Mary Louise Wilson and Ron Nyswaner. (photo by Dion Ogust)
Schein, of course, became close with Mayer while making the film. Mayer did not reveal his real intentions to commit suicide to Justin until much later into the filming. Vishner hired the director initially, who had been making films since 1998, to document his life.
Schein also refused to film the actual suicide where Mayer took the overdose of pills that ended his life, even though Vishner wanted Justin to film it. So there I sat, after viewing this haunting and intimate documentary into the life of somebody who could be the man in the mirror.
The Q&A after the film was insightful however I needed to know more. I planned on calling the press office Friday morning and setting up the interview with Justin and at the same time find out what is going on with the “The Cubans” as they were referred to.
“Oh they’re still here and all of them are just walking around town.” Well I’ll be damned, Woodstock has real live Cubans walking around Tinker Street. “They are going to be here until Saturday morning then they are going back to Cuba.” I realized now that my window of time was quickly closing in on me. I had to meet Carlos Varela and I had to do it soon.
The Film
One film I really wanted to see it was The Adderall Diaries, starring Ed Harris, Christian Slater and James Franco. The two films that I had seen were documentaries and I was ready for a good drama adapted from Stephen Elliot’s true crime memoir. This was one of those films with no screener copies available and there were only two showings — one at the Woodstock Playhouse on Friday night at 10 p.m. I had it all set. Dinner at the Little Bear, a nice walk around Bearsville and then sit down and take in a good movie. After being shaken by Left On Purpose, a good crime drama would cleanse my pallet.
(Photo by Dion Ogust)
Earlier in the day, I had called the press office again to see if I could set up an interview with Carlos and Ron Chapman and Justin Schein. Now, it was Friday about 2 p.m. and still no word from the festival people.
I kept sending emails. Just as I was starting to think “this is not going to happen,” I got an email from saying, “If you want to interview Carlos, Ron and Justin, be here at 2:30.”
But it was about 2:30 when I received the email and the ride from Phoenicia, especially in Film Festival Traffic is at least 40 minutes. I was also sitting around in my PJ’s not at all ready to hit the road. I hadn’t even prepared any questions for Justin. Carlos, I could handle and I had the list of questions with me anyway. I emailed back that I could be there at 3:30 and that was the best I could do on such short notice. I would have time to kill later until The Adderall Diaries, but I would find something to do and maybe spend some real time with Carlos.
I drove like a madman to get into town (of course a school bus was in front of me) and found no place to park when I arrived at the office on Tinker Street. I asked the guard out front if I could park right in front of the building where there was obviously no parking. “Just for 15 minutes, please, I need to do this interview,” flashing my press pass around like I had the key to the city.
“Sure man, 15 minutes now,” he said. That’s one of those things about Woodstock — it can be a little looser. It turned out that the guard was a Police Officer and we talked for a few minutes about the police and politics. “I have a son who works for the NYPD and a daughter who has been in the U.S. Army for 15 years, a Captain, deployed to Iraq four times,” I told him. I saw we hit common ground, he smiled. “Bless her,” he said.
But when the festival representative finally came to bring me downstairs to the press room she sheepishly said, “we couldn’t get a hold of Carlos and we cannot get a hold of Justin either, but we have Ron Chapman here so you can spend 15 minutes with him.”
What part of “I am not coming in unless you can guarantee me that Carlos will be there,” did she not understand?
But Chapman, the The Poet Of Havana’s director and I hit it off immediately and we talked for well over 90 minutes. Ron told me how he met Carlos, and made the film, and all about his next film, The Forbidden Shore, the one that he was making when he met Carlos and, so inspired, stopped to make The Poet Of Havana.
