"Stop picking your nose." Trevor's hand shoots down to his side. "What are you talking about? I wasn't picking my nose." "Yes, you were. Me and everyone else here saw you." "I can't help it. The cold air really dries my boogers out." He sees me jotting down a note. "What are you doing? Don't write down that I said that." I shrug and cross out my note. We're in line waiting to see The Believer, which will go on to win the 2001 Sundance Grand Jury Prize. Trevor says Sundance shouldn't call their jury "grand", because it sounds like they should be handing out indictments instead of prizes. But at least they make a brave choice with The Believer, a fiery and cerebral story about an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi who used to be a devout Jew. The movie's fascinating premise is that he may still be a devout Jew, that his hatred rises from his conviction. Although the movie fairly wallows in implausibilities, it's a compelling character study that invites comparison to Edward Norton in American History X or Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper. But Henry Bean's script and Ryan Gosling's performance are in a class by themselves. Some of Gosling's fascist rants border on black comedy. Variety lists The Believer as one of the movies at Sundance likely to get picked up for distribution. I was skeptical because of the earnest treatment of its incendiary subject matter. Bean, who directed from his own script, said in the Q&A that the lead character's anti-Semitic speeches "ironicize themselves", but irony may be too subtle a concept for the average neo-Nazi. However, the Sundance Grand Jury nod should make it a more attractive package to studios that have been slow to pick up movies this year. We didn't see the winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for documentaries. In fact, we didn't see any documentaries. Trevor would have none of it. "Dude, you can see documentaries on PBS and The History Channel," he says, "That's what they're there for. You come to a film festival to see movies. That's why it's called a film festival, see?" The winner for documentaries was called Southern Comfort. It was about transsexuals. "We wouldn't have seen that in a million years," Trevor said when we heard it had won. "Why not? I wanted to see that one." "You wanted to see a documentary about guys who get operations to become chicks?" "I heard it was good." "Dude, that's weird," Trevor said, "I guess you also wanted to see the documentary about gay Jews." "Trembling before God? Yeah, I heard that one was good, too." "That's weird. You're not even Jewish." "You're the one who used to go to The Rocky Horror Picture Show all the time." "That's different. It's got nothing to do with Jews." "Didn't you tell me you used to dress up for that?" "No way, dude. That was a friend of mine." "'A friend', huh? What was his name." "I don't remember. Shut up. Okay, so it was just one time. And I wasn't Frank-N-Furter or anything. Jeez." I never got the whole Rocky Horror thing, so I was surprised how much I liked Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the winner of the 2001 Sundance Audience Award. Hedwig is a shrewd brazen musical about a boy from East Germany named Hans who grows up during the Cold War admiring "the American masters": Debbie Boone and Toni Tennille. He gets a sex change operation to come to the U.S., but the operation goes awry and Hans -- now Hedwig -- ends up stranded in a trailer park in Middle America, where she starts a band called The Angry Inch that plays in a restaurant chain called Bilgewaters that features sinking ships as its theme. Okay, so it sounds like it makes no sense. You had to be there. Hedwig and the Angry Inch will be distributed this spring by New Line. It's based on a wildly successful off-Broadway play, created by John Cameron Mitchell, who also wrote and directed the movie and played Hedwig. Mitchell has a powerful screen presence, playing Hedwig with a cool flair, refined and cynical and ridiculous and slightly tragic. He has the soaring vocal flavor of David Bowie with the snarl of Sid Vicious. He also has a real talent for translating his stage play for the camera. He uses flashbacks, animation, and lurid production design to build a visually arresting movie around Stephen Trask's music and lyrics, which are like glam rock turned up to 11. Musicals may be dead, but Hedwig and the Angry Inch does a great job of kicking some life into the corpse. It's energetic, brash, and crude. See it with a crowd and see it loud. At lunch, I catch Trevor quietly singing one of the songs from Hedwig. "Six inches forward and five inches back...I got an angry inch...six inches forward..." "Is that one of the songs from Hedwig?" "Yeah. Why?" "No reason. I thought I recognized it. I was just wondering." "It doesn't mean I'm going to start cross dressing or anything." "I know. I just wondered if that's what it was." I call Trevor the day after we get back from Sundance and I hear music in the background. "What are you listening to?" "The soundtrack to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Cool, huh?" He puts the receiver to the speakers and turns it up. "You bought it?" "No way, dude. Napster. 