When The Best Part of The Day is Not The Movies...

They've Turned King Street into a pedestrian walkway with overly loud music, sponsored kiosks and restaurants spilling into the road. Late at night it becomes a place for non-festival goers to hang and drink and party. One of the biggest attractions is standing in front of this nifty logo sign and getting your picture taken.

My morning started out with a mess of a film called 'Mangelhorn' starring pal Al Pacino as a locksmith who yearns for a lost love. The story was a bit mangle-horned and not too sure how its going to do.
Had to leave a bit early to get downstairs and stand in line for a film called 'The Cobbler' starring Adam Sandler, Steve Buscemi, Dustin Hoffman and Ellen Barkin. Adam Sandler plays a fourth generation shoe repairman who is considering changing his profession and moving on until some wild things begin to happen when he begins to use his grandfathers ancient shoe repair machine. And that's all I'm going to say.

But honestly, the best part of the day came when I left and went over to the bar to do a spot of emails and saw Clark Johnson sitting there. I'd seen him at a few screenings. I asked him if he was watching or in a film (it's rare that you see actors at the Industry screenings). He said "both" and I clunked my head - of course, he'd been in one of my favorite films at the fest, 'The Bird People'. We had a really nice chat that lasted quite some time, and then his girlfriend, filmmaker Nika Belianina joined us.

We had a really nice time talking about a number of subjects. In addition to acting in such shows as 'The Wire', 'Homocide' and the truly funny 'Alpha House' on Amazon Prime (you got to check this out - super funny show about Senators rooming together in a beautiful home in DC), he's a director and a writer. His girlfriend Nika is originally from Russia, living in Toronto and is very involved in producing and directing films herself. We had a funny chat about Putin and the Olympics (my favorite part was the military guard singing 'Get Lucky' and the boycotts. She also taught me a new non-verbal expression for my tendency (well necessity) to multi-task in my job. I shall be using this expression going forward. Hope to see these guys soon on Sundance Cinemas screens and at Q&A's. Looks like 'Bird People' was picked up by our friends/cousins at IFC.

As I've said before (not here) I tended to sleep through dense foreign films during my film school days, so I was not prepared for 'Pasolini' starring Willem Defoe during his last days intertwined with a fantasy of his last script being filmed. It was Fellini meets Pasolini meets a hard core gay film.