Monday, September 12, 2005

Tideland Reviewed

Don’t ask me how, but I managed on Friday to get a hold of a ticket to attend a cast party for Terry Gilliam’s new film Tideland—the event following the film’s inaugural screening earlier that day.[1]

My wife drove me down—bitterly, obviously, as she wanted to go too … Alas! would that there had been two tickets, or that I wasn’t so unchivalrous—and we happened to pass, en route, Jack Layton and Olivia Chow. They were both dressed quite smartly and riding their bicycles in single file. Off to sling soup at the Scott Mission one assumes. I was sorely tempted to jerk the wheel from my wife’s grip and run them over, but thought better of it, and constrained myself to only puff my cigar out the window at them, laughing villainously.

The party was in a warehousy-type thing on Queen’s Quay and consisted of a largely indifferent collection of sort of vaguely recognizable faces. There was what’s-his-name—co-founder of Roots clothing—sticking his be-eyebrowed head out from a clutch of very attractive young women. (Daughters, perhaps? Well, it’s one thing to produce blonde and brunette from the same components—but what about that Vietnamese girl? From a different marriage, I assume. Divorce, after all, is a commonplace these days.) And there was what’s-her-name, formerly of the Polka-Dot Door, now (apparently) of some soap opera or other. “And dude from Felicity”—this intelligence from one of my companions. I wouldn’t know.

Only three persons that I could see had names. Terry Gilliam, Jeff Bridges, and Jennifer Tilly. Gilliam was the only one that interested me, but—satisfied with a ten second, uninterrupted view of his profile from about twelve feet away—when it was suggested by my equally reluctant companions that we should find ourselves a nicely deserted corner somewhere to unselfconsciously drink our faces off, I could make no reasonable objection.

Why, then, did I bother attending? Why, for the luxury of being able to have so little to say about it, of course. Call me the Beau Brummel of celebrity gossip.

(Besides, how many of you can say that Terry Gilliam ever got you sauce-panned? I never even met the guy, but he thought it was important to fill me up to puking with drink ... No biggy.)

[1] Which, unfortunately, I was unable to also manage tickets for. I realize this makes my title rather misleading, but here: I have it on good authority that the film’s pretty “crazy.” (“Cra-zay” was the word, actually.) I leave it to you to decide whether or not that qualifies the film as a one thumb up or a two.