It’s a Wonderful World: What I Saw at the 2024 TCM Film Festival

Well, now that it’s been close to five months since I had the pleasure of attending my 10th in-person Turner Classic Movies Film Festival, I think this would be a great time to share my experience. After all, better late than really late, amirite?

In my previous post about this year’s trip to Los Angeles – where I was accompanied for the fourth time by my older daughter, Veronica – I shared the various activities we participated in before and after the festival. The time, as promised, I’m focusing on the festival itself. And I’m jamming the entire four-day experience into this one post, so fasten your seatbelts – it’s going to be a long flight. Or whatever. You get my drift.

Day 1

My unofficial start to the festival was attending a brand-new event called “So You Want to Put on a Classic Film Festival.” It featured current and former TCM staffers – including Darcy Hettrich, who served for more than 23 years as VP of Talent; Gina McKenzie, former VP of Public Releations; Festival Director Genevieve McGillicuddy; Senior VP of Programming Charlie Tabesh; and Scott McGee, Senior Director of Original Programming – who shared a variety of fascinating stories about the ins and outs of putting on the festival, including securing the many guests who have participated in the fest over the years. I honestly was too riveted by their tales to take a single note, but I did manage to take a few pictures, so there’s that!

And has been my tradition since my first festival in 2013, I officially kicked off my festival experience by participating in the trivia contest, So You Think You Know Movies, hosted by the ever-entertaining Bruce Goldstein, repertory programmer for New York’s Film Forum. As always, the event was held in the Club TCM at the Roosevelt Hotel, which was the site of the first Academy Awards ceremony back in the day. Goldstein shared that 14 years ago, when he conducted the first trivia contest for the festival, the room was two-thirds empty because it was held at the same time as the film screenings. Afterward, Goldstein asked TCM Head of Programming Charlie Tabesh to schedule the contest at the start of the festival – and the event is now standing-room only!

As always, the contest was great fun. The questions seemed to get harder and harder every year, but I don’t care. Especially since I can say that I was a winner one year! (Have I mentioned that before? Ha!) Also, the contest always features special surprise guests, and this year, George Chakiris, of West Side Story fame, showed up. So great to see him! Also, each year, I like to share a few of the questions from the contest, so you can join in the fun and try your hand. Here’re the ones I managed to scribble down. (I have to share, though, after seeing me frantically trying to write down the questions and answers, one of my fellow team members asked me, “Why don’t you just record them on your phone?” BOING!!!!!!)

Here goes. One more thing – each question can have one answer or more than one!

1. Which of the following did Fred Astaire NOT dance with?
   • Joan Leslie
   • Joan Fontaine
   • Joan Crawford
   • Debbie Reynolds
   • Gracie Allen
2. Richard Dreyfus had a small role in which movie?
   • Bonnie and Clyde
   • The Graduate
   • Wait Until Dark
   • Valley of the Dolls
   • The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
3. Which of the following marked Judy Garland’s first on-screen appearance?
   • Every Sunday
   • Everybody Sing
   • The Big Revue
   • Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry
   • Pigskin Parade
4. On what early TV show did Franklin Pangborn appear?
   • Hopalong Cassidy
   • The Honeymooners
   • Howdy Doody
   • Your Show of Shows
   • The Tonight Show

I’ll give you the answers at the end of the post!

After the contest (where my team definitely did not win!), Veronica and I got all gussied up to attend our first movie of the festival. I’d purchased the Essential pass, which gives you access to the Opening Night movie, even though you don’t know at the time of purchase what that movie will be. Because I hoped against hope that the movie might be a Dick Van Dyke film, with the legendary actor making a special appearance. It wasn’t, of course – it was Pulp Fiction, but I was over the moon at this choice. When the movie was first revealed, it was announced that John Travolta would be in attendance, which was quite enough for me – but as the weeks went on, I learned that the following cast members would also be there: Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Phil LaMarr, Julia Sweeney, and Frank Whaley. What’s higher than over the moon?!?!?

