The Vergecast - Special Edition: The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

Episode Date: January 27, 2015

The Verge's Casey Newton, Emily Yoshida and Bryan Bishop chat about the films of the Sundance Film Festival, the huge steps Oculus is making in the narrative film world, and the unstoppable force of nature that is James Franco. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to a special edition of the Vergecast live from the Sundance Film Festival. We were just having a debate about what we were going to call this podcast. I'm personally in favor of Verge Pod Sun show. Wait, what? Virge Pod Suncast show, special. And I wanted hot celeb chat. Okay, so let us know what you think in the comments. I am Emily Oshita.

I am the editor of the entertainment editor at Theverge.com. I'm joined with Brian Bishop, a senior entertainment reporter at The Verge. Hello. Casey Newtman. Casey Newton. Casey Newman's own. Buy my salad dressing. You really like bind everything together here.

I'm the salad dressing. You're the zip. It's, as you may be able to tell, it's been a long few days here at the Sunday. Dance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Beautiful Park City, Utah. It is beautiful. You guys have both, this is not your first Sundance. This is my first Sundance, but how is it stacking up?

It's a prior. You know, I actually haven't seen as many movies this year as I did last year because there's been a lot of, you know, tech-related but not movie news. There's not the line debacle that you saw last year, Casey, that seems to not be as bad this year, yeah? Yeah, there's less trouble. getting in. I think last year they introduced this electronic wait list

that gave people a lot of problems around hearing as much about that this year. But, you know, I would also say that this year may feel a little weaker to me than the past two years that I've come. There doesn't seem like there's been a runaway hit out of the festival. The one movie that people started

talking about yesterday, me and Earl and the dying girl is apparently terrible. Well, I mean, don't take it for me. It got a record deal out of Sundance. It got bought by Fox searchlight for $12 million. So apparently I'm wrong. And this is the feel good hit of the summer slash early Oscar season.

But it also just seems like kind of cashing in on this trend of sick lit. And here's a girl with leukemia dying to give meaning to the life of her boyfriend. Yeah. You know, like when I think of Sundance, I think of movies like Fruitvale Station from last year, right? Movies that took us to places that we don't already go. I haven't seen a ton of that this year, but I have seen some. Yeah, I would agree. I feel like there's a lot of this kind of stereotypical Sundance narrative that I, you know, had expected, but I also expected to be disproven about. I expected to be surprised because there's just so many films here that there has to be something that will break that mold eventually. And yeah, I've seen a lot of coming of age dramas so far, partially because I signed up for them, but also, I don't know. It's just a lot of really similar arcs. Yeah, that's what's here.

And while you've been seeing coming a vague dramas, I've been seeing really straightforward documentaries that are like rock solid and yet don't really do much in terms of like playing with the form or, you know, showing us a subject from multiple different sides. It sort of feels a little sundance by numbers, if that's a thing. Can we say that? Are we cranky here? Because I...

Maybe you should have opened a beer before we started this. I know, I know. There's still time. I've got my gobletful of it. Coke Zero. So, no, I mean, but I've been seriously thinking about that as like a more overall issue that I'm coming up against at the festival. It's like there is a thing of that I, you do sense that a lot of people want to have that aha moment with a film here. I mean, I want that moment. I've been going into every movie wanting that moment. And I think a lot of

people are making themselves believe that they are having that moment. And a friend of mine who's gone to the festival many more times than I have. I was saying, you know, the best part is eight months from now when all these movies are in the theaters and everybody who was just freaking out about them in the festival is like, wait, what was I this excited about? I mean, it's going to be really interesting, especially for like Mural and the Dying Girl, which, you know, all these serious film critics are going to, like, you know, losing their minds over and it's definitely going to be marketed as a fault in our stars or, you know,

It's going to be marketed for teens as like a, yeah, sicklet. And I think that a lot of people are going to maybe wish that they had not been so. Hyped it up so much. Yeah. Well, a lot of it is about context, too. You know, like if you stand in line for something for like an hour, hour and a half, you brave the cold. You're seeing something in a room with the filmmaker for the oftentimes the first time anybody's seen the movie. And everybody's excited about just that sheer experience.

You're going to get amped. But it's almost like Comic Con in that sense. Like at Comic Con, everything's fucking amazing. and no, it's not rarely. I talked this woman in the bus today, and she was so excited. She's seen like five things. She's like, I didn't buy tickets in advance.

I just showed up. I waitlisted. I've seen everything but one movie, and I love them all. I wish I was having her experience. I'd not be a great experience to have. I have not had that complete experience, especially in the ease of use of just getting around.

