by Walter Chaw The drive home always feels faster. I
didn't think it would this time, but it did.
Backtracking along the scenic route, along
the empty spaces and small towns and manicured lawns
and a high-school field with a carefully-raked running track, red clay or
something, I rolled down the window. It smelled like almost-autumn. I thought
about stopping at the summit of Monarch Pass this time, where a cottage
industry had sprouted up around the fact of reaching the tip of it. You could buy
suntan lotion there, and a sweatshirt that declared you to be short of
breath, which you were.
I listened to the next sixteen chapters of The
Stand and Larry hadn't quite gotten out of Manhattan yet, and Stu hadn't
quite escaped captivity, and I stopped once on the side of the highway
so that I could get my sunglasses out of the festival bag I'd stuck in the
trunk–the bag a gift from friends who'd already given me back a piece of myself over the past three days.
***
There are a few things to know about
Telluride. It's a little city in a valley–or whatever it's called when there's not so much a valley but a hole in the mountains they put a city into.
There's a bookstore there called, cozily, "Between the Covers," and
it has a remarkable selection of obscure film books. I wonder if they have that
selection year-round or if it's just highlighted during the festival. I bought
Annette Insdorf's new book on Philip Kaufman and, because it's Telluride during
the festival, I was able to get both Prof. Insdorf and Mr. Kaufman to sign it. I
told the latter I'd be reaching out to him to do a full-length interview about
Invasion of the Body Snatchers–because, I said, I believed it to be
a key film of the American Seventies. He seemed grateful to hear it.
Regardless, I'd always wanted to say that to him.
I spent a lot of my downtime at Telluride this year shuttling between the bookstore and the various screening venues. In one journey, feeling the 8,600ft. elevation as I was
getting pelted by the clockwork afternoon rain, I saw Mia Wasikowska
weaving through the crowds on the street, unnoticed, with a look of
consternation on her face, the very picture of Alice. I had a lovely cup of
espresso and two scoops of ice cream (salted caramel and toffee) one
afternoon from a local ice creamery, and a chicken kabob from a street vendor,
and a couple of concession-stand turkey sandwiches, accompanied by popcorn and
washed down by bottles of root beer.
Public transportation in Telluride comes in
the form of two gondolas. One route lasts approximately thirteen minutes, the other is much
shorter. I got to take both to the condo where I was staying. I shared
one trip with Errol Morris's delightful wife and sometime-producer Julia
Sheehan, during which she told me that Donald Rumsfeld, unlike Robert McNamara,
could not stop being a politician, not even for a moment. I shared another with
a beautiful woman who, halfway through, told me the only film she saw at the festival
so far that she hadn't liked was Under the Skin. I kept to my side of
the gondola the rest of the way.
On my last night in Telluride, I took my
friends to a Chinese restaurant and noted with bemusement that the staff
had tuned the flatscreen in the dining area to a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC documentary on the hunting habits of lions. One of my friends covered her eyes
and asked if it was possible that the lions were just cleaning the hippo they
were draped over. I assured her that among the things about to happen to the
hippo, a kind of cleaning was likely among them.
On my last morning there, I got up and the room was quiet. It was early, at least an
hour before the shuttle from the condo to the gondolas was running, so I
shouldered my bags, lamented the weight of my laptop, and started walking down
the side of the mountain. I was cold for the first time this summer, and it felt good. I walked the winding road, almost a mile to the gondola station, and
stopped at the family-owned coffee shop–where I'd been getting
Americanos and breakfast burritos every morning for the ride into the second
gondola station–to find a sign, hand-lettered. They were
grateful, they were sad: the day before had been their last day, too. I read it
twice, tapped the counter, and then I was gone.
The drive home is faster because you know the
way, I think. And for that moment at the side of the highway, I stood watching storm
clouds gather to the west in an angry blot. To the east, where I was headed, there was only flat blue. Sunglasses in one hand, my other hand on the lid of the trunk, my
heart was full and my head was swimming with wonders and remembered versions–better
versions–of myself. For that lungful of mountain air on a cool summer morning
turning into fall, everything was possible backwards along the scenic route. I
had everything I ever wanted, and I was everything I wanted to be.
Really lovely piece.
How I missed your writing, Walter. Thanks.