rafi

This year I'm skipping the Toronto Film Festival for the first time in some years, which is just fine with me. While there are some movies I would have liked to have seen (chiefly A Serious Man, Men Who Stare at Goats and Broken Embraces), it's definitely not my favorite of festivals and the lineup as whole didn't knock me over this year - not that you really get to all many screenings attending as a producer.

All of that sounds terribly jaded I realize, and I feel sort of bad that I've been so out of the festival loop the last year or so. In 04 and 05 when we were exhibiting, selling or screening PJT, I went to so many over such an abbreviated time period that I got somewhat burnt out on them. The atmosphere can be enticing - particularly how immersive Sundance is & how entrancing Cannes feels - but more than anything else you just feel tired. After one day at a large film festival you feel like you've been there two weeks. Two days in and you start to forget the rest of the world even exists.

Instead, I'll be taking some meetings this week in New York, which is nearly ALWAYS my preferred place to be, largely because it ends up being little more than a pretense for eating copious amounts of bagels & pizza, and drinking vast quantities of Brooklyn Brewery, Sixpoint and Dogfish Head beers. My usual lodging was booked up so I'm staying at the Chelsea Hotel, which I've heard mixed things about as far as quality, but at least has some history to it, so it should be interesting. How can I finagle a stay in Tom Waits' old room??