Right. Yeah, I mean, I wonder, because, I mean, it starts to really dawn on you how kind of crazy it is that we're all sitting here in these, you know, dark rooms, often in strip malls in a small town in Utah. And, you know, this could have all been streamed to us. Like, we could have paid for the exact same price of airfare and everything and just sat at home in a blizzard and watched all these Sundance movies. But, you know, there is that experience and the build and the struggle to get here and the struggle to get in every screening

that I do think molds the experience to a certain degree. Yeah. And if you haven't been, I mean, let me say a few nice things about Sundance, right? Like, it remains a cultural treasure. I really believe that. It's the only place. place I've ever been in my life where people try really hard to see a movie. It feels just totally like anachronistic to the point of being quaint at this point, right? But it's also a place where you're seeing a lot of dramas that are being made for adults that are coming from outside the studio system that are not all based on Marvel comic books. And often, and always, I wind up seeing at least one thing here that I wind up sort of carrying around with me in my head for the rest of my life. And so that's

magical. And at the same time, it is sort of a lottery. You really, don't know what you're going to see when you walk through the doors. It's part of what makes it fun, but it's part of what can make it frustrating if you don't like what you saw. Well, let's talk a little bit about some of the bigger films that are premiering here. There is the premiere section, which is films that are not in competition, but are kind of the big marquee names at the festival. We've gotten a chance to see a few of them between the three of us. Brian, you just saw a true story this morning. Right.

So this is, you want to kind of summarize it a little bit? Yeah, true story is a, I mean, it's a, you know, based on a real life incident. Jonah Hill plays a New York Times reporter

who has disgraced himself and then finds out that a man accused of murder who was James Franco used his name. And so he kind of like, invest, starts interviewing him in jail saying, I can turn up

and this, this is my big chance to redeem himself. And it's this two-hander that's supposed to be a real cat and mouse game where they're like playing each other and sizing each other up and going back and forth.

and there's an interesting movie there. It's a really, really polished film as well put together. Jonah Hill, who I consistently like and pretty much everything is great. James Franco, though, is this serial killer, and he's supposed to be a sociopath and, like, scheming and, like, figuring people out and all this stuff. And quite frankly, like, in the first half, he's just not there, not selling it at all. At first, I thought he was acting as if he was, his character was acting poorly. Like, it's not like, sell Jonah Hill well.

And I'm like, oh, that's subtle. That's interesting. You're like, no, that's not a choice, actually, at all. I feel like I've had that moment in a lot of James Franco movies where I was like, is the thing here that he's supposed to not be good? Is he prank does all? So, yeah, that one is already already has distribution and that's pretty, right? Yeah, really so, yeah.

That's like a super high profile movie. Yeah. And yeah, it was frustrating, though, because that's one of those movies where you see it. And that felt what I, it tends to happen a lot. I think it's in the last few years we'll have. It's an indie feeling movie. It's a small movie, but big star. cars could be marketable, but doesn't quite, you know, work.

And the whole thing's got a fantastic cast. It's just disappointing about that one thing. But the truth is, like, I have a hard time taking Franco seriously anything, I think. And I realized it today. Like, after the interview, it's really hard for me to go and see him in any serious role and be like, you're a real actor. Like, I know you were, and you have been, but not today. What was the moment where you had, like, the too much Franco moment for all of you?

Because I think I know what mine was. And it was way later than I think I would have actually imagined originally. I think it was his poem about spring breakers. That was kind of the worst thing in the world. It was pre-spring breakers. Because when spring breakers hit, I was like, I can't take it. He was going to spring breaker. I had nothing against spring breakers.

Like that's the moment where I'm like, oh, I cannot take anymore. Right. It's a good note to end on. Well, he's kind of the king of Sundance. I was just saying to somebody on Slack earlier today. Cool slack side note there. You guys been slacking a lot while we're here? You guys slack has been burning up in the snowstorm.

Yeah, no, he's been, I mean, I've heard people on the bus saying like, oh man, I saw James Franco. Like, he's the person to see here. He is the celebrity. He's in two movies. He's in that. And I am Michael, which apparently is not very good or possibly even worse than true story. I mean, I don't know. this is this is the franco film fest he's doing a coffee at slam dance like he is he's all over main street

oh so he's true indie oh he's legit oh man yeah i think he's just sort of like turned his whole life into performance art though and like that's what makes him interesting is like that everything that he does now just feels like a stunt even if it's something totally pedestrian which is like a kind of achievement yeah he kind of he's sort of the uh i don't know which is the more functional version of that him or shaya he's good shia yeah he's definitely good shia I guess. Because he's actually making movies and we don't know if it's a prank yet. You know what I mean?

We're like, shy, you're like, you're like, you're in a room with a bag in your head and asking people to come see you. It's like, yeah, no.

So another, another big premiere here, I guess you could call it a big premiere. It was a walk in the woods, which is a little bit of an inside job. Yeah. So I saw this film because it stars Robert Redford and Nick Nolte, Robert Redford,

of course, founder of the Sundance Film Festival. And I thought, you know, if he is going to put his own film into the festival. I understand he's not the chief curator, but, you know, he certainly participates in the film being selected, right? It's probably going to be pretty good. It's really not. It's like two grumpy old guys in the wood.

