More fun at the festival

Lazy day. Not much to do, so I walked up to Westwood to see if I could get tickets to some shows.

After inquiring at the festival office, I ate a scrumptious lunch over at Damon and Pythias ... portobello mushroom and fresh mozzarella sandwich, and their fabulous onion rings. Really, they have the best onion rings I've ever tasted. With the garlic dipping sauce, it's absolutely divine.

Walked over to the Mann Festival, and got into the standby line for 2 Days in Paris, written by Julie Delpy, and starring Delpy and
Adam Goldberg, who I will always remember as the quirky friend in Relativity, which was one of those really good shows that got cancelled.

As I sat down on the ground to wait the hour and a half before the show, I met a professional mime. Of course, I had no idea he was a professional non-speaker. He was just the guy who asked the whole line to move down so he could also sit down unbothered by the prickly vines that spilled down over the short wall we were all leaning against. And really, I had two books to keep me entertained, but after a couple minutes of chitchatting, I decided that Clowning Around was much more entertaining. Turns out that he decided to be a mime while in high school. Went to mime school in Paris. Travelled with Cirque du Soleil as a clown. Lived in Australia for six years as a comedian. And has been living in LA for a few years trying to make it as a screen writer. (For a non-speaker, he was incredibly verbose). Anyway, after talking about how he and his writing partner had been signed by a big agency, and they had a film coming out this year, the actor sitting next to Clowning Around became very interested in our conversation! It was almost comic ... Clowning Around finally having an industry-related fan who was rather impressed, and Actor Dude almost flirting with him in an attempt to make a famous connection. I guess CA must have liked us, since he gave both of us his card.

Well, we all made it into the showing (after seeing Goldberg getting photographed outside), and ended up sitting together. I could tell that Actor Dude wanted to sit next to Clowning Around. I don't blame him ... if I were a struggling actor, I'd try to work every single angle possible. But it was not to be. I ended up being in the middle. Sometimes fate just works that way.

The film was funny. Delpy had some really good dialogue, and I liked the way she had the movie shot. She and Goldberg were hilarious together. My favorite scene was in the apartment, when they're getting hot and heavy. (paraphrasing)

G: Baby, I'm so hot for you. You know why I'm so hot for you?
D: Yes! It's because we have opposite immune systems!
G: Uhh?
D: We have opposite immune systems. The forces of procreation are driving us together so that our children will have strong immune systems. That's why we're so attracted to each other.
G: This is like dating PBS!
...
G: Whatever. Baby, let's procreate.
D: Yes yes! But, before you procreate with me, could you please put on a condom?

Anyway, the movie was hilarious. I don't even remember the ending, but I know that I liked the film. I left as soon as the movie was over, to meet my mother for the next film directly after. Luckily, I was able to buy tickets earlier in the afternoon, and she was free to come down and see it with me.

The next movie was Does Your Soul Have a Cold, a documentary about depression (utsu) in Japan, how it's been perceived, how medications were marketed there, and how perceptions have or haven't changed. Mental illness has such a stigma attached to it in Japan, that I was curious to see what the movie had to see. Interestingly, information was passed by a huge ad and internet campaign by Glaxo Smith Kline. And some of the interviewees in the documentary reported a big improvement after starting drugs. Sadly, the improvements don't seem to have lasted. Some of the people feel the drugs no longer help, but are afraid to stop taking them because they dear falling even more deeply into depression. My feeling is that depression is a multi-factorial issue, and that some sort of therapy or behaviour modification would have helped. However, of the few interviewees who had started therapy, none had persisted beyond a couple sessions. I wonder if this was more due to a lack of hope that it would work, or an east asian prejudice that therapy is totally ineffectual.

Postlude: Being a little skeptical of Clowning Around's verbosity, I later looked him up on imdb.com. Of course, it doesn't tell me about mime school in Paris, but it looks as if his bragging about his work in Los Angeles is legitimate. Makes me wonder how long Actor Dude waited to call Clowning Around after today ...