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Considerations
Covering the annual film industry awards races, with sharp commentary on the pictures, the players, the money and the spectacle. by Tyler Coates
Considerations: The Regional Festival Road Trip
Christy Filmmaker‘s Awards Season coverage launches for the Fall with the return of Tyler Coates’s Considerations newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday or find it online here every Friday. — Editor
I spend the bulk of my time in September and October driving across Los Angeles to watch movies. It’s not something I feel like I can complain about—I love the movies!!!—but it is a lot of work, particularly for someone who lives on the east side of the city. I’ve spent so many hours in the Wilshire Screening Room in Beverly Hills, and thus just as much time in my car to and from the location. (Plenty of us east siders bemoan the long commute and have talked about collectively asking for more conveniently located screening options—but then again, we’re seeing a bunch of movies early and for free, so do we really have any reasonable complaints here?)
For the most part, these small screening rooms buried in corporate office buildings are packed with critics and pundits, and the conversation before the films have lately have involved a lot of doom and gloom about various industry challenges (corporate contraction, mass layoffs, etc). One might have a brief chat afterward in the parking lot about the movie, but there’s not a ton of value in asking one another about a film’s prospects in the awards race this early in the game. None of us are actual voters, so the predictions at this point—when there are still too many good movies for the limited nominations—are purely based on vibes.
Which is why the late October onslaught of regional film festivals can be pretty important.
I tend to take reactions out of Venice, Telluride and TIFF with a grain of salt. Those festivals are overwhelmingly attended by industry folks with some sort of skin in the game and hoping to get an idea of what will dominate the season. (My current frontrunner for best picture, director and adapted screenplay is still One Battle After Another, which skipped the festival circuit entirely.) Yes, there may be a little bit of FOMO on my behalf because I can’t justify paying to travel to those places, so I do miss out on the festival mingling (which, of course, can feel a little starfucky when I’m seeing candid photos of famous people at festival parties as I scroll through Instagram).
But the festivals in Georgia, New Jersey, Virginia and Texas, among other states, are a nice testing ground for general audiences and their reactions. Yes, the talent also make appearances in these places far from Los Angeles (which can help boost ticket sales as well as allowing films to collect preliminary honors on the way to the critics’ groups and guild awards at the end of the year). But for the most part, these festivals attract true film loversexcited to see these titles on the big screen in a communal setting.
It’s also helpful for me to hear from these people, too, because their reactions are a bit more illuminating than those of my fellow pundits. I spent the long weekend at the Virginia Film Festival (full disclosure: I’m a member of the fest’s advisory board) where there were sold-out screenings for Netflix’s titles Frankenstein, Jay Kelly and Train Dreams. The response to Frankenstein was something I was particularly interested in; I heard a lot of positive reactions from those who saw it in the large Paramount theater in town (whereas I saw it in a small, albeit loud, screening room at Netflix HQ)—so much so that I think it’ll have a stronger chance at a best picture nom than I did three or four weeks ago. (Best picture nom or not, the film will dominate the crafts categories.)
The Sydney Sweeney-starrer Christy, a biopic about boxer Christy Martin, was also a hit with everyone I know who saw it, while those who saw 20th Century Studios’ Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere were more mixed. And I was excited to see Searchlight’s The Testament of Ann Lee, a late entry in the race after the studio acquired Mona Fastvold’s musical drama about the founder of the Shakers, which I haven’t yet been able to screen in Los Angeles. It’s also a testament (sorry) to the engaged audiences at the festival that international titles like Brazil’s The Secret Agent, France’s It Was Just an Accident, Iceland’s The Love That Remains, Spain’s Sirāt and Taiwan’s Left-Handed Girl all attracted full audiences.
All of these movies will hit theaters soon enough (even Frankenstein, for a limited Oscar-qualifying run), then we’ll understand more of the wider reception before the guilds, critics and however you’d describe the Golden Globes voters will start making their picks, which could sway the Academy voters to follow suit (or at the very least take seriously those nominated contenders). We’re still a few months from knowing what the true crop of contenders will look like. Until then, the campaigns march on across the country with the studios treating regional audiences with early looks at next March’s winners—whatever those might be.