Redford, who we all know for being this sort of like shining golden boy, plays this really peevish, annoyed old writer who, we're told needs to go rediscover his purpose by hiking the Appalachian Trail, which is not a me. metaphor in this case that he really does hike the trail with Nick Nolte and almost nothing happens to them like there's sort of a series of incidents and then um a sort of lukewarm conclusion and that's the film and I have honestly no idea why they made it I don't know why Sundance selected it um it's just kind of a whole lot of nothing is it the Sears land ho it wishes it were the Sears land ho um I find it interesting though there is like a lot of there's definitely a uh there's definitely a market for the geriatric like buddy com here at sundance and a lot of like local moms so i'm sure that i mean i mean that's i feel like that's the audience i could see it working it's just one of those

movies where every joke just seems to land like a half a bit too late you know that it felt like it sort of needed an edit it was just like a little bit slow um like seeing too old guys like get in a series of ridiculous uh situations like i could totally enjoy but this one was just was not that movie. I mean, is it better or worse than gone fishing? That's what I really need to know. Or the bucket list. Or the bucket list. Wow. I didn't realize how much. Or last Vegas. I think I smell a film fest. Yeah. There should just be an old fart film fest. Well, well, I saw a movie that I liked you guys. So I'm going to be positive for a second. I saw the end of the tour, which is James Ponsolt, who did a spectacular

now and smashed. He's kind of a sundance darling at this point. But it's his adaptation of David Lipsky's book that's basically his account of profiling or attempting to profile David Foster Wallace at the end of his book tour for Infinite Just.

And this one's been kind of rumored about for a while. I think like there's a lot of hand-wringing about it because there's obviously something kind of weird and ghoulish about Jason Siegel dressed up in a bandana and the wearing glasses and everything. And I was really like expecting to be a little bit grossed out by this movie. But I kind of loved it. I really did.

It's one of those, it's one of these things like, kind of like Selma where you can't call it a biopic because it's about an isolated incident in a real life person's life. But by choosing to focus on this kind of key exchange or moment, you really do get a sense of the whole character, which, and I think it was done and written very, very well. It's essentially just one long conversation between Lipski, who's played by Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Siegel as David Foster Wallace. And how do they give it any sort of like narrative momentum if it's just like two guys talking in a car? I mean, it's so, so I kind of wrote about this and my, I did a review of somewhat of a review

of this movie. I don't read your work. I'm sorry. I'll have to, yeah. It's been a busy day. You know, internet, it's hard to come by here. I understand. I it's so a lot of it for me at least how I read the film is a lot of it is about just the nature

of journalism and particularly profile journalism and this relationship that the two guys form which is supposed to be professional but cannot help but become kind of a buddy road trip type thing just because they're stuck together in a car and on a plane and all this stuff um the thing for me about this film and I think the point in which I differ from a lot of people who also liked the film a lot is that I really saw it as a indictment of that act. I don't think that it was written with that intention, but that's the feeling that you get when you come away from it is that this was basically like a five-day assault on David Foster Wallace or Siegel as him and David Lipsky is kind of a vampire of a personality in this.

which is really creepy and troubling to watch, but also super fascinating. And that is a film that I was thinking about for hours after I saw it. And Jason Sickle is really, really good. Like, he deserves credit for, I mean, I haven't seen enough footage of David Foster Wallace just talking and being a person,

so I don't really know, you know, how literal a performance it is. But it feels like a real whole character, and I think that's what matters. And, you know, yeah, it's, it's a, and it goes by really quickly. I mean, like any, yeah, like any long interview. It's really fun to just kind of watch a Q&A. Yeah. But yeah, no, I enjoyed that one.

Yeah, Jason Siegel is a guy that, like, I, like, going back to freaks and geeks, like I've always liked and has been doing some stuff that's been kind of like whatever lately. So I'm really excited to prox of him and just, like, nailing, like, a serious role like that. It's interesting. I got Franco and Jason. and Siegel and... The whole freak's crew here at Sundance.

Could I talk about something I liked? Yes. So I did see one movie that I just unabashedly loved this year. It's called Tangerine. It is by director

Sean Baker. Yes? Did I guess last name right? I probably should have Googled who's a fact checker on this? This is me typing on my keyboard right now. Quietly? But he is

an indie director who drops you into this world of, and I got the answer right, so that was great. That was great. Thank you. So the movie is about two trans women who are best friends. They're working as prostitutes in West Hollywood. And when the movie opens, one of them named Cindy has just gotten out of jail

and her friend lets it slip that her boyfriend, a pimp named Chester, cheated on her with a biological female. and that enrages Cindy, and so Cindy decides she's going to hunt down the woman who cheated on her man. And so that launches this sort of hilarious farce about these two women who are very different personalities, who are just sort of like struggling to make it through

a very long day in West Hollywood. And the story is great, and the technical backstory is interesting as well because they shot the whole movie on three iPhone 5S's. I would not have guessed that it was shot on a phone when I looked at this movie, they used anamorphic lenses to make it look more like a kind of traditional 35 millimeter film. But apparently they shot the whole thing in an app called Filmic Pro that costs $8.

They made L.A. look really good. And it's a really funny story. And there's a lot of heart. So it was to me the sort of ideal Sundance movie because it took me to a place I've never been before, introduced me to some really cool, interesting characters and told a pretty good story. Yeah, I'm really bummed. I'm not going to get to see that one because that that was high on my priority list. And just that there's something really inspiring too about, I mean, that's what this film festival should be is people using $8 apps, especially now in like 2015. People should be able to like just make a story without necessarily having all these celebrities in it or being backed by, you know, an indie studio that's really a major studio. Like there's something really cool about that kind of story coming. through and getting a big audience here. Yeah, absolutely.

