If you're reading this you almost certainly already knew the story. The Telluride Film Festival mass emailed pass holders on Friday with the assurance that TFF #47 was happening.
The complete text follows (but I'll bet you've already seen it):
From the very beginning, the founders of the Telluride Film Festival declined to call it an “annual” event. Like most things with the SHOW, this was intentional. There was an understanding that life is indeed full of uncertainty. Maybe there wouldn’t be a festival every year…and it has made each eventual Labor Day celebration that much sweeter.
We see clearly the obstacles that are cruelly, tragically and stubbornly in our way this year in orders of magnitude our dear founders might not ever have envisioned.
But there has been a determination to proceed, in large part fueled by the voices in our community. This community understands that movies really are empathy machines, that when we assemble to witness the glories of cinema together, something magical happens. We humbly suggest that our world needs the light of cinema and its beautiful by-products of compassion and emotional storytelling alchemy like never before.
We are not ignorant of the devastation facing the world. We feel the fear and distress too. This is why we are committed to observing all guidance as suggested by the consensus of voices of the scientific community with whom we are consulting now. This will not be a business as usual event. Things will look and feel very different.
We’re contacting you today to let you know we’re hard at work to provide a safe and joyous environment that will include an extra day to allow more space within and between screenings, along with all of the necessary safety tweaks and adjustments you’ve become very familiar with, regardless of where you call home.
The festival will begin Thursday, September 3, instead of Friday, and will end on Monday, as usual. We will have a charter from New York City, in addition to our usual charters from Los Angeles, to ensure easier and more controlled transit for our East Coast friends. Please contact ann@ski.com to book your flights.
Your comfort and safety are the most important things to us. A defining characteristic of our community and especially of the dedicated volunteers who bring you the SHOW, is remarkable willpower - and grit. We promise to marshal these qualities to create the most secure environment possible for all of us.
For those of you who opt to not join us, we absolutely understand and support this decision. Your reasons surely involve heightened personal health concerns and you must do what is the very best for you. We trust and hope you’ll be back with us the next time we can provide optimal conditions for the SHOW. May that be soon.
In the meantime, we will let you know additional and specific information in the coming weeks.
For every gesture of support you have shown us, we thank you- very, very much.
FIAT LUX!
The email includes the official announcement that the fest will start a day early -on Thursday, Sept. 3rd. Of what is perhaps the most important sentence in the email is the assurance that "additional and specific information" will be on its way in the coming weeks.
I suspect that kind of information will be crucial to decisions about whether to attend the fest for a number of people.
As I'm sure many of you saw, the release of the email created quite a ripple in the film press universe. Among all the stories I ran across the one that seemed most willing to toss on a little speculation beyond the text of the email itself was Pete Hammond at Deadline.com
Among the items that piqued my interest in Hammond's story about TFF going forward were these:
Hammond suggests that Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch might still be in the running to screen at Telluride. He writes:
"Of course, there is great uncertainty about other big name films being ready for any fest, and the situation is fluid, to say the least.
One possibility would appear to be Fox Searchlight’s Wes Anderson film French Dispatch, which was reported to appear in Cannes and open in May. It has been moved to an October launch, which would make it an obvious choice for Telluride and Toronto, especially since Searchlight almost always has at least one premiere, and often more, in the pipeline for these fests."
That would be fantastic from my perspective and undercuts the notion that The French Dispatch might be a Toronto-only presentation.
Further, Hammond opens the door slightly to there being the possibility that Netflix's announcement that it would be doing any fall fests might not be 100% carved in stone:
" Netflix, which has been a key presence in the last couple of years is sitting this one out, at least at this point."
The key sentence there being the "At least at this point".
And, as an aside...due to Telluride's secretive nature, you kind of have to wonder that if Netflix was ONLY going to screen at Telluride that they might suggest they weren't going anywhere.
Personally, I take Netflix at its word that they won't screen anywhere...but it's fun to speculate.
The third take from the Hammond article underscores what I've been saying for a bit and that is that we're all likely going to get some insight to possible TFF selections when Cannes announces the films that it would have programmed on Wednesday. Hammond writes:
"Several titles always come from Cannes, so we can probably expect some of them when Cannes reveals the lineup they had set for the May fest that didn’t happen. That will be on June 3, and those films will be able to carry the Cannes Film Festival 2020 label. So Telluride toppers Julie Huntsinger and Tom Luddy will certainly be looking at those."
So, there are some things to chew on.
The complete Hammond/Deadline article is linked here.
CANNES SLATE REVEAL ON WEDNESDAY
As mentioned above and in previous posts, Cannes will be announcing a list of around 50 titles on Wednesday that will be classified as Cannes 2020 selections and will carry the stamp of that going forward as other film fests will be screening those films. As Hammond mentions in his above referenced post and as I have said repeatedly, you can expect that some TFF #47 choices will be on that list.
As I written here before, in atypical year the average Telluride/Cannes crossover is 7-8 films. My guess, and it's totally a guess, is that the crossover might be larger this year.
Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux is expected to announce around 50 titles on Wednesday. He was interviewed recently by Scott Roxborough for The Hollywood Reporter and though Fremaux doesn't mention Telluride specifically...I have to believe, as Hammond does in his article, that Cannes will have a presence at TFF #47.
The Fremaux/THR interview is linked here.
HOUSEKEEPING NOTE
Long time followers of MTFB know that as we get into June I have traditionally expanded the number of times I post per week. However, with the lack of clarity surrounding virtually everything due to Covid-19, I'm going to keep with the normal twice a week format for a couple of weeks.
Lots of approaches and items that I normally write about at the start of the summer are so ill-defined currently that I don't think that they'd be all that valuable to address right now.
So, I'll likely expand to the four posts per week schedule the week of June 22nd.
Of course, this all could change at any moment.
Be safe and kind this week...
EMAIL: mpgort@gmail.com
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