SF IndieFest: 2.4 Hours on Craigslist
Even by 3:45 on Saturday, the lines were so packed around the Roxie that we had to walk onto 16th Street to try and read the (extremely poor) signage on the box office before the Indiefest double bill screening of Oakland Raider Parking Lot and 24 Hours on Craigslist. Over and over again: "Is this the line for will call or is it the wish line?" (FYI for future attendees -- buy tickets online, pick them up at the box office, wait in line to the right of the theater, on the Dalva side. If you didn't buy tickets, wish line goes to the left, on the Truly Med side.) The mob was so big, we missed all the other 'Fisters we were supposed to meet (sorry, guys!).
Everyone feels at least a little bit proprietary about Craigslist -- that's where I hired a DJ/got moving boxes/signed up for marketing focus groups/paid through the nose for Arcade Fire tickets -- so it would only be fair to expect a movie showing the stories behind one day of the site's postings (August 4, 2003) to attract an unusually devoted crowd eager to see just who their compatriots are. Meet the couple trying to sell six strollers! The dog owner applying for a room! A woman looking for a gay sperm donor! See SFist Cheshire! (We won't spoil the surprise and tell you where he is in the movie, but he is neither the heavy metal chef, nor the guy with a big bottle of formaldehyde in his basement. Ask him in the comments if you want to know.)
So... we got out of the movie around 6:15 (okay, we took some liberties with the title of this post, but you know what we mean). And how did we like it?
Picture from the 24 Hours on Craiglist website
Well, like any movie filled with little vignettes (about 80, out of over 120 shot, and almost 2000 submissions from the 30,000+ postings on August 4), some of the stories are very entertaining (including: the drug courier, the houseboat roommate, the drag Ethel Merman hiring a backup Led Zep cover band, the diabetic cat support group) and some, unfortunately, are not (the golfer, the butler, the rent-a-husband business). And a lot of your favorite sections aren't portrayed -- no overtly-casual casual encounters, no missed connections, no community. These are minor complaints, though, and given the breadth of the subject matter, it's probably inevitable that some stories will fascinate you and others may not.
The Q&A afterwards was unusually lively for one of these meet-the-filmmaker things, where usually no one asks anything except for the one guy with a verrrrry specific question about film speed. Not this one. Filmmaker Michael Ferris Gibson discussed how they got the stories, how he'd assembled the crew for the movie (you guessed it: one posting on craigslist), explained how they filmed it (8 crews went out for a week), and fielded questions like, "what stories did you leave out?", "do you have a distribution deal yet?" (yes), "did you accept funding from craigslist?" (no), and "is Craig in the movie?" (yes). And the filmmaker for the well-shot and also vastly entertaining Oakland Raider Parking Lot revealed that he had gotten the news clips in his movie off Craigslist as well.
The movie is playing again next week on the 12th in Oakland and the 13th at the Women's Building. The Roxie will also be adding a second show, for those of you who didn't get in off the wish line, which will be either Monday or Tuesday (check back on the website when the date gets confirmed). And Gibson says the movie will probably go into national distribution around May and come back home around June. You can get tickets online, at Naked Eye, or, for East Bay showings, at Mama Buzz.