One week into the Los Angeles Film Festival (with three days left), and I’m not sure which is funnier: Boys’ & Girls’ Guide to Getting Down, Paul Sapiano’s energetic and saucy how-to film, or the fact that The Eliza Hajek Hate Club has it’s first member. That’s right, I got an angry phone call today about a comment I made about filmmakers only doing what they do for swag bags. I thought it was obviously sarcastic, but said woman didn’t think so. She accused me of being materialistic and an embarassment to my gender. She told me she’d pray for my soul (ooh, how dramatic!). I told her she didn’t have to read my posts if she was offended, and she said not to worry, she wouldn’t be reading my "trash" anymore, so I guess that means I can be as sarcastic as I want without someone taking it seriously.
ANYWAY, back to the important stuff: Boys’ and Girls’ Guide to Getting Down. I tried to do some research on it, but the powers that be have blocked the website from my computer, citing "Sex" (oh my!) as the reason, which means that the website must be really, really awesome. Someone will have to let me know. The movie, which centers around a large group of 20-somethings "getting down" (or trying to), is presented in the fashion of retro educational films. It’s quite clever, and very funny. The friend I saw it with complained that he didn’t learn anything from the film. I didn’t expect to actually learn anything from the film, I expected to be entertained, and I was. I’ve actually been quoting it for the past couple days, and will continue to until it becomes popular and everyone knows that I’m ripping it off…
And now I’d like to take this time indulge myself (yes, even more) and attempt a sort of "Eliza Recommends" section. It’s where I’ll (try) to find interesting communities or organizations or website pertaining to film, and it’s sure to be sporadic at best, as I’m a kind of new Angeleno and am still discovering a lot of stuff myself. We’ll see how this goes. My first "ER" is Film Radar. Scott actually turned me on to this. It’s like the Bible, if the Bible was a website devoted to letting people know about damn near every specialty screening or series or lecture or what have you going on around here. So check it out.
Tonight I go to Mike Ott’s Analog Days, which I am looking forward to. After that, I plan on shooting people with tranquilizer darts so I can steal their swag bags, because that’s what embarrassments to their gender do.
(Film Radar is also on MySpace, just so’s ya know – Ed.)