The Essential pass also allows you to walk the red carpet, so we got to see several of the stars close-up – I said hi to Phil LaMarr (squee!), was in spitting distance of Samuel L. Jackson, and Veronica spoke to Uma Thurman, who was taking pictures near us – she told Uma that she liked her belt! And Veronica can actually be seen in the background of the Instagram picture Uma posted!

Most of the Pulp Fiction cast members were seated in the audience (along with the wife and one of the daughters of Bruce Willis, who was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2022), but four of the cast members were on stage for a pre-movie interview with Ben Mankiewicz: Travolta, Jackson, Keitel, and Thurman. Thurman told the audience that Pulp Fiction was “probably one of the most fun films that I’ve ever gotten to do. It changed cinema.” And both Travolta and Keitel praised director Quentin Tarantino; Keitel called him “one of those talents who changed the environment that we were working in,” and Travolta, referencing the “undeniably articulate script,” said that Tarantino “took me to the moon and back.” It was so awesome to see these stars and hear about their Pulp Fiction experience – I was hanging on every word!

The movie – which, as I shared in my pre-TCMFF post, is one of my favorites – was great, as always, and I loved seeing it on the big screen again. Veronica wasn’t as bowled over by it as I was, though, and she had lots of thoughts on the matter. She was definitely put off by the gratuitous violence and the frequent use of the “N” word, she thought it was too long, and she felt that “too many things were happening just to be happening, that were completely divorced from the plot.” And she feels that sexual violence should never be portrayed on screen. She did add that she “didn’t hate it,” though – she thought it was well-shot, had some great dialogue, and a first-rate cast, and that “the way the plot was structured was very interesting and different.” Got it?

And that leads us to . . .

Day 2

The second and first full day of the festival is always my favorite day. It’s exciting to really get the fest into gear, and it’s early enough to feel like there’s lot of fest ahead. Our first screening of the day was 101 Dalmatians (1961) at the El Capitan Theater. I wasn’t interested in seeing the movie, but I was incredibly interested in seeing Disney illustrator Floyd Norman, who was interviewed by Mario Cantone, one of my absolute favorites! Norman was one of the first Black animators for Disney, and was the subject of a fabulous 2016 documentary, Floyd Norman: An Animated Life. Norman shared that Walt Disney didn’t like the look of 101 Dalmatians – he “thought it was too rough, too scratchy.” It was the only Disney film where one animator, Marc Davis, did every scene of a character – Cruella de Vil – himself. Davis was one of the “Nine Old Men,” the group of Disney’s core animators, who worked at the studio from the 1920s to the 1980s, and 101 Dalmatians was Davis’s last film; afterward, he worked exclusively for Disneyland, where he designed characters for the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion attractions.

After the interview with Floyd Norman, Veronica and I skipped out before the start of the movie – speaking of the theater, they had a fabulous curtain show before the movie started. It’s hard impossible for me to describe, but it’s this beautiful, colorful display involving the theater curtains. I’ve included a picture I took, but it doesn’t begin to do justice to the experience. Also, about leaving the theater, I’d been kinda stressing about that; I know that people sometimes attend a screening just for the interview and then leave, but I never had. It was a piece of cake, though – we sat in the last row on the aisle and it was easy peasy.

Our next film was The Little Foxes (1941), one of my favorite all-time movies. I’d wanted Veronica to see it, but I also didn’t want to miss the pre-movie introduction by Ben Mankiewicz and Mario Cantone. Those two together are comedy gold (not to mention exceedingly easy on the eyes). They make me smile even when they’re not talking! Their interaction together was everything I’d hoped for, and seeing this superb film on the big screen was a real treat.

After The Little Foxes, Veronica I made our way to Club TCM for an interview with Billy Dee Williams by TCM host Jacqueline Stewart. It was so exciting to see in person this icon that I and so many of my girlfriends crushed on as teenagers – and at age 87, he looks fabulous!

We learned so much about the actor – he grew up in Harlem in a neighborhood with such future luminaries as Nipsey Russell and Nina Mae McKinney; went to high school with Diana Ross; and made his film debut in 1959 opposite Paul Muni in The Last Angry Man. In fact, I took so many notes during his hour-long interview that I’ve decided to devote a separate post to it, so stay tuned for that.

