MAKE-UP SCREENING WILL BE AT 10AM; SAITO RECOUNTS LAST NIGHT'S EVENTS
According to Robert Cashill, the New York Film Festival has added a screening of Passion to make up for the cancelled screening last night. The make-up screening is set for Saturday, October 6, at 10am. The film will also screen at 9pm that evening, as well as tomorrow afternoon at 1pm, and Thursday, October 11th, at 3:15pm.
Meanwhile, The Moveable Fest's Stephen Saito provides a detailed account of how it all went down last night:
"If such a cruel fate was going to befall a director as what occurred at Alice Tully Hall on Saturday night at the New York Film Festival, at least Brian De Palma knows a thing or two about sabotage from his work. In attendance for the premiere of his latest thriller Passion, the director had promised the audience was 'going to have fun,' but just after his introduction and the festival’s bumper trailer played, the screen went dark and the lights came up. Soon, the festival’s programming director Richard Peña emerged onstage to tell the audience that something had gone wrong with the film’s digital projection.
"Sitting on the right wing of the hall’s balcony, intended to be a public spot where a spotlight is traditionally drawn at the end of a film at the festival to garner an ovation, De Palma never left his seat, seemingly unflustered by this chain of events but not unconcerned. At first, arms crossed and then forming a temple with his hands triangulated at the bridge of his nose as if he were the Godfather, De Palma was consulted [by] Film Society of Lincoln Center programmer Scott Foundas, who in true consigliere fashion, would lean in on his left to give updates. Indeed, by the time Richard Peña appeared onstage once more to tell the audience he was 'mortified' to report the projectionists had no further luck, a hit had happened and like a quick cut in one of his films, De Palma had vanished.
"Only an hour earlier, Peña had been across the street at the Elinor Bunin Film Center’s Amphitheater reflecting back on some of the best and worst experiences he had in programming the New York Film Festival as part of a panel on the festival's selection committee. While he could laugh now about opening night miscalculations such as the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, which Phillip Lopate chalked up to the acoustics at Avery Fisher Hall as much as the film’s grim tenor, he surely never endured a situation like what happened Saturday night. He told the audience at the Passion screening that the projectionists had unlocked the code that allowed the movie to be shown and tested a few minutes from it before audiences entered Alice Tully Hall, but when Passion was intended to ease into its place following the NYFF bumper, it had somehow locked up once more, with what one can assume were panicked calls to Technicolor and others to find a solution."