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Snacking Online Press Kit
This has got to be the weirdest film festival ever.
Snacking is the tale of how a scary group of arrogant filmmakers and wanna-be movie stars descend upon a small mountain town that has accidentally agreed to hold probably the weirdest film festival ever: no entry can have cost more than $500 to make.
Perched on a dry lake in historic Bitter
Leaf, California, the Raccoon Village Family Resort is a shadow
of its former glory. Then, in breezes the shaman of showmen, Jack
Hicks, with a lightning tongue and a bizarre proposal to resuscitate
Raccoon Village by holding The Bitter Leaf Film Festival (formerly "The Blazing Hills Film Festival" before the fire).
The rules: each entry must have cost less than $500 to film.
Suddenly the cut-rate spa overflows with
cut-rate glitterati cutting deals, ducking photogs, and talking
big-big-big. Meet Luis Cristal, Eurotrash auteur of the film Black
which is just that -- no picture, almost no sound. Just black.
And Mitchell Starch, whose Abbott and Costello Meet Alien
is sure to be the hit of the Festival as long as he can resolve
a few legal issues first...like permission to actually use the
footage. And Rudolfo Finnini, whose next project is a Punk-Rasta
version of Lewis Carroll's tale entitled Alice With Attitude.
It's all for art, of course. But will anything
be left of poor Raccoon Village when the geniuses are through
snacking?
The Sundance Film Festival, despite its
early intentions, has become a glamorous winter-playland snow
camp, like something that belongs in Frontierland at Disneyland.
There, the rich and famous can walk on the streets like normals,
and where unknown filmmakers can hobnob with studio execs like
superstars.
But when film stars descend on a remote
mountain summer camp in this comedy send-up of Sundance, three
hopelessly overwhelmed camp counselor/festival producers are thrust
into the awkward position of checking them into their shack-like
cabins as the first ever Bitter Leaf Film Festival.
Ranging from the all-in-black-Prada feminist
famous director super-bitch to the egocentric Italian cineaste
who demands to poison all the chirping forest animals so he can
have some peace and quiet, these very special guests of the fest
threaten to rattle the poor little festival to shreds.
The writing is the star of this short excerpt
from what is presumably a feature script by writer-director Emmett
Loverde. Fascinatingly nuanced and neurotic characters form the
eccentric base of this wry and knowing story that builds a delightfully
wicked satire around the more unfortunate elements of film fests.
Exaggerated comedy can be overbearing, unless
treated with a light touch by the performers. Everyone clearly
had a blast on this film, and it shows. More of an in-joke for
those in the film biz, it'll be a giggle-fest for everyone else
nevertheless.