After dinner at my very favorite L.A. restaurant, Musso and Frank’s, I let Veronica pick the film for the next slot. I was hoping she’d go for It Happened One Night (1934), but she selected All the King’s Men (1949). As it turned out, it didn’t really matter, because I think Veronica felt asleep before the opening credits stopped rolling. And I hate to admit it, but I realized that I really don’t care for this film. I’d seen it a couple of times before, but this time, I just wasn’t feeling it. I feel especially bad because it’s so highly acclaimed. Speaking of which, the screening was preceded by an interview with Ben Mankiewicz and Editor of the New Republic, Michael Tomasky, who shared that the film was number 59 on the magazine’s 100 Most Politically Significant Films of All Time. It also earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor for Broderick Crawford, and Best Supporting Actress for Mercedes McCambridge. (Incidentally, I learned the correct pronunciation of McCambridge’s first name – Ben Mankiewicz informed the audience that his father told him, “When we dated, I called her MER-cedes.” Got it.)

On Friday night, I am pleased to say that we made it to the midnight movie, my very first in all the years that I’ve been attending the festival. The movie was a pre-Code exploitation film called The Road to Ruin (1934), which was a remake of a silent film by the same name. The film was introduced by Quatoyiah Murry, a former TCM employee and co-author of TCM Underground, who shared that the film was a “mostly fun but tragic tale” that served as a precursor to the juvenile delinquency films of the 1940s. Also, it was directed by Dorothy Davenport, the widow of silent screen heartthrob Wallace Reid. It was no masterpiece, but Veronica enjoyed it, and I was just glad to have finally gotten a midnight movie under my belt! And that experience brought Day 2 to an end, just in time for . . .

Day 3

The third day of the film festival is when I start feeling little twinges of sadness, because of the reality that “tomorrow” is the last day. But I always deliberately shove those thoughts from my mind and renew my determination to enjoy every second of the fest while it lasts! To that end, our first film of Day 3 was Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), about a fake mind reader who suddenly finds that he’s able to predict the future. The film was screened in the Egyptian Theater, which was purchased and renovated by Netflix; it was out of commission during the 2023 festival, so this was my first time inside the theater since 2019. It was a pleasure to be inside this historic structure again, and it was a packed house! Introduced by my pal, historian and writer Alan K. Rode, the film was adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich, who Rode termed the greatest and most prolific writer of the film noir era – a whopping 40 of his stories have been adapted for the big screen, including Phantom Lady (1944) and Rear Window (1954). Although star Edward G. Robinson dismissed the picture as “unadulterated hokum,” Rode called the film grim and suspenseful and served up a tantalizing end to his presentation: “Are you shivering yet?” he asked the audience. “You will be.”

Next up was another film I was anxious to share with Veronica: The Big Heat (1953), starring Glenn Ford as a crusading cop and Gloria Grahame as the luckless good-time girl who helps him bring down the town’s powerful crime syndicate.

The film was introduced by actress Dana Delany, who spoke of her fondness of Grahame: “She’s always been my favorite actor. I feel like her personal life has eclipsed what an incredible actor she was,” Delany said. “I’ve seen all of Grahame’s performances – including TV shows – and this is the most Gloria of Gloria performances.”

After The Big Heat (which, by the way, I’m delighted to say that Veronica loved), we headed for the Chinese Theater for The Shawshank Redemption (1994), another hit with Veronica and another one that was must-see for me because of the special guests: both Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins! Robbins said that the script was one of the best he’d ever read, “from beginning to end.”

“People would stop me on the street and say how important the film was to them,” Robbins recalled. “This movie touched something in them that a lot of movies don’t.”

Shawshank was our last movie for the day – and, just like that, it’s . . .

Day 4 (cue collective “awwwwwwww” sound from the crowd)

We started out the last day of the fest with the Billy Dee Williams’s book signing; as soon as he was announced as a special guest, I was determined to get a chance to see him, but this event gave me the chance to actually MEET him, so you know I wasn’t going to miss that! I’m certain that I said something to him when he signed my book, but it’s all a blur, really. For all I know, it could have been, “Blah-de-blah, Mahoghany so sure happy. Peep peep!” Fortunately, Veronica had the presence of mind to ask him to look at our camera so we got a lovely picture out of the deal!

