The most striking feature in SIFF's IKEA-furnished hospitality suite is the open bar, where I cheerfully bellied up for the weekend. Los Angeles hipsters and identical twins Ada Tai and Arlene Tai, the producers, writers, and stars of Rock, Paper, Scissors, tiptoed in, bedecked in the latest Burberry fashions, wallpapered the room with promotional material, and tiptoed out. Adorable!
Necks craned when certified sex symbol Billy Wirth, the director of the feature film MacArthur Park, came into the room. A lanky fellow with a smoldering gaze, he's best known as the guy that Drew Barrymore shoots in Boys on the Side. Worth is promoting his hard-hitting drama about a homeless man's reunion with a long-lost son, written by Tyrone Atkins, a dapperly attired man who penned the script when he himself was on the streets. Touching!
I eavesdropped on the intense young filmmaker Ian Truitner, auteur of the short film Richard Roe, as he powwowed with Jose da Silveira, the star of his next film, Debacleism. Da Silveira, a smooth French flirt with a hypnotizing gaze, whispered insinuatingly, "I am the most famous painter in Europe and they print this crazy shit about me in the tabloids. Do I know Kate Moss? Yes. Has Traci Lords fucked me up the ass with a strap-on? Certainly not. Just because a man goes to the Playboy Mansion five times, journalists think they can make this shit up." Sexy!
Now, if I told you that by the time the W's bar closed, this fellow and this journalist were contemplating getting tattoos--would you think I was making that shit up? Stay tuned for more of that special SIFF madness!