Each year, my head explodes when the Melbourne International Film Festival Guide comes out. It really does literally explode, clear off my shoulders.
And today is the day.
THANK YOU to whoever at the film festival listened to the requests for everything to be listed on the same page. I know I, for one, filled out hundreds of individual response slips with responses like PLEASE LIST THINGS PROPERLY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD written on them in red pen. Last year, it was like a computer game. It was like a quest. It was a feat of mental gymnastics just to get to the movie in time.
If you look closely at this photo, you can see "PLEASE FIX FESTIVAL PROGRAMME" written in red pen. This is one of the forty-seven versions of the same request that I wrote (literally - I saw forty-seven films and I filled in a form for each of them). Like so:
Which brings me to the problem with having a full festival pass: it enables you to go to everything. And yes, if you go to twenty films over 19 days, you have justified the $300 ticket, BUT...
If someone says "Buy this credit card for three hundred bucks - now, go to your favourite shop. The credit card is unlimited."
What are you going to do?
You're going to go completely bezerk and buy as much stuff as you can. You'll be buying things in a size 24 JUST IN CASE YOU MEET SOMEONE who is a size 24.
So, you want to see EVERYTHING (with a few exceptions, the sight of which fill you with enormous relief) because you CAN.
Greed, I suppose, is what I'm describing. Film greed. One very time-consuming sin.
Let the games begin....
Hi, you may vaguely remember me from such things as Andy and Lawrence's test gigs. I'm a bit of a festival nut and have been been developing a fancy-smancy film festival planner that's designed for people trying to maximize their festival pass usage. It's made the last few years festing much easier: http://soxbox.no-ip.org/films/.
Yes, it's a problem isn't it? I purchased a festival passport this year for the first time, am taking two and a half weeks off work and I told myself I'm not going to see more than 2 or 3 films a day. Then when I saw the guide (I got mine at the offical launch last night, so I had a head start), it filled me with this panic.
There's all these tremendous films I want to see, and only 19 days to see them all in. For f***sake, there's 10 straight from Cannes alone that I'd like to see. I made up a short list of 48 high priority ones, but have only booked the very high priority ones - that's 17 at present.
I'm planning to spend much of the weekend poring over the guide and working out in more detail what I'm going to see without drowning in films (I think there's an art to the restraint). As I mentioned on my blog, festival director Richard Moore announced some of the subtle changes. The one that was received most warmly was that session times are now found with each synopsis. But I still find the guide a bitch to get through. The master list should be on the back or second last page. Putting it in the middle just isn't right.
Daniel, I think you should propose to take over the MIFF guide. Thousands of film nerds will become a lot more productive in their day jobs if you do!