Next up was another slot where Veronica selected the movie and she chose Sabrina (1954), the delightful Billy Wilder film where Audrey Hepburn’s title character is torn between her longtime crush (William Holden) and his responsible, upstanding brother (Humphrey Bogart). It was introduced by Kin Shriner, who I know best for his role as Scotty Baldwin on the daytime soap General Hospital. Shriner told the audience of his connection to TCM and classic film: “I have ‘huge TCM fan’ in my Twitter bio and my banner photo is Bogie and Bacall,” he said. “I just find Bogart movies so comforting – I just love watching them.” Shriner is also a fan of Sabrina; he praised Hepburn’s “captivating, waif-like quality” and shared that he watches the movie every time it’s on TCM (“It’s black and white,” he said, “but it seems like a different type of black and white.”)

 Our second movie of the day was Chinatown (1974), which I selected instead of The Searchers (1956) solely because the special guest was director Carl Franklin – not only am I a huge fan of his films One False Move (1992) and Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), but he played Thelma’s fiancé in two episodes of Good Times! He called Chinatown one of the best films he’s ever seen. “Any time it’s on, I have to stop and watch it,” he said. “Because it’s kind of complicated, the more you commit yourself to understanding it, the more mesmerized you are by it.”

Both Sabrina and Chinatown were a hit with Veronica, and we wrapped up the festival with Spaceballs (1987), Mel Brooks’s parody of Star Wars. I wasn’t especially interested in seeing it, but there was no way I was missing the chance to see Mel Brooks in person again. He’s a national treasure! Ben Mankiewicz called the director “the definitive master of big screen parodies.”

Spaceballs was a bit too goofy for my taste, but it was worth it to see Brooks, who told the crowd that he had appeared at seven of 15 TCM festivals. “I don’t even mind that they’re not paying me,” he joked. He also told the audience about a letter he once received from a child: “I just saw Star Wars and it’s not nearly as funny as your movie.” It was such a joy to be in the same room as this legend.

And that brought our 2024 TCM Film Festival to an end! It was another memorable experience, filled with great movies, awesome guests, and wonderful reunions with the friends I’ve made over the years. Also, I wanted to share one more thing. The final event of the festival is the closing night party, which is held in Club TCM. I’ve gone every year, but this is the first year that I hung out in the lobby right outside the party and never made it inside; in fact, I stayed in the lobby long after the party was over. Once the party ends at midnight, the festgoers exit Club TCM, and the doors are closed while the hosts and any presenters or special guests have their own private party. Well, about an hour after the doors were closed, who would emerge from Club TCM but Ben Mankiewicz and Mario Cantone! They entered the lobby and walked to the far end, behind a pillar. But I knew they were there, and it took me about 15 minutes (and three more gulps of my glass of Prosecco) to work up the nerve to go over there and introduce myself. (I’ve never had a personal encounter with Cantone – although Veronica did a few years back – and I haven’t had a photo with Ben Mankiewicz since 2019.) Well – and here’s the point of all this – I was about halfway across the lobby, on my way to boldly introduce myself to these two titans, when my quest was intercepted by a friend who I hadn’t seen during the entire festival! We got to talking a picture-taking, and by the time we finished, Ben and Mario were gone. (Womp womp.) Ah, well – guess it wasn’t in the cards. Maybe 2025 will be my year!

If you’ve made it this far in this wrap-up, I thank you sincerely for reading! And if you’re playing along with the So You Think You Know Movies contest, here are the answers to the questions I listed:

1. All of the actresses danced with Fred Astaire!
2. Richard Dreyfus appeared in both The Graduate and Valley of the Dolls.
3. Garland’s first screen appearance was in the 1929 short, The Big Revue.
4. Franklin Pangborn appeared on The Tonight Show.

How’d you do?

~ by shadowsandsatin on September 7, 2024.

Posted in TCM Film Festival
Tags: Ben Mankiewicz, Billy Dee Williams, Carl Franklin, film festivals, Mel Brooks, TCM Film Festival, TCM Film Festival 2024, TCMFF