Twentynine Palms: has anybody seen this? wtf?

Of course, the good folk of Twentynine Palms really aren't going to understand it...

Desert residents angry over portrayal in film

BY CARLA WHEELER AND MIKE SCHWARTZ
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE

When French filmmakers arrived in Twentynine Palms last year to make a movie, townsfolk said they understood it would be a light romantic comedy.

But less than a week before the premiere of director Bruno Dumont's thriller "Twentynine Palms" at the Venice Film Festival, the movie's Web site shows a film with sex scenes, nudity, vulgar language and violence -- including a sexual assault in the desert.
Now some people who live and work in Twentynine Palms are concerned that the image of the desert community on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park has again been tarnished.

"Oh, that's great," said an unnerved Gary Daigneault, news director at KCDZ (107.7 FM) in Twentynine Palms, after viewing a photo of a sex scene posted on the site. "We were told it was a romantic comedy. They fooled us." Based on what he understood, Daigneault's station agreed to broadcast a call for movie extras during filming.
The film is about a tempestuous young couple's visit to the desert, and a movie trailer on the Web site appears to put the town in a bad light, said Mike Collins, a civic leader who owns Collins Computers and Innovations.

In one scene from the trailer, a grizzled man in a passing truck yells, "This is our street! Get the hell out of the way!" as the couple, played by Katia Golubeva and David Wissak, are standing well out of the truck's path. In another scene, the terrified couple's SUV is thumped from behind by a another pickup in the desert, where the two are attacked.

"I'm disappointed," Collins said by phone. "We have war heroes and they pick on a few (bad apples)," Collins said. Twentynine Palms houses a large Marine base.
"One of the first things people go for about the desert is they want to depict desert characters as unsavory," said artist Chuck Caplinger of Twentynine Palms. "But they're not like that at all. Anyone coming here to visit would be safe. This is really a safe place." Caplinger did a poster for the film of two actors standing naked and holding hands.

Producer responds
Darren Goldberg, associate producer of "Twentynine Palms," said the three assailants in the desert scene are "not townies, but vagrants." A fight takes place between the bad guys and the couple, and there is a rape.

Goldberg, speaking by phone from his New York office, said the movie "was never billed as a (romantic) comedy, but as a drama."
"I know they're sensitive," Goldberg said of the town's residents. "And we were concerned about that in the filming, but the actors really didn't interact with many people in town."
The town has previously been stung by negative publicity generated by the book "Twentynine Palms," based on a true story of the killings of two young women by a troubled Marine. No connection exists between the book and movie, except in name. The film is also not related to "29 Palms," a direct-to-video movie currently available.
The movie was shot last October and November. Filming was done in both San Bernardino and Riverside counties, including Twentynine Palms and Whitewater near the wind turbines, said Sheri Davis, executive director of the Inland Empire Film Commission.
Ken Patel, manager of the El Rancho Dolores Motel, said the crew used six rooms and stayed about seven days -- two days to film a parking lot scene and five days for a pool scene.
"In the pool scene they had a high camera -- maybe 40 feet up on a truck. The young couple was romancing in the pool by themselves," Patel said. "They didn't let anyone see it except the crew, but some said it was a nude scene.
"I told them if something bad was going on, take our sign down. They said it's not a bad movie -- so I said, `If it's not bad, put my name in,' " Patel said.
Goldberg said there were sex scenes at the swimming pool, in the desert and in a motel room. "Nudity and sex is definitely a part of it. Dumont is very well known for the way he expresses sex," he said.

Eye on a prize
"Twentynine Palms" will vie with 19 other international films for a coveted Golden Lion award, Venice's equivalent of an Oscar. It will show there on Sept. 4.

Dumont's films are not widely distributed in the United States.
Even if some residents disagree with a film's content, the U.S. Constitution protects a filmmaker's right to free speech, said the film commission's Davis, who helped Dumont's crew obtain permits in unincorporated areas.

"I never even asked for a script on it," said Davis. "I was told by the California Film Commission you can't turn down any project based on content. It's a First Amendment right."

Judy Burns, professor of screenwriting at UC Riverside and former professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, said the film's producers would have a problem if they misrepresented what they were doing. "But I would be very surprised if the fine print of the contract didn't say `what we're doing is our business,' and if the locals signed it they would have no right to squabble."
Jay Corbin, development director for Twentynine Palms, said he never asked to see a script before he issued the permit. "We want to know the nature (of the movie)," he said, "but we don't get into reviews or passing judgment."

Daigneault, speaking by phone from the radio station he owns, said he was unaware that Dumont is known in film circles for making controversial movies such as "Life of Jesus," about anti-Arab racism in France.

