoying a book, I'll quite happily read for hours and hours, and it's often actually hard to stop reading, and not go on until three in the morning. However, I also know there are some people who don't own a single novel, and may not read a book all year, so I'm aware that it's not the way everyone sees it.

There's also the "you won't enjoy them as much all together as you would spaced out over a long period of time" school of thought. There's a certain amount of validity in this argument - when I was first watching Buffy, for example, the quantity of enjoyment I gained from it might have been bigger if I rationed myself to one episode a week, allowing expectations to build, etc. But there are two flaws to this line of attack. The first is that the Festival is only running for two weeks, and while some of the films will come back, many will not - and even those that do, I'm unlikely to be able to organize myself to see, so I'd miss out on the possible enjoyment that they'd give me entirely. The second flaw is that I have not yet run out of enjoyable things, nor I do seem likely to in the forseeable future - 'fun' is not a commodity that I feel the need to carefully ration against some future happiness-drought. With my current backlog of things likely to be pleasant that I have not yet experienced, I'm prepared to suffer a little potential-enjoyment loss.

Do you have a spare Farenheit 9/11 ticket?

No. No, I do not. I am going to a Japanese silent movie from 1926 with a modern soundtrack. I think I'll probably go to Farenheit 9/11 when it gets wider release, but A Page of Madness isn't likely to make it back any time soon. I can see that there would be a lot to be said for seeing it with a Festival crowd; but on the other hand, I don't find Mr Moore's style as compelling as other people I know, so I'm not that desperate to see it.

***

And there we have it. Next up - thoughts about what Svend might do in Europe.

Posted by svend at July 1, 2004 12:45 PM