By James David Patrick
Good news. You woke up. Is this Kansas?
The lack of sleep and muscle atrophy has taken a toll, but this is your last day – seize it. In 12 or so hours it’ll all be over, and you’ll be headed back to soul-crushing reality. On Monday that won’t be hyperbole anymore. Returning home will be hard, harder than you’d imagine. You’ve eaten and breathed according to the movies. The three-dimensional friends you’ve made will disappear, shrinking back to their still-life avatars on social media. So—you’re very, very tired, but throw on the only clean shirt you have left and take advantage of every minute. If you could just watch three or four of the offerings in this first slot, you’d be living your best life. Unfortunately, there can be only one you and one movie. For sentimental reasons, you’re abandoning perfect choices like After The Thin Man (1936), Waterloo Bridge (1940), and Spartacus (1960) in 70mm. The last one hurts, but Spartacus requires a two-slot commitment and there’s some good stuff coming up.
9:00am – Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich, 1973)
It seems only fitting that you attend arguably the late director’s best film in this first festival since his passing. Mr. Bogdanovich last appeared at the 2017 TCMFF. TCM celebrated his career and presented his screwball classic What’s Up Doc? (1972). In a silly twist of fate, I didn’t attend that screening – but watched it upon my return home and it’s become one of my favorite movies in the whole world. Attending Paper Moon makes amends and pays respects to his wife -- writer, actress and producer Louise Stratten, who will introduce and discuss her volunteer efforts and attempts to get Peter’s unfinished work into the world. TCM chose Paper Moon for a reason. It’s an elegy to a disappeared era of filmmaking. A simple story of a foul-mouthed nine-year-old con (Tatum O’Neal in her Oscar winning performance) and the swindler bible-salesman (her real-life father, Ryan O’Neal) who develop an unlikely relationship that goes beyond identifying an easy sucker. It’s acerbic but sweetly funny, and László Kovács’ cinematography deserves a whole paragraph of its own.
Paper Moon lets you out of the TCL Chinese Theatre around 11am. There’s a little time for a breather as you walk back down Hollywood Boulevard to the Multiplex. Wherever you call home can wait. Take a breath. The Boulevard’s relatively quiet-ish on Sunday morning and there’s room to walk and remember where you are. Appreciate this moment. The rest of the day will start rolling downhill and before you know it you’ll be in a Lyft on your way back to the airport, sending all of your TCM friends sappy text messages and private messages about how you miss them already. Even the hardest hearts fall apart on these last days.
12:00pm – High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952)
Admit that you haven’t seen High Noon since your undergraduate film history class. Oh, just me, then? Whatever. You haven’t seen it recently either, and unless I’m mistaken you haven’t partaken of a Western this festival. This is your last chance for the classic film genre bingo. While it might not seem like much of a draw, the daughters of old Hollywood stars have great stories and personal histories to share about their fathers. Maria Cooper Janis (daughter of Gary Cooper) introduces the film along with singer/songwriter Marty Stuart, which piques my interest. U.S. marshal (Cooper) stands alone to face evil when his townspeople abandon him. Writer Carl Foreman based his screenplay on his experience with the blacklist, which lends the film an extra layer of personal resonance. High Noon remains a meticulous exercise in narrative conservation, pacing, and directing audience expectation. It’s also been adopted into the DNA of just about every Western made since 1952.
The quirk about Sunday TCM Film Festival scheduling is that popular movies from earlier in the week get encore presentations during planned TBA slots. These slots litter Sunday’s final three blocks of movies so it’s hard to plan ahead with absolute certainty. Did you get shut out of a Theatre 4 pre-Code film? It’ll almost certainly play again on Sunday. Other movies gain steam via festival word of mouth. A few fests ago, Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back became a buzzy screening because people (me) wanted a second chance to make the right decision. (For the record, there’s no wrong movie decisions at TCMFF.)
Depending on what plays in the 2:15pm TBA slot, our plans might change, but for now we’ve got a date with a panel discussion at Club TCM in the Hollywood Roosevelt. Writer Roxane Gay, Sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, and TCM hosts Ben Mankiewicz and Jacqueline Stewart will talk about the need (or lackthereof) to value art made by problematic artists. I’ve seen Gay speak before and she’s a brilliant woman of letters worth the price of admission.
3:30pm – The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973)
I planned to wear my Robert Redford “McKay The Better Way” t-shirt (inspired by 1972’s The Candidate) from Kate Gabrielle’s shop to this screening of The Sting, but now I’m just wearing it to write my blurb about The Sting. It’s not the same. Tidbit #37 about attending the festival – even though there’s a movie you haven’t seen in the same time slot, sometimes you need to make concessions for personal favorites. George Roy Hill’s jaunty, jazzy long-con crowd-pleaser gets the IMAX-sized treatment at the Chinese Theatre and it’ll no doubt play to an energized crowd of adoring fans as Robert Redford and Paul Newman once again pull the wool over the eyes of Robert Shaw’s Chicago crime boss. Producers (Tony Bill and Michael Phillips) and writer (David S. Ward) will join Ben Mankiewicz in introducing the film.
After this movie-induced high, there’s just one thing left to do. While many attendees will be waiting for TBA announcements and heading off to see silent favorite 7th Heaven (1927) and 1992’s A League of Their Own (with a half dozen of its stars in attendance), you’ve had this slot earmarked since the schedule first dropped. The queen, Pam Grier, will be introducing blaxploitation classic Coffy (1973) and you’ve mentally been in that queue for months.
7:15pm – Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973)
Cult filmmaker Jack Hill and Pam Grier previously worked together on The Big Doll House (1971) and The Big Bird Cage (1972), but it was Coffy that elevated Grier into a blaxploitation superstar. A nurse seeks revenge on the gangsters that turned her sister into an addict. This incredibly simple revenge premise provided the playground for Pam Grier to canonize lines like “So, you wanna play with knives, huh? Well, you picked the wrong player.” Today’s inadvertent theme revolved around viewing big-time crowd-pleasers, and Coffy won’t disappoint this surely raucous congregation of Pam Grier worshippers. There’s no better way to put a cap on this 2022 TCM Film Festival.
Coffy lets out roughly an hour earlier than A League of Their Own. Take one last look at the neon glow of the Boulevard on your way back to your room. The festival says goodnight and goodbye with one final closing night party at the Hollywood Roosevelt. Some dress up, some put on their finest Hawaiian button-downs. Honestly, I’ve never been able to attend because I’ve always caught the last flight home on Sunday. This would have been my first closing party as I’d booked an early Monday flight. Alas.
Hopefully I’ll feel well enough to have a small drink on Sunday night to toast the end of another TCMFF from afar. Attendees will say some tearful goodbyes and stagger back to their rooms. I’m sad thinking about my various “last days” and I’m just sitting outside, all by myself, at a coffee shop, still wearing a KN95 on the off-chance I’m still a little bit contagious after more than a week with this nasty little bug fighting my immune system. COVID-19 has kept friends apart for years and my own poor luck has extended that timeline. But we’ll always have the movies to comfort us.
I hope my series of posts have inspired you to consider a trip to a future TCMFF. Maybe I’ll even see you there…
James David Patrick is a Pittsburgh-based writer with a movie-watching problem. He has a degree in Film Studies from Emory University that, much to everyone’s dismay, gives him license to discuss Russian Shakespeare adaptations at cocktail parties. He hosts the Cinema Shame and #Bond_age_Pod podcasts. You’ll find him crate diving at local record shops. James blogs about movies, music and ‘80s nostalgia at www.thirtyhertzrumble.com. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.