Apparently the director just, his previous film was also about a sex worker and he was sort of interested in kind of continuing to explore that world. And so his travels in West Hollywood where he lives, by the way, took him to this LGBT center where he met a couple of people who were getting services there, struck up a conversation with him and wound up hiring both of his leads from the center, people who've never acted before. And then they collaborated on the script. So the stories that you're seeing are like real stories from West Hollywood that have sort of been, you know, turned into something a little more Hollywood. But it's really fun that we're seeing.

Cool. So there have been a couple of big, uh, buzzy docks here, also in premieres. Doc Buzz. Doc Buzz. There, uh, so, so yesterday, I believe was the, I'm losing track of days. I will warn you guys. It was the day before yesterday. Tuesdays Monday?

We've been here for six days. That's not true. Yes. We got her Wednesday. You lie. No. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. I just got to six. Okay, today's Monday to 26. You're right. I'm scared. Yeah. God.

We live here now, you guys. We live here now. No, I still feel like I never left the terminal of JFK when I got stuck because my flight got canceled. Well, you may be stuck in the Salt Lake City Terminal. We may be sorry. We ever did this. So I think it was Saturday. the premiere of Kurt Cobain montage of Heck, which is a new documentary about,

obviously, Kurt Cobain using a ton of home video footage and recordings from his childhood. I mean, it's like a three-hour-long documentary. Final cut, I think, is 2.10, 2.15, something like that. But yeah, it's director Brett Morgan, who's made The Kid Stays in the Picture, kind of like experimental, very stylish documentaries that differ from film to film.

And this one, basically, he had the support. court of Kurt Cobain's mom, his sister, Courtney Love, and Francis Bean Cobain. They kind of just said, here's everything, you know, all four of them that said, here's all the stuff we have on Kurt, just go. And it's this really, really amazing documentary because it goes back to have, you know, footage from him, and he's like one and two years old, you know, at this birthday parties. And he seems so happy. And then from about, you know, his parents get divorced, and then from about eight years

older, you just see him get more and more depressed. And it's an interesting film because there have been movies about Kirk Cobain, fictional and not. There have been books about him. They're all kind of like adhering to this main narrative. This movie gets into some stuff with footage that he and Courtney Love took video footage, that kind of stuff. It quite frankly puts him in a terrible light. It shows him at the lowest points where he's a junkie, you know, just like in a very, very bad place, both of them. It shows that, you know, there's a scene where I think I mentioned it in my piece where he's getting his, Francis Bean's getting her haircut and he's holding her and he's nodding off

because he clearly is super high. And Courtney Love, love like says you don't want your daughter to see you like this and he gets defensive and kind of like lashes out at her like you don't like him because of this uh at the same time it made him incredibly human in my eyes and having you know been you know you know a fan of irvana growing up and then like seeing him die like a kind of humanized in way that i hadn't seen before and i haven't seen any other movie do before and so that sense it was really really powerful and uh i also had a chance to see the film really liked it and one of the ways that it differs from most of the like cabane docs that I've seen, aside from the fact that it doesn't accuse Courtney of murder,

is that it takes his journals and animates them. And, you know, there was sort of a big buzz when they, when they, you know, released his journal so anybody could read them. And as a result, like, you've seen them just a lot of places. So his handwriting looks very familiar. This film takes it in all of his doodles, right? He loved to draw. And it just sort of animates all of those things. And so, you know, the subtitle of the film is montage of heck, which on one hand is, like, a horrible, horrible title. I haven't know how they picked that title. But it really is a montage, and it's the best way of thinking about the movie.

Like, on the one hand, it does feel more comprehensive than a lot of the documentaries that are out there just because they had such great access. Yeah. But on the other hand, it is not comprehensive. Like, Dave Grohl isn't in the movie. And while it does sort of tell, like, the entire shape of his life, there's a lot that gets left out. Like, MTV is, like, barely in it. And, like, I don't understand how you tell the story of Nirvana without telling kind of, kind of the story of MTV and the role that they played.

But that's a quibble. It's really good. It's worth seeing. Even if you don't have to love Nirvana, I think, to love this movie. I think if you like Nirvana, you might love this movie. Yeah, I took several people who did not like Nirvana actively, but love the movie. Which is kind of interesting. And the name montage of heck is actually a cassette tape, I think, that some of the audio is pulled from.

So that was like, that is a Kurt Cobain title, apparently. It's still an awful movie title. So that's no excuse. But yeah, I think that comes out in April and May on HBO. So it's an intense movie, but we're checking out, definitely. Yeah, there's been a, I think there's at least a couple of musician documentaries here, because one of the opening night films was what happened, Miss Simone, which is actually a Netflix documentary, which will, I don't think it,

still don't think it has an actual date, but it's going to be soon whenever it is. So that left a lot of people to not prioritize it on their schedule here, because it's like, we'll be able to watch it on Netflix soon anyway. But, yeah, it was in, I mean, I haven't seen the next. the Cobain film, but it was also similarly very, very intimate in its sources. It didn't, you know, it didn't have people in the industry so much as it had, like her closest friends, her daughter, her ex-husband, all these people.

