BackLot Film Festival

By Rowan Harrison

Culver City is heralded by the L.A. Times as being a community taking a cultivating climb, as well as, surging in business and residential property development.  This definitely seems to be the case as I was heading west on Culver Boulevard from Overland going towards the 10 freeway.  I couldn’t help notice a flourishing downtown community littered with posh dining facilities, a grand cinema plex, fashionable boutiques, and people milling around the upscale taverns. 

Not being a resident of Culver City, and living in the O.C., I don’t venture to the Westside communities very often, if hardly ever.  But, Culver City is not what’s on tonight’s agenda, so lets go back down Culver Blvd to Overland, and on the corner sitting in the shadows from the Sony Pictures Entertainment lot, is the Veteran’s Memorial Building.  Within this large and spacious auditorium, 14 feature films will be presented along with a dozen or so shorts, including tribute screenings dedicated to entertainment honorees Arthur Freed and Carl Reiner.  So after a quick cold beer at the local watering hole, BackStage, lets get on with the 3rd annual Backlot Film Festival, with tonight’s opening night features, Yesterday was a Lie and Inalienable.

Yesterday Was a Lie

Written and Directed by James Kerwin

Hoyle’s eyes relax and close, as she wanders into a dream state, slipping into her sub- consciousness drenched in soothing black and white.  She lies on her therapists couch; in the middle of her session she admits that she is afraid, “what are you afraid of?”  She sees a woman in her dreams, someone that is haunting her, “someone is here…she wants help.”  This is the opening scenes to the west coast premiere of Yesterday was a Lie, a crime drama taken right out of the film genre, Noir, with a very textbook approach.

Kipleigh Brown plays the lovely and fashionable blond, detective Hoyle, a woman with smarts and savvy, and selects bourbon as her choice poison. She is on a case, but we are not quite sure what that the case is, because at the beginning of the story, details of the case are clouded in ambiguity.   Yet, the appropriate and familiar setting of an empty dark secluded warehouse is where Hoyle and her associates converge. 

Hoyle and her loyal partner enter a trap door, one of many metaphorical symbols that are laced through out the film.  As they proceed down a long dark hallway Hoyle realizes this is a passageway into a surreal realm of her past.   Who or what they are after has eluded them, however the objective of their pursuit quickly ends as they find their suspect lying dead in a damp alley way.  Oddly enough a book of T.S. Elliot poems are laying next to him with a page opened to a phrase, ‘through the unknown remembered gate.’

The Pigeon Hole, clever name for a bar, is the local lounge and in a scene out of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” we find our protagonist at the bar, muddling over the case, however, she is more disturbed by an ominous figure from the past.  Meanwhile, our attention is gravitated to the beautiful singing chanteuse played by Chase Masterson, after her sultry little set, she pulls a stool next to Hoyle.  “What are you working on?”--- “It’s complicated”---“You know what the secret is to a good Manhattan?”---“Balance.” 

A few nights later Hoyle is attending an art opening, clues to her case are to be found somewhere within the exhibit.  As fate would have it, the singer walks into the room, with the same femme fatale outfit as Hoyle, skin tight black dress, with a V-neck to the abdomen, cleavage abound.  Here the two find mysterious and clues in a Salvador Dali painting, while they engage in a deep metaphysical discussion relating to perceived reality and linear facades. 

Hoyle and the singer continue their mysterious endeavor as they pursue a scientific genius and a notebook that includes his formulas.  Yet, Hoyle loses herself into the realms, of linear time, cognitive disassociation, and the confused state of reality and non reality as she grapples with a broken past.

“Yesterday was a Lie” is a film that runs the gamut between Blade Runner, The Twilight Zone, and one of those Humphrey Bogart crime films.  It’s a film that presents itself in the film noir style of the 40’s or 50’s, a soft and rich palate of black and white that enriches the well photographed production.  There are plenty of those Hollywood taxi cab scenes that are dark and foggy adding to the misty and mysterious tone of the story.  And while the story line seems to be set in the middle of the century, there are a sort of odds and ends, that would lead you to believe otherwise, for example some of the singers, wardrobe appears to be right out of Old Navy, and I don’t think they had Apple Macs in the 1940’s, but then again this is a film that deals with the present and the past.

Shot in about 24 days, Yesterday was a Lie is more of a puzzle and a search for truth that relies heavily on quantum mechanical theories, spiritual and psychological journey’s about people who are stuck in the past.   It is an interesting low budget indie, that one must be attentive too, because beyond its tones of dark and light there is a world of distorted reality and where “the most powerful force in the universe lies within the depths of the human heart.”