'Six inches forward and five inches back...I got an angry inch'... Hey, what would you have picked for the 2001 Grand Jury Prize for Best Film at Sundance." "Memento," I say. The director and screenwriter, Christopher Nolan, won the jury's screenwriting award for his Memento script. But it was, to me, the best movie I saw at Sundance. "Hey, that's my pick, too!" Trevor says. Memento is a mystery/thriller with an exhilarating twist on the hackneyed amnesia plot device. The lead character remembers everything up until the rape and murder of his wife. But since then, he's been unable to record new memories. He forgets anything that happens within hours of it happening. So to hunt down his wife's killer, he has to leave himself notes and Polaroids to remind him what he knows so far and where to go next. He gets the really important stuff tattooed on his body. It's a wonderful narrative device to slowly unfurl the movie for the audience, who knows as much and as little as the main character. Like him, we start in the present and have to piece the past together from fragments. Memento starts at the end and gradually moves backward to a deeply satisfying conclusion that works its way back to where we began. In the lead role, Guy Pearce revisits his L.A. Confidential noir sensibility. Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Ann Moss are alternately allies or enemies. Memento is almost like Alzheimer's noir, an intricate story about suspicion and confusion and solving shifting riddles. How do you know who to trust? Are memories more reliable than scraps of paper and hastily jotted notes? From the opening scene all the way to, well, the opening scene again, I couldn't take my eyes off Memento. It will be released in March, so remember that you read it here first. Unless you've been reading any other "Sundance buzz", in which case remember that you read it here also. "What would you pick for the 2001 Audience Award for the Best Film at Sundance?" Trevor asks. "You can't just pick that one. The audience picks that one. They vote and then the ballots are counted." "Yeah, like I'm going to trust that after the whole Florida thing," Trevor says, "I'd pick The Dish for the Audience Award." "You can't pick two best films." It is a tough call. The Dish, which will be also be out in March, was a real surprise. It tells the story of a huge radio telescope in rural Australia that was used to relay the moon landing in 1969. On the surface, it looks like yet another comedy about how wacky those Australians are. But the point of this affectionate cross-cultural comedy is that great human endeavors are not the feats of kings or millionaires or geniuses; they are instead the feats of regular people coming together. The Dish is also a paean to the moon landing as sung by a remote and tiny corner of the world. Although it never leaves the tiny town of Parkes, Australia, it captures the sweep and awe of world events better than the average epic. It also marks the rise of the age of geeks and a moment in history when science wasn't a dirty/sterile word. "It makes me want to be a radio telescope operator," Trevor had sighed as we were leaving. "You also said that after Contact." "Yeah, but this time I mean it." Although The Dish was one of the better movies we saw, it might have been too mainstream and upbeat for Sundance. "I can pick whatever I want for the Audience Award," Trevor insists, "I pick The Dish. And I'd pick Hedwig for Best Musical," he says. "There's no musical category." "For best director, I'd pick that guy that told a joke when I asked a question. I didn't really like the movie, but he was pretty cool." Near the end of the festival, Trevor had figured out anyone can ask questions; you don't need special clearance or a press pass. He raised his hand after we watched a weird French language film about fishermen called Maelstrom. Actually, he didn't raise his hand so much as wave it as if he were flagging down a semi. He also pushed himself up in his seat by getting up on one knee. The director, a pleasant young Quebecois fellow, pointed at Trevor. "Wouldn't it would be neat if you could pump the smell of fish into the theatre for the scenes with fishermen?" Trevor announced. The Quebecois waited patiently for a moment to see if Trevor is going to say more. Then, trying to be gracious, he said, "Well, maybe for you." The audience laughed. Trevor laughed and uncurled his leg, sitting back down. "Maybe you should let me handle the Q&A," I whispered to Trevor, while the director fielded a question about symbolism or something. "Okay, but what he just said was funnier than anything in his movie." "How do you know? You were asleep for most of it." "The Best Patrick Swayze Film would be Green Dragon," Trevor tells me on the phone. Swayze was in Donnie Darko and Green Dragon. Since we didn't like Donnie Darko, Trevor's award might sound like it's damning Green Dragon with faint praise, but this slow lovely film about Vietnamese refugees in 1975 is better than that. Swayze and Forest Whitaker are conspicuously placed in the movie presumably to make it more attractive for U.S. distribution. Their roles feel a little forced, but this lyrical movie from Tony and Timothy Bui weathers its star power nicely. "You liked Green Dragon?" I ask Trevor. I thought it was another one he had slept through. "Pretty much. But for a movie with subtitles, there weren't enough fight scenes." "There weren't any fight scenes in Green Dragon." "Exactly. I think you've put your finger right on it. Look at Ang Lee or John Woo. This wasn't as good as those guys. But it was still the best Patrick Swayze movie we saw at Sundance." Now that Trevor has gotten a taste of Sundance, he's decided he's independent film's biggest fan. "You won't catch me supporting mainstream studio crap like The Wedding Planner anymore," Trevor says. "Oh, hey," he adds, "Make sure you're free on May 25. Write it down on your calendar." "What happens on May 25?" "Pearl Harbor opens. We're there, dude."
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