While Los Angeles burned, performers and personalities stole the show in documentaries this January at the Palm Springs Film Festival, in which famous costume designer Bob Mackie drew a sellout crowd and filled the largest of the 14 theaters. Baby-Boomer celebrities documented included Liza Minnelli, Paul Anka, Billy Preston, Janis Ian and songwriter Diane Warren.
One of the largest film festivals in North America and ranked in the top 30 in the world, the January event always has a bit of glamor to it because of its proximity to Hollywood. Celebrity Mayor Sonny Bono was the driving force behind founding the festival in 1989, with the idea of luring tourists to the area during the off-season. He was wildly successful, drawing major celebrities and bringing in 135,000 attendees annually. This year, despite Mackie’s attendance at the film about him, Naked Illusion, the tone at the festival was more subdued than in the past because of the wildfires burning in LA.
Many of the filmmakers expressed their concerns about the fires and their impact during the programs. Hotels in Palm Springs offered discount rates to those fleeing the fires, though nearby towns in the Coachella Valley still charged lower rates.
Diane Warren, who was scheduled to attend the showing of the documentary about her, called on the phone to interact with the audience because her Malibu house had burned down, and she was overseeing the care of her pet sanctuary in a safe location close by. Her house appeared in the movie about her hard-driving, outside-the-box life, Relentless.
A four-and-a-half-hour drive from Prescott, Palm Springs attracts visitors to its historic mid-century design and aesthetic, as well as its history as a Hollywood escape in the 1950s and ‘60s. Its theatres, museums, boutiques, a nearby animal sanctuary/zoo and restaurants for every taste make it family-friendly. (The second Bill’s Pizza, opened after the one in Prescott, is one of the newer restaurants in the city. Bill Tracy, sold those restaurants and passed away after opening his third location, in Palm Desert.) The city has a small-town feel like Prescott, but instead of Western décor dominating the design, finer restaurants and bars are more likely to exude a Rat-Pack chic. Instead of statues of hero cowboys, a monstrous 26-foot-tall statue of Palm Springs fan Marilyn Monroe, her skirt blowing up as it famously did in The Seven-Year Itch, stands near the entrance to the Palm Springs Art Museum.
After becoming a ‘gay destination’ in the 1970s and ‘80s, in recent years Palm Springs has been drawing an older LGBTQ population to settle there. The film festival reflects high local interest in LGBTQ themes, with many films exploring the both real-life people and fictional characters from that community. Documentaries on Mackie, Preston, and Ian described their journeys in coming out as gay.
The international angle of the festival, too, means that some of the best independent and commercial films from around the world are selected for screening and awards. Movies from Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Iran, Sweden, Israel, Spain and other countries won awards at the festival.
The festival included some commercial Hollywood films, including Better Man, The Last Showgirl and Millers in Marriage. Some already have Oscar buzz, like the musical Emilia Perez. Actress Zoe Saldana accepted a Best Actress award for her starring role as a transgender drug lord.
Among my favorites of the twelve films I saw during five of the festival’s eleven days were the star-filled Mackie documentary, highlighting his life and work as a costume designer for Marilyn Monroe (“Happy Birthday, Mr. President”), Carol Burnett (the unforgettable Gone With The Wind dress), Cher through her show and singing career, and Elton John’s outrageous getups. Another is Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It, uncovering his incredible talent as a tormented genius keyboardist/pianist with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and as a solo artist. Two personal favorites were The Stamp Thief, about a set of rare stamps stolen by a Nazi soldier and a film crew’s quest to find them in Poland, and The Way, My Way, by an Australian filmmaker about his experience walking the 800-kilometer Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail in Spain.
Several of the independent films at the event will soon be screened closer to our area, in the 31st annual International Sedona Film Festival, February 22-March 2. It typically draws over 10,000 people, and it’s ranked in the top 250 global film festivals. An announcement of the lineup is scheduled for the end of January.
