Tribeca 2005: Caveh Zahedi Exploits His Own Failure
Filed under: Independent, Tribeca, Festival Reports, Cinematical Indie
Just got back from a screening of Caveh Zahedi's I Am a Sex Addict. Before I go into the film, here are excerpts from Zahedi's sadly hilarious biography, as printed in the film's press notes:- After graduating [from Yale], Zahedi went to Switzerland to try to work with Jean-Luc Godard, but Godard refused to meet with him after he phoned Godard at three in the morning to offer his filmmaking services.
- Caveh quit his job and moved to Paris to try to raise money for a film about French poet Arthur Rimbaud. He failed to raise even one centime, and soon returned to the U.S. to try to make the film in Super-8 with no money. The result was a complete disaster, and he decided to give up filmmaking and devote himself exclusively to collage-making instead.
- Dejected, he eventually ... devote[d] himself to an experimental music video of a Talking Heads song. The music video, which took him two years to complete, was subsequently rejected by David Byrne.
- Caveh's next film, I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore, was an attempt to prove the existence of God by means of a road trip to Las Vegas ... but when the film doesn't seem to be going his way, Caveh resorts to plan B, which involves persuading his father and half-brother to take Ecstasy with him. [It was] virulently panned by most American critics and a box office disaster.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-16-2005 @ 4:17PM
Joe Swanberg said...
I'm really jealous that you got to see the film. I can't wait until it comes around Chicago. Hurry up and get your review on the site!
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