Spinners Are Winners
BY Ghita Loebenstein
If you only read one article this year, read Ghita Loebenstein’s “Spinners are Winners”. Thrills! Spills! Sassy critique of film festival programs and an interview with Thank You for Smoking director, Jason Reitman. A guaranteed tear-jerker. Fun for all the family. Shortlisted for the Cannes shortlist. Loebenstein is the gritty voice of a new generation. A modern-day Salinger.
Having recently emerged, parched and delirious, from the Hacienda of two of our nation’s annual film festivals, I find myself, once again, infuriated at allowing myself to get sucked into the misconception that a film festival program is a work of gospel.
Jason Reitman, the director of the recently released Thank You For Smoking, knows this phenomenon well. His film articulated the inner workings of the ultimate sultan of spin: a smarmy character aptly called Nick Naylor, the tobacco industry’s principal lobbyist. “A good spin doctor is someone who can put their morals at the door and speak purely in the world of ‘How can I convince you of something? How can I defend the indefensible?’” says Reitman.
Sure, selling films doesn’t entail the same moral flexibility as selling cigarettes but, like any document of spin, a film festival program has, as a matter of course, been liposuctioned of its fattier truths.
This, of course, is no more of a malicious exercise in spin than say, Australia’s Wonderland choosing smiley-happy-kiddies rather than hysterical-barfing-kiddies for their adverts, but the fact that film festival synopses are dressed up in the language of press reviews makes sorting the wheat from the chaff just that little bit trickier.
Wouldn’t you prefer to know that a film is a “rambling and dialogue-less meditation on the life of an emotionally stunted, misogynistic Francophone” rather than “a masterpiece of minimalism which is unafraid to walk an anti-emotional line”? Perhaps festival programs should be subjected to the same regulatory warnings as pharmaceuticals? Instead of admitting coyly that “This film is sure to divide audiences”, how about “This film may cause nausea, vomiting, irritability and drowsiness”?
There is, of course, some teensy weensy part of me that wants to believe that every film in the festival will change my life. Film festivals are, theoretically, playgrounds of the world’s dirtiest, prettiest and most inspiring cinema. If I can’t get cinematic enlightenment during an entire fortnight spent patiently in front of a festival’s flickering screen, when will I? Surely not during the McChristmas blockbuster season. Part of the spin machine is keeping that flickering hope alive. Perhaps next year I’ll just read the program and skip out the films.