And that really does paint a different portrait of a person than having, you know, these authorities on music and culture and stuff tell you why this person was important and all that. And it's kind of a refreshing way to do. a biographical documentary, I think. So, oh, let's see, we talked about Hangerine. Oh, now on my schedule I have, in all caps,

celebs. Finally. So Sundance is a festival where a lot of famous people show up and are in movies and at parties. It's a celebrity hotspot one might. say. And I just wanted to see if you guys had any cool stories, but celebs. I have some amazing stories. Yesterday, I stood behind Adam Scott from TV's Parks and Recreation in line for coffee for a very long time. He uses an iPhone 6 plus, and he tipped all the change.

He got back from the coffee shop. Just threw that right into the tip jar. So I have a lot of respect for somebody who does that. Obviously, you know, he didn't have to, but I guess he thought the service was good. And that's just one of many stories I have. What did he order? Just a coffee. So, um, okay. Just drip coffee. Well, here's what I thought was interesting about that is that that way he didn't have to give his name, you know, because if you order an espresso drink, all of a sudden it's like, what's your name? And I was listening in because I was hoping he was going to say, you know, Beauregard Jenkins or something. But, but instead he just got his coffee and and walked away.

Anyway, great guy. I consider him a friend now. No. You guys, one degree. We went through something together. It was a long line.

See, that's your opportunity to like kind of elbow him a little bit and be like, hey, what about this line? You know, know what I'm saying? That's how you get things done in this business. I'm pretty sure.

I almost just said, hey, is it cold enough for you? Because it's kind of cold outside. But I couldn't work up the nerve. Did you say, hey, are we having fun yet? I think both of us also had Jack Black sightings? Yes.

I'm so jealous of this. Yeah, but there was an event where the Meat Puppets played a concert, and Jack Black, along with Chris Nova Seleck from Nirvana, was hanging out by the side of the stage because that's what Jack Black does whenever there's, you know, somebody performing music. And at one point, he came up to sing. a song with the, with the meat puppets, which was amazing. And as he walked bombing his way out, I said, nicely done. And he patted me on the shoulder. We follow each other on Facebook now.

Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, does he like, can you see all of his picks? Yeah. He's crazy. He's Jack Black. He's Jack Black. I mean, what are you doing to do? I mean, come on. I also, I also had an encounter with Jack Black at that party, but I did not speak to him. But I did have full body contact with him for about five seconds. So I don't feel I need to really explain that any further. And you will not be washing that outfit anytime soon. He also, I believe, had an iPhone 6 plus. Really?

Yeah. It's the hottest trend among celebs at Sundance this year. So really into Apple products. Everyone's doing a 6 plus. The 6 plus? God. Why did I buy a 6KC? I did it wrong. This is why we're not famous. Just walking around with our basic ass 6es.

I've been trying to keep my mom. updated on all of my celebrity sightings because she's really excited about the fact I meant Sundance, maybe more than I am. And one observation she made after I had told her about a couple people was like, a lot of dudes. I'm like, yeah, that's right. You know, like, I haven't seen that many actresses.

Like, I didn't go to, I didn't make it to the serious ladies panel, which was like, Lena Dunham, Minnie Kayling, Kristen Wig. And was there somebody else? I don't know. I didn't see that. Kristen Wigs in a lot of stuff here. And apparently she's out and about, but I haven't seen her. She's the queen of Sundance, if Franco's the king, I think.

Which, yeah, she's fully deserving of from the one thing I've seen her in so far. She's in three movies? No. She's a nasty baby. She's in Dyer of a Teenage Girl. I feel like there's something else. Does this mean 2016 Sunnance is going to be the year the Francoe Whig collaboration? Oh my gosh.

Don't give them any ideas or do. I'm Facebook and Jack Block right now to make it happen. We're so connected. Yeah, we're plugged in. But yeah, no, it's been kind of a bro party out there so far from what I've seen. I saw Jason Schwartzman at another party, and I saw Adam Scott at that same party for the overnight, which is also supposed to be quite good. I have not seen.

Probably will not get to see. That's the story with so many things here is you kind of piece together your schedule like a jigsaw, and then something always gets left off. It's so weird. It's like I saw six movies in three days, and I feel like. I'm like barely on like the outer edge of having seen the relevant stuff. Yeah. Well, it's hard because you don't feel like there's really a good sense.

I mean, you talked in your piece earlier about how we don't, there's no narrative around these films yet. So it's not until people start seeing stuff. You know that something's good. But then you already have the rest of your week planned out. And it's like Sunday or Monday. So what can you do? I've done so many days though.

It's like I had a full schedule, a very comprehensive schedule. And then like I read one tweet. And I'm like, oh, shit. I got to go. Got to go change everything. Like, trade in all my tickets. I mean, that's kind of what happened with me and Earl yesterday. Oh, we also, I think we skipped over this.

