Bright Star, Bad News
The good news for the media attending today's packed TIFF screening of Jane Campion's Oscar-hopeful Bright Star? The first 100 minutes were terrific! The bad news: The final 19 were upside down. A plattering snafu flipped the films final reel into a fuzzy, hazy, hallucinogenic blur featuring ailing poet John Keats and his lover Fanny Brawne sharing their last moments -- backwards. If you thought Keats's language was beautiful in English, there's an even more singular pleasure in hearing it run in the clipped dialect perhaps best known as Lynchian. Tough break; it happens to even the best of festivals, but more than 300 people filed out without knowing how the couple's tragic romance ends. Or at least the part up until Keats dies at the tender age of 25. Spoiler alert?
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Comments
Hmmmm... "plattering snafu" or a clever Down Under style "hey you" from Jane Campion? I mean, it got you writing about the movie, amirite? Huh?
Maybe that was just the Australian cut of the film? (Them being located on the bottom of the Earth and all)
Darth Vader is his father.
Kevin Spacey did it.
Rosebud was his sled.
It was Kevin Spacey all the time.
He's dead.
She dies.
It's full of stars.
Never turn your back on Kevin Spacey.
The boat sinks.
They all did it. Every single one of 'em.
As a manager of an Art House Cinema that has presented multiple Festivals over the years, this is a more and more common possibility. In the past, as theatres would get the prints early they could build it and check it and fix mistakes. However, most of the time now - distributors are holding the print (under the guise of security) until the last minute and getting it to the projectionist with just barely enough time to put it together and get it on screen. The already heightened tension of a big Festival screening combined with the rushing around needed to build the print quickly makes for an atmosphere where mistakes like this are more likely. I myself have seen this happen once in about 100 screenings but am surprised it doesn't happen more. In retrospect, I am sure that the distributor should have chanced the small possibility of piracy over such a high profile snafu.