Tribeca Film Festival 2009 Rundown

April 28th, 2009Blog0 comments

Hey peeps — if you like movies, the Tribeca Film Festival is a great time to come to New York. It’s also a really special thing to be a part of. Seeing how the machinery works from the inside and being surrounded by creative people is pretty thrilling. It’s even better while eating hot dogs and diner food.

I first came to the festival in 2006. I was wide-eyed and goofy, and had more than a week to motor around, see movies and things, and I had a lot of meetings to take. That was a great first experience in a major film festival environment — the big picture view.

This time was a much more concentrated experience. I was there for four to five days, and most of it was spent preparing for a presentation. It reminded me of how the movie version of Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia was presented: It begins with Spalding casually walking into the theater, sitting down in front of the audience, and telling his story. This trip was very much like that — walk into an interesting place, tell your story.

Essentially this presentation was a big pitch. Fifteen minutes telling the story of a narrative project backed by animated visuals and music, with Q&A afterwards.

The thing I learned about pitches early on (and learned the hard way) is that preparation is key. I need to have the thing structured, solidified, and memorized. I need to practice it until it’s second nature — run it at least fifty times. Not only must I know the words — I need to own them.

Then the nervousness doesn’t matter. “The willies” don’t matter. Once I own the words and my body has complete muscle memory over the whole thing, as soon as I hit it, I’m performing and my nerves go away.

I knew I would be nervous. I was nervous. I have this fear of blanking out when I get nervous — but I know that once I get started and get that very first line out, I always do fine. So what I do is begin every memorized presentation with “Hello, my name is Michael Golamco.” That way I can’t blank out because it’s sort of impossible to forget my own name.

And then I hit it. When I’m well prepared I can relax and have fun. I can savor it.

Confidence sells. In the end we are all a bunch of really well-dressed chimps, and we look for the most confident chimp to invest our bananas in.

This is why the Scout motto is Be Prepared.

New York: I love this city. Before I used to think I could live there, but now… Not so much. I do love it, but I can’t see a place for myself there. I’m older now, and the rush of humanity has crossed the line away from being endearing.

Diner food will always be my late-night food of choice. The ingredients and composition of LA diner food is the same, but it feels different. Like a crummy photocopy. Maybe it’s because it knows that it’s not being eaten in the greatest city on earth.

On this trip I fulfilled a goal and ran the perimeter of Central Park. It only took about an hour and twenty minutes. It was hot — the sun beat down, the pavement was uneven, the milling people required a lot of zigzagging around. But it was good. It was like being in a training montage.

And you really can’t beat the food in the city: Chat N’ Chew, with its superlative mac and cheese and pork chops. Korean food on 32nd street. Ice cream from a Mister Softie truck on a hot day.

Highlight of the trip: Being at a party downtown, talking to a friend, blah-blah-blah yada yada, then suddenly seeing De Niro walk in. New York experience: COMPLETE.