Pittsburgh

If you can't get into the swanky filmmakers' lounge to see half of L.A. uprooted and landed here, the fest program does offer its own inside peeks into the nutty chaos of the entertainment industry. Spoofing celebrity relationships, Hollywood management, and even himself, Jeff Goldblum fulfills a personal dream in Pittsburgh, an amusing backstager that smudges the line between documentary and poker-faced mockumentary. All that can be confirmed as true is that Goldblum ignored his A-list status to do a two-week stage run of The Music Man in his hometown, along with friends Ed Begley, Jr., Illeana Douglas, and his much younger fiancee, Catherine Wreford. Beyond that, it's perfectly unclear which moments are real and which are right up James Frey's alley, though it's a safe guess that Douglas never got dumped during Coney Island's Mermaid Parade by her techno-vegan boyfriend, Moby. If you hail it a comedy, Pittsburgh is unique in that it's consistently compelling without ever being very funny, so leave your expectations for a Christopher Guest-style chuckler outside. Co-directors Chris Bradley and Kyle LaBrache have structured their film like a straight narrative, shunning interviews and on-camera winks to keep the "fourth wall" intact. We may never know if Goldblum's acting insecurities are sincere or if Conan O'Brien has permanently bumped him to the second slot on his show, but it's no less unknown than the truth behind any popular reality-TV program.

The TV Set

PREVIOUS UPDATE Update #6: May 1, 2006 Featuring I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, Colour Me Kubrick and Comeback Season. NEXT UPDATE Update #8: May 3, 2006 Featuring Backstage and Sheitan.

Then there's surreality-TV, at least in the crazy procedures behind how a television pilot gets made. In writer-director Jake Kasdan's The TV Set, a trio of boob-tube producers can't see eye-to-eye on how to develop a new show called The Wexler Chronicles to survive the gauntlet of "pilot season." Nerdy writer Mike Klein (David Duchovny, finally allowed to play against type) has drafted a deeply personal script about his brother's suicide, but potty-mouthed network exec Lenny (Sigourney Weaver, having the most fun she's had in years) thinks it might play better if the brother lives. Aligned somewhere in the middle is the opinion of headhunted BBC executive Richard (Ioan Gruffudd), who is torn by his working relationship with Lenny and his passion for maintaining Mike's artistic integrity. Comprised of a few long-form sequences like the final casting session and the first day of shooting, The TV Set is essentially a series of satirical toggles: Mike attempts to put his foot down on ludicrous changes to his project, then Lenny bulldozes with irreversible compromises that are mostly inspired by her 14-year-old daughter. Having cut his teeth in the biz with his cult TV faves Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, Kasdan has obviously seen his share of management double standards, and his execution can sometimes be laugh-out-loud clever (such as the network's biggest hit being a self-explanatory reality competition called Slut Wars, or comparing the writing quality of The Sopranos to Shakespeare). Ironically, Kasdan makes concessions of his own, pulling a few punches so that the film can be appreciated by more middlebrow audiences. It isn't quite broad enough to expose why most programming is condescendingly terrible, but the cast is genuinely funny and hey, Justine Bateman's working again!

Steven Soderbergh, shown here directing the day-and-date release Bubble, discussed the future of cinema distribution at the Tribeca panel "Downloading at a Screen Near You."

Overlapping television, film and even the internet was Monday night's indispensable "Downloading at a Screen Near You" panel discussion, about the experimental business models planned and challenges faced in the future of distribution. Having broken ground this year with the release of Bubble, a film that premiered in theaters, on DVD and high-def television on the same day earlier this year, 2929 Entertainment's CEO Todd Wagner (co-owner of Landmark Theatres and HDNet with billionaire buddy Mark Cuban) said there is no way to predict if big studios will start adopting "day-and-date" distribution within the next two years. "Technology never goes as far you think it will in two years," Wagner said, "but it always feels farther in ten." Panelist and Bubble director Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's 12, Traffic) believes the entire Hollywood system needs to be rebuilt with limitations on greed, so that profit percentages are reserved for theater owners, $3-million salary caps are placed on star talent, and increasingly bloated prints-and-advertising budgets are axed. Quoting MPAA statistics about the disproportionate increase in number of screens over actual admissions and other disturbing facts that should be shaking studios from their apathy, Soderbergh deserved his applause for voicing how to undo damage already done; "We gotta get everybody together… this should not be part of the experience, going to a movie theater and seeing commercials." Charismatic but unconvincing, panelist Dean Garfield (MPAA Executive Vice President for Strategic Planning, and former protector of studio copyrights) had no easy answers about how the majors will and should react to fringe power-players like Wagner and Soderbergh, and Ashwin Navin (co-founder of the online peer-to-peer platform BitTorrent) offered only superlatives about the controversy of internet distribution, other than he's actively for its unlocked potential. Moviegoers watch films differently nowaways—including on portable video-game systems and computer monitors—but while many are quick to toss blame on box office losses to lackluster product or theater conditions, it's nice to know there are some visionaries trying to advance and enhance the experience for the rest of us.