Did I recently call someone a bonehead?
I may have officially, permanently surrendered that right this evening.
Remember that advance screening of Capote tonight that I was so excited about, so thrilled to be coming to Denver right on the heals of the NY Film Fest earlier in the week?
Hopefully you didn't take my advice that it was likely screening in your towns, too, and if you went to the that sponsored archive page on Capote, it might offer you tickets near your zip code, as it did to me.
The eagerly-anticipated screening was tonight. And I had meant to google-map the address, because from the beginning I had found it a little odd. 19th and Broadway--that's right on the edge of downtown--Broadway is the central north-south street through Denver--just four blocks north of the capitol, but I never realized there was a theatre there.
But then I don't pay so much attention to buildings, unless they're interesting--I just planned to get there a little early to find it. We shot for an hour early, hopefully that would get us a decent seat. There might already be a healthy line, I was expecting somebody might have to hop out while I parked.
Odd they weren't showing it at the Mayan, though. Those guys nab all the great films like this in Denver.
A good friend drove up from Colorado Springs--an hour an a quarter--to see it with me, brought his teen son who was also very excited about it. They had watched the preview online together. They had read In Cold Blood since getting the news on Tuesday.
OK, I made up the last one. But it was the long-anticipated first meeting between me and the son. I was glad to be hosting something so likely to be so wonderful. Really wanted to make a good first impression.
So we're driving around and around, and where the hell is this Loews Theatre? Past 19th, back again, asked a security guard, asked a pair of business ladies, asked a courier . . . The 16th Street Mall, they all suggested, whole bunch of theatres there. No, no, it says right on the invite, 19th, between Broadway and 19th.
We started another loop, and suddenly it dawned on me. The screening was taking place in NY. (And since they're two hours ahead, it was already taking place, halfway over, as if that mattered.)
It was so hard to even get the words, out, I swear, it was the first time since I told my parents I was gay that I literally was afraid to hear the words come out of my mouth and couldn't do it at first.
I wished they would figure it out and I play dumb while they broke it to me, but it was the crucial piece of information that I had gotten the invite logging into a New York Times site. And of course NY is the one city that doesn't feel the need to include the city--that is what was oddly missing!--because it is The city, so it's implied, only the provincial towns need identify themselves.
God.
They weren't prepared to believe it at first, probably because it came out laughing, must of sounded like a joke. And I did find it all tragically comic: "I know where this theatre is! New York. What? Broadway. I think the theatre is on the Broadway. In New York. Oh my God, I'm sorry."
Perhaps the dumbest I have ever felt in my life.
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So there is a little epilogue.
So they were up here in Denver, what are we going to do? Dinner would be great. We all just ate, cause the movie wasn't going to be out till 9.
Another movie?
We drove to the megaplex on the mall. (Pedestrian mall, down the center of downtown. A few blocks in from our little Broadway.) Two decent movies starting soon. My friend's son picked The Twenty Year Old Virgin, which turned out a bit too racy for a high school kid, so we left that ten minutes in, but discovered we had not noticed Lord of War the first time among the 37 or so choices. Just about to start.
I thought it might be OK. Prolly a slightly entertaining slightly annoying minor waste of time. With maybe a 30 percent chance of being pretty good. But I really like Jared Leto. And what the hell.
Wow. It's true, what I've read, that this was totally mismarketed. This is about the farthest thing from an action picture imaginable. Highly disturbing. In a good way, but I still feel painfully disturbed. I feel dirty. Filthy. And I feel like I've lived in blissful ignorance, and now my eyes have been forced open and I'm a party to it and have no choice but to despise myself for it. At least a little bit. No, a lot, but only for a little while. Till I shake it off and return to my own pressing concerns.
Really powerful movie. Hard to watch. But expertly crafted in oh so many ways. (Maybe a little overkill on the first-person narration, and maybe a little weak on narrative arc, but it was so intense, so unflinchingly intense, who the hell could ever look away. It kept making me look, and kept finding fresh ways to keep me looking, so I was never bored, maybe just a little restless, and wondering how much more of it I could take.
And Jared Leto. Is his face really that expressive--so vibrantly some moments, painfully the next--or do I just melt gazing into those luminous blue eyes?
Both, I think. Way too tiny for me normally to get excited about, but that face. It's not just beautiful, it exudes! Ever since he was Jordan Catalano--and he was crucial to that show, because we needed something that powerful to make a soul as perfect as Angela's completely come unglued.
L:ike a force of nature that would make her say things like:
Rayanne: You wanna have sex with him.
Angela: Who?
Rayanne: Who. Jordan. Catalano. Come on, I'm not gonna tell anyone, just admit it.
Angela: I just like how he's always leaning. Against stuff. He leans great. Well, either sex or a conversation. Ideally both.
heeheehee. Or this (pay attention to the names, on the one below; Angela is standing there just staring away wistfully while the other two banter at first, then she chimes in suddenly in the middle--here, I'll bold her interruption for you):
Rickie: "If you were about to do it, okay, what would you want the other
person to say, like, right before."
Rayanne: "`This won't take long.'"
Rickie: "No, seriously."
Rayanne: "`Do I know you?'"
Rickie: "No, like, for real. Like, romantic."
Angela: "`You're so beautiful, it hurts to look at you.'"
Rayanne: "`It hurts to look at you?'"
Rickie: "How'd you think of that?"
Rayanne: Where would it hurt?
Ahhhhh. Where would it hurt? One of my all-time fave lines. And Claire Danes didn't even get to deliver it.
But she did get to say He leans great.
Whole lot more of my favorite quotes here. I just keep reading them over and over again, wondering why they can only create television shows that perfect once or twice a decade.
(My So Called Life, if none of this is ringing any bells. The complete series is on DVD. Only (23?) episodes exist, so you can plow through the entire extraordinary piece of work in one dazzling weekend. If that's how you like spending your weekends.)
(For a brief moment or two way back I toyed with the idea that The OC might leap toward that level at some point, but not even close.)
But we'll always have Angela.
OK, one more quote:
Angela: My parents keep asking how school was. It's like saying, "How was that drive-by shooting?" You don't care how it was, you're lucky to get out alive.
Dutton (Penguin) in early 2009. 
