..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Ray Pride
..Patricia Vidal

We still haven't seen hide or hair of "The Movie" in Park City. But we have now seen the movie most likely to get too big an offer and to be remembered as "this year's failure" when the movie fails to clear P&A costs in theatrical release. The movie is Garden State and it clearly qualifies as one of those movies that plays better in the light air of Park City.

The film by first-time director/small-time TV star Zach Braff has lots of cinematography, lots of jokes and lots of Zach Braff in the lead role. Unfortunately, Zach has looks nearly as compelling as David Duchovney, but acting skills that are even more low-key, making his performance the base coat on the car instead of the high gloss that almost every movie needs on the surface.

Mr. Braff's screenplay is every bit as mistaken as the casting of the film's lead. The film relies on jokes, not unlike Mr, Braff's TV vehicle, Scrubs, in style. One can feel the movie reaching for the sensibility of a movie like Songs From The Second Floor, but it fails for not having the courage of its convictions. Little by little, the film becomes more conventional until the third act loses any sense of humor at all and becomes a maudlin dirge of self-awareness.

The movie Moonlight Mile tried to achieve a similar balance of deep emotion and flippant comedy. Some felt it failed. I liked that film a lot. But all of the jokes, whether you bought them or not, were attempting to fit into the overall story arc. Here, you get gags for the sake of gags and only a small percentage really deliver.

Along for the ride is Natalie Portman, who seems to be doing a "10 years later" take on her role in Beautiful Girls, thought that smart young girl would have had to make some really bad decisions on the road to this film. Portman, actually, is quite good in the film and you get the sense that she was thrilled to have such interesting material to play with (though again, I don't think it fit as a cohesive story) and played it to the hilt.

In the third lead - and really the third and final name non-cameo - is Peter Sarsgaard, who must be slumming for a friend. Sarsgaard has never done less.

Perhaps the performance that best reflects the entire film is a young actor (whose name I do not know and is not in the program guide) stops young Zach for doing 80 in a 25 zone on his sidecar laden motorcycle right out of Project Greenlight. First, you never believe that Zach was doing 80. Then, the actor screams obscenities at Zach, far too aggressively to be real. But it does get a laugh. And the actor is doing a really nice job with what was on the page. As the scene continues, the "cop" turns out to be a high school pal of Zach's character, and continues to get laughs. But the scene doesn't really enlighten any of the themes of the film. It is, as so many of the moments created by Mr. Braff, a one-off.

But someone's going to throw money at it…

The hot word around here these days is "documentary," as people hope to find their Bowling For Columbine, Capturing The Friedmans or Winged Migration. So far, no go. But that doesn't mean that there aren't terrific documentaries here at the festival.

I saw two really good, really impossible to release theatrically, documentaries about spectacularly arrogant artists. The first is called Dig!, the story of two bands - The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre - who were connected in their early days, but who slowly moved towards the opposite ends of the success spectrum.

The central figure in the film is Anton Newcombe, the maniacally egocentric singer/songwriter/guitarist of the Massacre. He is the classic beautiful boy who lost his way after being told he was the beautiful boy too often. The story of the two bands, one that escaped youthful anarchy and one that was swallowed whole by it, is an interesting story well told, with lots of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll and, though a little long, it is a good trip.

That said, there is no theatrical option that makes sense for the film. My take on it is that it belongs on MTV as five or six or even seven half hours, restructuring this material as half-hour segments with a story line, much as Bunim-Murray creates weekly drama on The Real World. One of the reasons that the movie is a little long is that a lot of the mistakes made repeat over and over again. But when you repeat something in Episode Four after you saw it in Episode Two - especially when it is truthful, which is what has made The Osbournes second and third seasons a bit less fun and which threatens the future fun of Newlyweds - it is a recall of an amusing memory.

The other ego-out-of-control doc is Overnight, the story of Troy Duffy, another talented guy who flew too close to the sun before falling to earth. Duffy is the guy who was working at a bar called J. Sloan's before selling a screenplay to Miramax, only to have part of his deal be Miramax buying the bar for him. Lots of hype. Lots of print.

And ultimately, no movie.

The film was conceived by Duffy and his cohorts as the Miramax deal happened. The filmmakers, Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana, started recording the process, from the early arrogance to the various falls and recoveries of Duffy and his family of friends, who also were part of a band called The Brood.

Among the flaws of the film are that it is a show biz story and that the filmmakers did not do much to tell the story from a wider angle. They did an interview with Sharon Waxman (then of the Washington Post), apparently trying to create some perspective on the Miramax side of this relationship. But Duffy's unrelenting arrogance is ultimately more amusing to these filmmakers than any real perspective on Miramax's motivations throughout the process.

Ryan Duffy seems to place the majority of the blame on Miramax Production prez Meryl Poster, but the truth probably has a lot more to do with the screenplay's failure to attract talent that would make a $15 million budget for a first time director a reasonable business choice.

There was gossip page stuff about the film being looked at by Miramax for a purchase, the subtext being argued that Miramax wanted to silence the film. It is to laugh…

Why is it that people keep convincing themselves that things like this movie or the Biskind book or the New Yorker article are damaging to Miramax or Harvey Weinstein? Sure, no one likes to be upbraided in public. And I know for a fact that Weinstein is upset about the Biskind. But dear God, each of these things seems like a warm bath for The Big Man compared to reality. And this film features the kind of self-involvement, arrogance and ultimately, a lack of ability to get "it" done, that Harvey looks like the sanest man in the world for getting out of business with these guys.

This film belongs on HBO or Cinemax, where it can serve as Project Greenlight: Before Project Greenlight, which is essentially what it is. I don't think this experience led to the Greenlight concept, but in a fantasy world, you can almost see Harvey talking to Poster and saying, "This thing was a waste of a lot of money, but what if we could do it for a lot less and guarantee a money win based on the story of making the movie even if the movie fails at the box office. Give me a fucking donut!"

There was one great film that I caught on Friday. It is an HBO documentary called Born Into Brothels, made by Ross Kaufman and Zana Briski. It is a truly remarkable story, reminiscent of 2003's My Flesh & Blood as much as anything else. The stories are completely different, but the heart is the in the same place.

But more on that film, Zatoichi, D.E.B.S., Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the SLA tomorrow. (And if I'm lucky, I'll get into the Patty Hearst Q&A after the Sunday screening of Neverland.) Also, why the new star most likely to come out of Sundance 2004 is Marguerite Moreau, the young star of Easy.

 

- by David Poland