Inalienable

Written by: Walter Koenig

Directed by: Robert Dyke

Ok, now on a lighter note and time for some fun, for all of you diehard X-file fans, like myself, one can be rest assured, that the alien chasing team of spooky Mulder and agent Dana Scully will be searching for the truth, in another installment of the X-file series this summer. 

Yet, here is another film that fits comfortably within this type of  science fiction genre, that deals directly with aliens, parasites, government syndicates, and an unwilling host. The second film of Backlots opening night is an unusual endeavor called Inalienable, yet what makes this one rather unique, from other science fiction thrillers, is the courtroom drama that deals with a custody battle---let me explain.  

Do you remember a television series that ran from 1978 through 1979 called Battlestar Galctica? It starred Lorne Green, Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch, where a human colony was fighting a war with the Cylons in a galactic star system far, far away.  Well, here we are some thirty years later, and surprisingly we find Richard Hatch, playing a laboratory researcher named Dr. Eric Norris, who is trying to find a cure for a disease, using monkeys as his guinea pigs. 

Dr. Norris is in a depressed and somber state in his life, and it has been several years since a tragic car accident took his wife and son.  Eric is struggling with the guilt, as he was the driver who lost control of the car.  Yet, he manages to claim his existence as a once brilliant scientist, Amanda is another researcher at Fairfield Labs, played by Courtney Peldon, who is several years, his junior, smart and attractive, she tries to uplift his spirits.

Then one day a meteor from outer space hurdles and crashes near Fairfield, a friend of Dr. Norris brings a fragment of the meteor, for him to check out.  Burned out from fatigue, Eric falls asleep at his desk; unknowingly creepy tentacles slowly emerge from the bag where the meteor is kept. 

Ignoring Amanda’s persistence, Eric finally takes her out on a romantic evening, which ends at Dr. Norris’s apartment, and they didn’t play Scrabble.  The following day Dr. Norris arrives in his new sports car and is buzzing over his new romantic interlude.  Things quickly turn sour as Eric notices a grotesque growth on the side of his abdomen. The prognosis is negative, “it’s a monstrosity, removing it would cause massive hemorrhaging, then death, it will kill you in a short time.”  The diagnosis is provided by Dr. Proway, briefly played by Alan Ruck, who starred as Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Days go by and it becomes clear that an extraterrestrial life is growing in Dr. Norris.  Aided by Amanda the two seek refuge out of town, and soon Dr. Norris gives birth to a baby alien, whom he names as “Benjamin, my son.”  Meanwhile our antagonist Schilling, who is the boss at Fairfield, tips the Feds off, and soon the government catches up with Dr. Norris and immediately takes custody of both father and baby alien, Benjamin.

Confined in a secret government hospital the baby grows into a young boy, and the bond between father and son become inseparable.  The Feds, who believe the baby alien is “genetically linked” to Dr. Norris, are unable to decide what to do with it.  But the courageous Amanda, knows what to do, like any smart girl would do, seeks a professional attorney, and what entails next is an over the top courtroom battle over the custodial rights of the baby Benjamin. 

There are a lot of bizarre things that happen, half baked concepts that makes Inalienable amusing, and far fetched.  Yet, I have to admit that this made for T.V. film, hopefully the Sci-Fi channel will catch hold of it, one doesn’t easily forget.  The script by Koening, who had a nice run playing Commander Chekov in Star Trek, flows rather nicely.  The story line sticks to the point and doesn’t dwindle off in too many areas, even when a young staff at the hospital, plays a pivotal role in its outcome, that segment is kept to a minimum. 

Mostly T.V. actors make up the ensemble of the cast, Peldon works well carrying her own, as the supportive girlfriend.  The attorney is amusingly and energetically played by veteran actor Erick Avari, whose courtroom antics and lawyer type cast traits, provides a bit of humor in an other wise tense situation.  However, it is Hatch’s performance that is on the spot here, it was fun seeing a familiar face from the past.  Now you may ask, what about the alien baby?  That I won’t give away, interesting I will note.

Now beyond its science fiction element, Inalienable I felt is trying to gravitate to a much broader message.  It does scratch the surface dealing with issues of degradation, alienation and the rights of parental custody.  Yet, this little science fiction piece only registers as entertaining at best, but somehow I can see myself talking about this one, years from now, within a circle of science fiction buffs. 

Thanks to all the staff and crew at the Backlot Film Festival for making this a pleasant screening.  Now if the Veterans Memorial Auditorium and its constituencies could book Guns N’ Roses in that big spacious theatre, that would definitely call for another trip to Culver City.