By popular demand, here’s video of me reciting my annual Slamdance poem, entitled “Artificial Movies.” Written by actual me, not AI. I write a poem every year for the opening of Slamdance which just celebrated our 31st year (1995-2025), and also celebrated our alumnus Sean Baker’s historic win at the Oscars! (his feature Takeout was the Slamdance Grand Jury Winner back in the day). Sean joins recent Oscar winners Bong Joon Ho and Sir Christopher Nolan & Dame Emma Thomson who also launched careers at Slamdance. Hats off also to Slamdance alumni Eddie Berger whose film Conclave won 1 Oscar and Jon M. Chu, whose film Wicked won 2 Oscars. Grand total of 8 Oscars (at least?) by Slamdance alumni directors. Very cool that Anora won 5 Oscars, but you know what else was cool (and puts things in perspective)? On Oscar-Sunday, running into my friend and neighbor Dennis Parrish, who was the Prop Master on PATTON, which won a whopping 7 Oscars! Dennis said he was invited to the Oscars that year with the Patton team, but couldn’t make it because he was shooting another film in Spain.
By the way, if anyone knows someone at IMDb, if Dennis corrects your trivia on Patton or any of the other 50 years worth of films he worked on (from Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to Nebraska) y’all ought to listen to him. He was there.
From John Ford to Sean Baker, it’s nice to remember the film industry is only a couple generations old.
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