There is another doc premiere going clear the Scientology documentary based on the book by Lawrence Wright. That is a very big newsy thing here. I think they hired HBO. It's produced by HBO films. It's going to be, I think it's probably going to be on. sometime this summer. But they hired something like 160 lawyers just to, I guess, protect them from, because, you know, Scientologists are notoriously litigation happy.

It was, I had read the book, and I am also obsessed with Scientology, so a lot of stuff I'd seen before. I had not seen, so a lot of the film is devoted to the sort of war that the Church of Scientology had in the early 90s against the IRS so that they could maintain their tax status as a exempt religious institution. And that goes on for a few years. And then they basically just individually bully various people at the IRS. And eventually they are let off the hook for a billion dollars, a billion dollars in back taxes. And they have this big rally. And David Miscavage is addressing everybody in this incredibly over the top set and fireworks go off when he tells them

about their tax status and this like this title goes over the screen and says we won the war and it's it's mind-blowing like and that's really like there are all these individual horror stories about people who have been abused by the church and and all the stuff which a lot of which is in the book but I think I think that element of it um and you saw it two caseing I think we were both talking about this like that element of that's what keeps them of float. That's what keeps all of this abuse protected and it basically comes down to the IRS. And that seems like one of the biggest takeaways from it, one of the most mind-blowing things about it, I think. Yeah. And also just how like we're in this weird position in a country where

the agency charged with deciding like what is a religion and what is not, is in no way, like, capable of doing it. Basically, it's a bunch of accountants and lawyers and we're asking them to like argue these, you know, fine points of philosophy. Yeah. I thought going clear was really good. And I thought I had never seen Tom Cruise's maniacal laughter used more effectively against him. They sort of use it to illustrate the point that the further you get into Scientology,

the more you become like Elron Hubbard, who was a deeply paranoid person, who could be very vindictive. And you sort of watch that narrative play out in several different people that it profiles. and none more effectively than Tom Cruise, you just see sort of like cackling and looking completely unhinged. Well, have you seen that video on YouTube, the big long one where he's talking about the magic of the stuff?

He's really not even saying sentences. He's just laughing. Do they have interviews with people that are formerly from the church and that kind of thing? Yeah. Paul Haggis is one of the main interviews, which Lawrence Wright did a profile on him prior to doing the book, I think.

And he also figures in heavily in the book. Yeah, him. This woman, I think her name is Spanky Williams or something. Spanky Taylor, I think. Spanky Taylor. And she was a friend of John Travolta who left the church after a pretty horrific story she tells about being separated from her children in a kind of disciplinary action. Yeah, there's a pretty good selection of people there. And at the end, they show the people who had declined interviews, which of course is like Tom Cruise, David Miskavage, John Travolta,

Kirstie Alley. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I think if you haven't read the book, like I feel like a similar thing happened like this with Guns Germs and Steel, like, which is another book where I was like, oh man, you have to read this book. And then like, they put out a movie of it or a documentary of it. It's like, well, you could just watch this too. But, yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's great. It's got, it's, it's very, it's very well done.

It's very shiny. So this year there's been a lot of virtual reality at Sundance. Both Casey and Brian did a big write-up on kind of the state of VR at Sundance, specifically with storytelling in VR, which is definitely taking a big jump this year. You guys want to talk a little bit about what you saw? Yeah, well, like last year they had, like, they've been doing stuff since for the last three years. And this year there was a big new frontier, which is their kind of, you know, art installation section. 11 of the 14 pieces there were virtually reality related in one form or another. Casey did this amazing thing called Birdley, which you should just talk about because it's amazing.

Yeah, so Birdley is this full-body VR experience where you strap yourself into a chair with your arm spread as if you're flying. They strap, you know, an oculus onto your face. They put headphones over your ears. A fan blows air at your face. and when you open your eyes, when you start the simulation, you are flying over a 3D rendered simulation of San Francisco. And what I thought was really cool is that just intuitively you start flapping your arms. Because like what else would you do, right?

And as you flap, you gain altitude. You can sort of twist your arms to sort of fly from one side to the next. And you can just sort of explore the world. And there was something really lovely and almost. therapeutic about it, right? Nobody's trying to shoot you out of the sky. You're just sort of exploring and the physical chair that you're sort of strapped into does a great job of sort of helping you maintain that suspension of disbelief and make you feel a little bit like you actually are flying. So I would say definitely the coolest thing I've seen at the festival because it did

feel like a step forward for VR. So much of the VR that we see just isn't interactive. You sort of get plopped in the middle of a what is essentially a travel brochure and you look around and then you get pulled out of it. This, you actually kind of got to move around a little bit and interact with things. I flew into the side of the Transamerica pyramid just to see what that would be like. Turns out it resets the simulation. But it was a really cool thing to do. Yeah. And there's a couple interesting pieces too that there's one thing called Project Syria that a woman named Noni De La Pena from USC did. She did a piece called Hunger in Los Angeles that we covered a couple years ago. And this thing, basically, you step your inner rooms, you can walk around, like, fully, you know,

move up and down, and it tracks. You also have an Oculus headset on. And there's three sequences in there that take place in Syria. And the first one is you're just hanging out in, you know, intersection in a town. There are people talking. And rocket strikes. And it's like, it, you know, blows out your eardrums. It's loud because you're wearing headphones. You can't see anything. And you see a child running towards you. And it's an interesting thing. This is happening with Hunger in Los Angeles, too, where because you can walk around freely, you just like immediately go into the world. It's kind of like what Casey's talking about,

but you're walking as a person. I started running after this kid, and the woman stopped me so I didn't run into a wall, which was nice of her. But it's interesting about how VR, looking around is one thing, but it's when you can add those other elements, either like, you know, wind blowing in your face or moving around that it kind of takes it to another step.

