Telluride Diary – Waiting for the Miracle

Battered by wildfires and heat waves all summer, Los Angeles County is now blanketed with a cloud layer, dropping the temperature, and giving air conditioners a break, the briefest of respites from the new normal of climate change. Surely the heat will return. It’s only a matter of time. Maybe hours. Maybe minutes.

My backpack for Telluride will contain a MacBook Pro, an iPad Pro, a Tascam remote voice recorder, a camera, cords, chargers. A dog bag will be filled with food, treats, bowls, baseballs. Then the decisions over clothing. Smart people check the weather. The weather looks like it will be sunny, not rainy. Colorado isn’t electric green for lack of rain. It rains. Suddenly, unexpectedly, sometimes violently, just as quickly gives way to an achingly clear sky. The water is clear and clean, even out of the tap.

AwardsDaily’s old friend Michael Grei is tagging along for the ride, and once there, AwardCircuit’s Mark Johnson will be joining our motley condo crew. We will head out by car from Los Angeles and land in Flagstaff, Arizona for the night. We’ve taken this route for a few years now. I know where the Starbucks is, as well as the two cafés, Macy’s and Wildflower Bread Company. There is a barbecue joint near the Econolodge. I know where I will walk my dogs in the morning — the University campus nearby. The grass will be wet and I’ll be wearing flip-flops. I have no doubt about that. My little dog Luna has some serious PTSD either from her previous life or her two week stay at the shelter. No one wanted her. We almost didn’t connect with her until a kindly volunteer stopped us on our way out and said, “Here’s a dog you should meet.” It was love at first sight. But Luna flips out when she sees other dogs (leash aggression, I know, I need a trainer) so my job is always to avoid any other dogs on leashes. The bigger dog, Jack, we found at a gas station near the Four Corners. He was a puppy, living under a trailer. My daughter and I were on our way to Telluride four years ago. Now, I wonder as we barrel down the highway if Jack knows, if he remembers, if he can smell something far off in the distance that reminds him of his old puppy life. We pass the same gas station every trip to Telluride since, and I still wonder where he came from, how he ended up there, or if I’ll one day see any of his siblings running around somewhere.

Those of us who go to Telluride every year are lucky to be able to experience this short but memorable festival. Luck is one way to put it. Ability to lay down cash is another. They sell out faster and faster every year. Prices for lodging has also spiked. So many want to be there, to see the movie that will ultimately win Best Picture, and Telluride is cheaper than Cannes or Venice (although by now not by much).

I like going for a lot of reasons. The first, of course, is that if I’m to cover the Oscars I have to go. But it’s more than that. It’s heading out on the open road. It’s leaving Los Angeles behind. It’s just looking as the vast expanse of the still mostly pristine American West, those umber and bright orange buttes, the puffy white clouds drifting across the baby blue canvas sky. Then the endless winding road that leads first way up and then sharply down into the valley where the town of Telluride sits nestled at the base of watchful mountains that cast long shadows and capture the first splinters of bright gold unfiltered sunrise light. Somehow a river runs through it, or maybe it’s a creek, or a babbling brook — though it hardly seems real walking the path next to it. Even if you’ve never been there, you’ve seen a thousand photos of it, along with smiling selfies in gondolas that glide on a cable up to the top of Mountain Village, where the Chuck Jones theater is. I once rode up with Jennifer Garner eating her lunch right across from me. You do that celebrity encounter thing — look, don’t look, laugh, don’t laugh, listen, don’t listen, react, don’t react.

And that’s really the thing about Telluride. I’ve made so many memories there, vivid encounters that I see in my mind’s eye like so many of the photos I’ve taken of it over the years. I remember both the moments where I felt at home — sitting next to pals like Tomris Laffly, Anne Thompson, Michael and Kris Patterson, Glenn Zoller, Roger Durling, Pete and Madelyn Hammond. Passing Kris Tapley who always sits in the back on the aisle to make a quick exit. There aren’t a lot of awkward moments of isolation to be had there. If you aren’t sitting with a friend someone you are sitting next to will simply start talking to you. What is it about Telluride that makes everyone so happy all of the time? I don’t know — maybe it’s the whisper thin mountain air, maybe all of that unsullied oxygen. I guess the question is, what’s not to be happy about?

I remember the highlights Emma Stone and Damien Chazelle introducing La La Land, Steve McQueen and Brad Pitt introducing 12 Years a Slave, Greta Gerwig crying as she screened Lady Bird for the first time. Barry Jenkins, who volunteered there, introducing Moonlight. Walking past Meryl Streep. Staring at Faye Dunaway’s Uggs. The humiliating — taking so many pictures of Robert Redford and Frances Ford Coppola someone had to tell me to stop, “this isn’t that movie,” they said. The sublime — Tilda Swinton warmly wrapping an arm around me as we commiserated about how fast our kids are growing up. Yes, dude, it is THAT movie. It’s that wonderful, impossible glimpse of the kind of life most of us do not, cannot ever have. We get to swim around in it for four glorious days. And then, we pack up our bags and head back up the winding mountain road, then back down, then back across the sprawling beauty of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California until finally rattling back to the megalopolis of Los Angeles, my city, my home.

Usually I can’t wait to get back home even before I leave for a trip. But Telluride is one stay I never want to end. I know that whatever I see there I will love — even if it isn’t the greatest movie I’ve ever seen. And the movies that really are that good? They will cast their spell on us. We will take ibuprofen to beat back the altitude migraine. We will buy hot tea at the overpriced concessions stand. We will zip up our puffers, thumb through our patron passes to cut in front of the line (I know, we’re assholes). We will wake up early and stay up late. We will all race back to our condos, tap on our keyboards to see who can get their review out there first. We will obnoxiously tweet our reactions to movies we just saw, with differing results. We will feed off each other’s enthusiasm, resent each other’s negative responses. I’m sure there is nothing fun about watching all of us attend Telluride via social media.

Eventually, after Telluride, festival coverage does eventually reach its saturation point. There will simply be too many reactions floating around, too many hot takes and sooner or later people will tune it out.  We’re not quite there yet. Hope springs eternal that the movies will be magnificent, the coffee strong and hot, and the sky, like the water, like the view from the gondola — crystal clear.

I will try to take you with me, every step of the way. The good, the bad and the ugly. Though there probably isn’t going to be a lot of ugly.