Serious wallowing
It’s that time of year again. In a few days the Festival de Cannes will begin its 78th iteration. Two days later the Seattle International Film Festival will commence its 51st edition. Let the whinging (at least from this corner) begin.
Once again, I shall not be present at either event, but so, what else is new?
One of them won’t deign to let me in. The other would gladly take my money, but my scheduling is off. Oh well.
I can, however, still wallow in nostalgia and immerse myself in the glory years when I would take in eighty-plus flicks in during SIFF’s three-and-a-half run. My friend Michael praised my endurance in the cinema seats by referencing my “butt of steel,” although some rust may well have set in since.
One way to wallow is to go through all the old festival programs and other paraphernalia I collected over the years at the annual fests. I was lately encouraged to do this by the Missus, who is not so much interested in wallowing than in appraising, organizing, shedding and disinfecting old boxes. She is becoming increasingly focused on downsizing and discarding our memorabilia’s detritus. This is that process of simplifying that my cousins in Scandinavia so charmingly call döstädning, which translates to “death cleaning.” Way to put a damper on wallowing in one’s glorious past.
Anyway, I have been rediscovering all kinds of evocative publications and other printed material from SIFF’s renowned history. One item I came across, which unleashed a flood of memories, was a booklet produced by a team of volunteers from among the ranks of holders of full-series festival passes. Those were the magic cards that let you—with some limitations—into any screening during the festival. Some people—festival guests, members of the press, and important dignitaries—got them for free. Others of us shelled out hard cash for the privilege with the foresighted early birds getting the best deal
There was a camaraderie among the pass-holders who got to know each other, at least by sight, by dint of attending many of the same screenings. At some point, specifically in 1990, some die-hards started printing and handing out to the passholders forms to fill out, listing all the movies in the festival, so each person could indicate which specific films they had seen as well as it giving it a rating. At the end of festival, we would then all be handed a printout with the tabulated results, brimming with statistics indicating the average number of films seen by each individual, which films were the most and least seen, and which got the highest and lowest ratings. The community was even given a name: Fool Serious, a play on the words “full series.” (In Swedish, I believe it would be dåre allvarlig.)
Who had the time, energy and motivation to do all that? Presumably, people with access to their employer’s computer resources and/or skills in data management.
The particular item I mentioned above, which was particularly evocative, was a thick little booklet issued during the 1991 festival, which was the silver anniversary edition. Somehow, these mysterious but efficient Fool Serious people managed to acquire photographs of all the full-series passholders (they probably just asked for them; like so many things in the 1990s, I simply don’t remember), and they published them in a handy guide to serious fools with names attached. It was called the Fool Serious Guide to Familiar Faces. It was quite a revelation to finally have monickers to go with the visages I had been seeing in screening after screening for years.
To the left is the page with my mug. Luck of the draw (the order was alphabetical by first name) put me dead center on my page, while poor old Sean Penn is stuck down in the lower right corner. In total there were 396 people included, up from the 183 of the inaugural Fool Serious year in 1990. Some of the better known luminaries were actors Alan Rickman, Dennis Hopper, Kiefer Sutherland, Mimi Rogers, Monique van de Ven, Peter Coyote, Quentin Crisp, Rutger Hauer, Tom Skerritt and Vincent d’Onofrio; directors Alan Rudolph, Gus van Sant, Paul Bartel, Peter Greenaway and Robert Wise; festival founders Dan Ireland and Darryl Macdonld (now both sadly deceased); and the indispensable Egyptian Theater espresso bar impresario Craig Cappucino. A few (very few) people are listed only by their first names. One is identified only as “Mystery Guest.” Quite an esteemed collection.
In addition, there is the obligatory inclusion of geeky statistics covering the first nine Fool Serious years, as well as black-and-white thumbnails of all 25 festival program covers and a list of the top five movies of each of the previous nine festivals, as selected by the Fool Serious community. There are also lists of all the previous festivals’ Opening Night and Closing Night films as well as all the filmmaker tributes during the years.
It’s all enough to send one into profound reverie much more intense than anything provoked by Marcel Proust’s infamous madeleine. I like the little French rich, half-shell-shaped cakes just fine, but for a real trip down Memory Lane, I would need to have a gorgeous double shot of espresso from Craig Cappucino.
-S.L., 8 May 2025
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