Word Count: 879

This year my yearly gig as a volunteer taxi driver for the Telluride Film Festival was really good. So enjoyable, that I got the idea for a fun essay out of the experience. I’d tell you to read it, but you’re already doing that, aren’t you?

A Somewhat Safe

Refuge from Reality

I guess I’m obsessed with watching movies? Bewitched to the point of putting up with all sorts of inconveniences just because I thrive on this weird enjoyment of walking into an auditorium with other like-minded obsessives. Specifically, so all of us can sit there in darkness and watch a story video unfolding before our very eyes.

I like to think this obsession with watching movies is a fairly healthy addiction. Could be a lot worse? What if my particular obsession happened to be collecting porcelain penguin figurines? Then you’d hear about some guy building a massive warehouse just so he can house all his dust-collecting treasures. He’d also make a guest appearance on, “Lifestyles of the Deeply Eccentric.” Does a show such as this even exist? I’ll bet there’s at least a YouTube video for such a thing.

Here’s the first set of totally ironic things related to this obsession with watching movies and the Telluride Film Festival. I hate driving internal combustion engine automobiles. So much so that the guys I work with for the Town of Silverton Parks-n-Rec. Dept. automatically hop into the driver’s seat and take the reins whenever we motorize ourselves from point A to point B. I despise driving so much so that I’ve been known to tell people that if I had tons of disposable income (yeah, right?), I’d probably hire someone to be my personal chauffer. While we’re being delusional, did I ever mention that I’ve vacationed in Fiji with my super-model girlfriend on a number of occasions in the past?

Here I am having just completed year #28 of taxi driving for TFF and outside of the festival, I try mightily to avoid driving like it’s a resurgence of the pandemic. I’m still doing the volunteer driving thing, and always putting my best foot forward in terms of doing it in a safe, reliable, and professional, manner. Truly amazing what a person will do in order to appease their obsession?

In the early years of doing the TFF Driving thing, I could also go home at night to the comforts of my not-so-mini-mansion apartment. Not any more now that I live on the other side of the mountain. This has forced me to do the car-camping thing on a few occasions, having failed to find a legitimate sleeping spot ahead of the festival. In a word this, “sucks.”

This year the car camping life experience didn’t happen (YEA!!). Solved that by getting to TFF a day early and found a legal spot to erect a tent just outside of town. Not only did this prevent a 2:00 am flashlight from shining in my face via the San Miguel County sheriff, but it’s amazing what lying horizontally inside a sleeping bag while positioned in a tent can do for a person’s outlook on life? I recommend this as a cure for lots of people suffering from severe cases of insomnia.

We can’t forget the main reason why I’m doing this whole thing, and that is of course watching movies. I didn’t know what to expect from this year since the ongoing writer/actor strike in Hollywood has flipped the entire paradigm upside down. At one time, I even wondered whether or not the festival would even happen. This was the 50^th installment of TFF proceedings, so they even added an extra day to this year’s festival. Turns out none of the actors spent any time promoting their films to the masses. Fine with me since my writing obsession has me more interested in story-structure and characters than celebrities.

Almost every film I saw at this year’s festival was a good one. There have been times in the past where I’d walk out of the theatre asking myself how they could’ve gotten the financing to make the movie I just saw in the first place. Sitting there and watching has had me comparing the experience to that of a vegetarian being forced to spend the remainder of their existence on this planet living off of Kippered Herring and multiple cans of Spam. Wondering what type of heinous crimes I committed in the past to warrant being forced to experience this new form of slow visual torture. Oh wait, this “karma” stuff only works if you happen to be Buddhist, right?

Will I keep doing this TFF Taxi-driving gig in the foreseeable future? Here’s the answer to that one; One of the really sweet things that happened this year was re-establishing contact with my old colleagues from past TFF Volunteer Taxi-Driving experiences. Most of the people in our particular department even remembered each other’s names. Quite the achievement when you think about all those times you’re interacting with another person, and you can’t even remember what their name happens to be. Maybe that’s the reason we remember each other’s names and faces so easily? One things for sure, being Film-Freaks (even the rookies) is the way it should definitely be.