"We didn't know that. We're small-town folks," he said.
Collins said he will watch out for the next French film crew in town.
"If it turns out they portray Twentynine Palms in a negative light and they come back to make another movie, then we might run them out of town."

I guess this isn't the 29 Palms I have a preview DVD of with Rachael Leigh Cook and Denis Leary.

you have blinded me with italics

Sorry about the itals. I thought the article was really funny. The film was hard to deal with--both long and boring, finally ending with violence and violent unmotivated sex. But not for a minute does it have anything to do with the town of 29 Palms, Calif. where some of it was shot. They protest too much.

I really do wonder, tho', if anyone else has seen this film, what it is it's supposed to be telling us. Is it some kind of allegory? I search for meaning.

Someone tried to pass a law in Lee County, Florida banning any films with sex and violence from being shot there. It didn't make it.

and i assume this has nothing to do with "Wild Palms", Oliver Stone's attempt to do "Twin Peaks"

No, this is a new film, German/French shot in California. Dialog is sort of half/half french/english, not that there's much dialog, and none of any interest. It's gotten a certain amount of press. I saw in in Paris (along with 3 other people in the theater) and found it vile. But maybe I'm missing something.

Can I ask again if anybody's seen this?

this seems to be one of those 'oh! the ennui!' endurance fests that make a splash every now and then.

All of daumonts movies are wtf?! L'Humanite certainly is anoying/boring/puzzling - but it stays with you in ways most films don't.

Oh great. Now I have a really bad solo Robert Plant song stuck in my head.

this seems to be one of those 'oh! the ennui!' endurance fests that make a splash every now and then.
-- amateur!st (amateur!s...), November 8th, 2003.
Amat., I don't know if you're referring to the film or to the thread. Either way, you're no doubt correct. I saw the film in Paris a month or so ago and at the time had just read a load of reviews about it. After seeing it, I wondered why it had generated so much ink. Immediately after seeing it, I felt mildly revolted. Now after a few weeks have passed, I can hardly remember it!

Spoil the ending plz so I don't have to see the film.

i was referring to the film!

i don't know the story of this film at all but these films always seem to involve long plotless sequences of boredom and ennui and people fucking while being bored and then they end with some kind of bloodbath.

so you can check off all the "vital" aspects of human nature being confronted without compromise: sex, violence, blah blah

see also gaspar noe who is like the cecil b demille of this style

S&D: Films about ennui. (and no fair using Antoinoni)

yeah we can blame antonioni but he was a good director anyhow.

although i (snob alert) like better his earlier films which don't take ennui as their reason for being. they have stories to tell.

Personally, I love the guy's sense of compositon. The ennui isn't of as much consequence. I'm not saying I'd likely think of L'Eclisse as a great film if it were populated with disco-dancing pedophiliac clowns, but it's possible.

yes exactly

the ending of the eclipse is a miracle, where the camera revisits the scenes of their rendezvous

i think of that scene all the time

Holy shit yes! Which, I guess, demonstrates that sometimes the best way, as a director, to deal with the subject of ennui is to hold it up in comparison to a variety of other expressions (in the case of Eclipse's finale: epic, desolate terror). I could be wrong though.

but does that deal with ennui? its just a more universal sense of absence and transience (i sound so pretentious sorry)

i mean i remember it/think about it in terms of those things, not in terms of boredom or annoyance

fuck you, Nate. That's a GREAT Robert Plant song.

This is true. In fact, I would probably try (if I were any good at debates) to make a case that none of the Antonioni films I've seen (admittely a small pool) are as much about ennui as people make them out to be. I'd lose the debate, but I would throw it out there on the floor just to see if it moves.

Read the spoiler for this film elsewhere on the net and although I appreciated seeing Noe's Irreversible on the big screen here in nyc last year...decided to pass on this one. Whenever I see films like this I feel like I'm watching something made by roommate in college and I always suspect he/they aren't trying very hard and go in for the shock as a cover for laziness (and call it art, or in this case "painting." And the shock seems surprisingly artificial, perhaps because the world itself has many more vivid wake up calls these days...if only one would expose themselves to them. We don't really need films for that, or at least I'm feeling like we shouldn't.

I am going to see this next week. TEE HEE (!!!) OMGWTF

Wow, does this movie ever fucking suck! I'm starting to suspect I'm done with movies after a piece of shit like this. But no, I won't succomb. I am stronger than this.

or, rather, "succumb." I think the movie made my brain nomb.

finally saw it and..i strangely like this pretentious as all hell movie.

The really strange thing is that I think I have yet to find a person who reacts to this one in the way they anticipated. I expected to sort of like it on what I remember being a positive reaction to L'Humanite (although now I think if I were to go back, I would change my mind).