Even something super minor, like the Game of Thrones things that had at South By in 2014, where you were like on the elevator for the white wall that had this vibrating floor. It made you feel like you were on. the elevator more than just the visuals. That next step stuff is always kind of what's really interesting with VR.

And the big news that we haven't seen yet, I guess we'll see it when this probably goes live, but Oculus announced this morning they're going to be starting to make virtual reality movies of their own. They're going to be showing the first one off called Lost today, which, you know, party wants it to be either like, you know, an incredible leap four that, you know, breaks all boundaries and changes the world forever.

Be a terrible disaster. The other option that might be fun. But in all likelihood is going to be a small iterative update, learning small things because when it comes in narrative stuff, VR is this brand new medium and knowing knows how it works. You can't use cuts. Film grammar doesn't apply. It's just like you're making up this brand new thing from scratch.

So all these steps are small and iterative. And looking back, I think, you know, in five years we'll be like, oh, that thing, that seems so minor at the time was a huge breakthrough. But right now it's just a small little tweak where, you know, a sound makes you turn around and that changes up story point. That's a big

breakthrough in this context. Right, yeah. And it's interesting to think about what kind of stories then we'll get priority with that you know like you think about something even as kind of minor as as 3D and how that seems to prioritize action films and things where things are going to be flying at your face and or things where you are soaring over the 3D army or whatever and like what kind of story will be the oculus will oculus be useful to tell uh and that's that's something i'm definitely interested in seeing both with that and with the hollow lens because i can't wait for hollow lens movies and I won't shut up about it.

No HoloLens yet at Sundance, but maybe next year. So we should probably wrap things up here. We'll be back on the Verge cast this week, barring any inclement weather, to talk a little bit more about the rest of the festival. But I just wanted to wrap up with your guys. Maybe everybody can go around and share their favorite thing, maybe their favorite most underrated thing.

and maybe the most overrated thing. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Preferably something we haven't talked about all right. Yeah. Well, I'll say this. One of my favorite moments.

I've heard stories about audiences getting aggressive with filmmakers at screenings before. I saw a documentary called The Visit Last Night, which is a very, very odd documentary about what would happen if aliens visited the Earth, right? And it's told from the perspective, like, the alien, you are the alien. so people are talking to you, the character of the movie, saying, like, why did you come here? And then it's interspersed with that

with a bunch of, like, really, really slow motion shots. It also has, like, a bill of the all alike, but, like, for two hours long and voiceover. It's actually an interesting movie, but three quarters of the people stayed, a quarter of them left during the screening. People behind me kept going like, oh, my God, this is so pretentious.

Oh, my God, I can't believe you did this. So I'm like, that was annoying. But when the Q&A happened, the people behind me had been talking the entire movie, basically just started yelling at the director for, like, being pretentious. And part of the point of his film was that if aliens came, we would immediately go

to a war stance because human beings would be paranoid. And they're like, basically we're mad for him being condescending and talking down to humanity for that. And then they didn't get their second question answered and they left because they were really angry. Wow. Wow. I don't think I've seen a super contentious Q&A yet. Usually it's people who

do the old trick where you say you have a question and really you're just like, I've been such a big fan of your work forever. I saw this and this. And, um, and oh let me try to think of a question and take five minutes trying to do that. I, yeah, I don't know. I also haven't stuck around for a lot of the Q&As, I will say, because you usually have to rush off to do something else.

I'll say that I think something that I think will maybe be getting more attention as the next week progresses, but still right now feels like not a lot of people are talking about is the Amina profile. It's a documentary from a Quebeccois documentary named Sophie. de Rasp, I think. And it's one that's hard to talk about because you don't want to spoil it for anybody.

But essentially, you can call it catfish in the Arab Spring. And it goes to some pretty bonkers places. It's not a perfect documentary. I think it's a little it's not a long documentary but it could be shorter.

But the story is definitely insane and she does a really good job. of breaking it out into like a larger more consequential place than hey like what a what a crazy thing that happened so and I don't know this is all very very vague but but I think it's also one of those things where I wonder how much it's going to be seen outside of the festival and I so I wish that it was getting a little more attention it sounds like it would be a great like Netflix documentary exactly it would be perfect of that or I could see it being like a vice documentary actually too

it's totally that kind of story um Yeah, I'm trying to think of something that I really didn't like, other than what we've already talked about. I don't know. I think I'm just getting line exhaustion, especially press line exhaustion. I went off on a Twitter rant last night when I was stuck by some kids who were talking about the art of film criticism. And I'm kind of, I worry for the future, you guys. I worry for it. Did you hashtag engage with the kids?

