Joe Dante Revives the Horror Comedy at Riviera Maya Film Festival

The Riviera Maya Film Festival is a young festival with young ideas and an innovative way of presenting films to the broader international film community. One of the big gets was Joe Dante who brought Anton Yelchin to present Burying the Ex to the crowd. Dante cautioned that it was really the kind of film that needed to be seen with an audience as opposed to watching on a little screen or, god forbid, in front of a house of poker faced critics with their notepads out jotting down observations and analysis. This isn’t that kind of movie and isn’t intended to be. It was made in the Roger Corman tradition (Corman gave Dante his start way back when) and was filmed in an astonishing 20 days.

Dante and Yelchin attended a press conference at one of the locations for the film festival. We were all aided greatly by the professionalism and generosity of Luis Carrillo, who drove us to each location, packing us into a tiny air-conditioned Mercedes which zoomed along the highways of Playa Del Carmen to wherever we needed to be. One such location held members of the press to find out what Dante had to say about his new movie.

The press conference turned out to be more than just information about Burying the Ex. Dante is quite voluble on the subject of Hollywood, how it’s changing and where it’s going. He has had many projects in the works but they never seem to see the light of day as Hollywood finds itself in the grips of fear — fear of the future, fear or risk taking, fear of the changing audiences. They don’t know where films are headed and, thus, are gun-shy about taking risks. In other words, they no longer have the balls to lead so they must insist on playing it safe.

So you think, okay fine, that’s the same old story. And it might be. But Dante thinks the whole thing is headed for collapse. The studios will have to reinvent themselves (once again) and if they can do that, Hollywood might thrive once again.

Later that night, Burying the Ex would screen for audiences and press back at the film festival’s homebase, the Yucatan Princess, which set up a theater in its opulent complex.

Burying the Ex is funny, with Anton Yelchin playing a young man eager to dump his pretty but a tad needy girlfriend (Ashley Green). When she’s killed unexpectedly she morphs into a zombie and from then, funny/scary chaos. Sure, it’s not Citizen Kane and it’s not meant to be. It reminded me of the movies I used to see in the valley in the 1970s, rocking a pair of orange Dittos, a satin and terry cloth halter top, with my shag cut. Escaping the summer heat with a big bag of popcorn to watch something that silly was the stuff of a young cinema lover’s dream.

Dante’s thumbprint exuberance is alive and well, so are the gross-outs here and there. Burying the Ex is sure to develop a cult following and become a favorite midnight movie.

The screening was followed by a party on a rooftop in the very lively downtown Playa Del Carmen. They were serving some kind of cucumber tequila mixed drinks as movies screened on the side of a building. There were small pools on the rooftop in a place that is defined by blue water.

Impossibly beautiful young men and women flitted about, danced at will while munching on barbecued shrimp. Elvis Mitchell, Ben Lyons, Claudia Puig and Ryan Lattanzio all gathered around Yelchin and Dante for conversation while the hard working team behind the festival had their annual celebration.

I wasn’t much in a partying mood, having gotten a tad baked the night before at a dinner for Dante and Yelchin with the governor of Quintana Roo. I remember the dining table shaped in a square. I remember Elvis Mitchell finishing his cigar with the photographer I’d brought along on this trip, Rick Segal on another rooftop with a cool breeze and a hell of a view. I remember drinking a lot of tequila, champagne and wine. Yes, wine. I remember a toast to the guests and then some of us stumbling out and heading back to the hotel where I’m pretty sure we proceeded to hunker down in their only open kitchen eating hot, salty fries and drinking yet more champagne.

I remember laughing with Lattanzio until I could not breathe and I remember Rick Segal’s camera snapping away, catching all manner of crazy things. We somehow made it back to our hotel rooms though that’s not the part I remember that well.

I was waking up in Vegas in Mexico and my head was pounding. That meant there was no way I could have endured, at my age, another one of those parties. So Segal and I headed out of the Joe Dante party and headed down the streets towards the beach, to get a look at the lapping night waves and their eternal dance with the gusty humid winds. To get there we had to walk through disco row. You’ve never heard music that loud. You can’t out-sexy these women. You have to either submit or withdraw to the bumping and grinding of the discoplosions happening every five feet.

We finally made it to the beach. Boats had been tied to the shoreline with ropes that you had to strategically step over without tripping. We passed a few more hard-charging discos until at last we came upon the gringo wedding. You could tell by Neil Diamond droning on through on their speakers. The wedding guests bobbed back and forth in marital bliss to the tune of “Sweet Caroline.” It felt like we weren’t in Kansas anymore, reversed. We were back in Kansas, baby.

Eventually we got home that night, too. Partly because the publicists were so helpful. Partly because we had to get home or else we were going to have to submit to one of those discos. I did not want to see where that might end up.

One thing about being invited to a film festival on the Mayan Riviera is that in your down time you can visit the natural beauty of the place. We had the choice of attending the Mayan ruins or taking our own side trip, which we did, to Rio Secreto. I’d already seen the ruins, though they are also highly recommended.

The underwater caves are filled with pure, clean water that takes a whole week to be turned from rainwater into underwater cave water. Naturally it will eventually dry up because of global warming (like everything else). Right now it is still the region’s major water supply. You might not know from the jungle that sat on top of it what is thriving underneath.

We all had way more fun than we were legally supposed to have. What a privilege to be there, to having nothing but natural beauty, the nicest people on the planet and movies playing non-stop. You could be an annoying American and complain if you wanted to, probably. You could find that angle if you were looking for it.

To me, it would be unseemly to complain about such a hospitable group of folks trying to make your stay as comfortable as possible. The stakes in Mexico are a lot higher than here, for instance, where customer service and entitlement rule the day. Their economy still hovers between recovering and collapsing. They offer us up their very best, which is, quite frankly, a lot better than any of us deserves.

It would be easy, for instance, to complain about it being too corporate or too touristic because your idea of a Mexican vacation is to relive Rachel Ward’s Cozumel camp in Against All Odds. You want a hut, a papaya and a bottle of tequila. Hey, you can find that here, too. But at the end of the day they are trying to build their economy and make their resort business a success. Fruity drinks all day, luxurious pools to lounge around in, chirping jungle birds fluttering about — world class bathroom facilities? As experiences go, this one was mighty fine.

You probably might be inclined to think, oh sure, they fly you down to Mexico what else are you going to say but nice things? You might have a point there. If you then use that information to write off the Riviera Maya Film Festival? Then you’d be shortsighted at best. It’s a festival that will continue to grow and evolve, along with its lineup and its coastline.