No, I kept looking over and I was like, I mean, I was like actually laughing. Like I wasn't doing it just to be annoyed at them. Like they were making me L.O.L. Because they were being so obnoxious. I mean, like there were some good lines. Like, you know, film criticism, it's dead. It shouldn't be, but it is dead. Except for Roger Ebert.

Roger Evert was one of the great. But since he's passed away, I guess it really is dead. I think it falls to them to reinvent film criticism when I look forward to their contributions. I know. I should have taken down their names just so I could see who these young Titans were. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm trying not to get too hung up on stuff that I don't like here because I'm trying to walk into everything with a clean slate and feel like, you know, I could still be surprised.

This could still be the best week of my life because of this one movie that I saw. So, yeah, we'll see. So a movie that I think, if not underrated, is at least under-talked about so far. And I haven't helped because I haven't written about it yet. But Larry Kramer in Love and Anger, another documentary that premiered this year. This one's also coming to HBO. HBO is behind so many of the documentaries in the festival this year. And I've seen three of them.

They're all great. So I have no complaints, really. but Larry Kramer, big figure in the gay movement, helped bring a lot of attention to the AIDS crisis in the early days. And first through the gay men's health crisis and then through Act Up and I think can credibly be said to have helped push the FDA to advance the development of drugs like AZT that wound up being incredibly effective in stopping the sort of slow motion, you know, death. of just this huge chunk of the gay community. So the documentary is made by a friend of his, so it's very sympathetic. Larry Kramer is a controversial figure in the gay community,

in part because some of his writings come across as deeply anti-sex, which pisses off a lot of people in the gay community. But the documentary itself is just a riveting piece of history. It's amazing how much has happened to the gay community just between, like, you know, 1979 and today. and Larry Kramer has been in the center of most of those issues. And so it was cool to get kind of a look at his life and to think about some of his big arguments. Yeah.

And then I don't know if it's overrated exactly because it's like just had its premiere yesterday. And I haven't seen anything about it. No, everything is already written in stone. So there's a documentary about the National Lampoon called drunk, stoned, brilliant dead. And the National Lampoon was this magazine that sort of evolved out of the Harvard Lampoon and so you had all of these sort of snooty rich kids

putting out this satire of American society. It became a national magazine and for about five years it was really successful. But the founders like both became disasters in their own ways and wound up leaving the magazine. What bothered me about the film was that I just didn't think it did a very very serious. good job at making a case for the cultural impact of the National Lampoon, which was sort of its one job, right?

Like, instead it sort of focuses on like the personal conflicts between all the people who worked there and how proud they were of the work that they did. But while the name itself is kind of a household word, because the brand got attached to things like Animal House and National Ampoon's vacation or, you know, the Christmas movie, it's not really clear to me like how influential the magazine was. And I think whenever you see a documentary where there's that much like padding of oneself on the back, like the least you have to do is to convince me that this thing had a huge impact. They've got a couple interviews with like Judd Apatow and Billy Bob Thorne where they're like, I thought this stuff was hilarious back in the day. But it just didn't quite push it as far as I thought it needed to.

It's one of those things. I think it's like a very common doc syndrome where you just assume that your audience is already on board and they don't need to be convinced. of why anything is great. Or they just want to hear famous people tell them why it was great and back up their own opinion. Yeah. I guess I do have a piece of hate. Have you guys played?

Okay, bring it. Going back to the VR thing. Do you guys play Kaiju Fury? This game is not new. I didn't do this one, no. Okay, I think this is, I believe Adi Robertson covered this at Comic-Con last year. But this is a game where it's on cardboard.

Google Carbord had a big presence in the VR lounge. And so you watch it through there. And basically they say, like, if this is going to be this cool monster fight thing? It's like an action movie. You're going to love it. And imagine if you took the worst sci-fi movie possible, matched that with, like, two guys in rubber suits,

and then put it into a VR short film that basically disregarded any concept of virtual reality and decided we're just going to go make a really bad, shitty student film, and then put it on goggles, and that's going to be a great thing. Oh, wow. And that's what this is. Now, granted, I know VR is a young, nascent medium. No one has had to do it right.

But one thing I will say is that if you're going to insist on using cuts in a movie, you should probably realize that people have to go and turn their head and left and right to look at different things in VR. So if you're going to have your really, really bad actress trying to play with some sort of like laser bolt generator thruster device to kill the monsters to the extreme left, you probably shouldn't have the monsters to the far right when you cut to that scene. Otherwise, you just whip your head back and forth for about three minutes until you vomit. So don't play that. Okay.

that's all. Stay away from this student art exhibition that can be out only in Park City, Utah for the next few days. That one you can download. I believe it's downloadable. Yeah, if you have Google Cardboard, you can do it yourself.

So take a drama mean and try. Okay. Okay, that you just changed your recommendation. Well, that about does it for us this week. Like I said, we'll be on the verge cast this week talking more about Sundance. Enjoy the rest of your week

if you are at Sundance. If you are stuck in, a blizzard somewhere in the east coast. Get some booze. I don't know. Okay. Bye, everybody. Later.

Bye.