"Well, you tried it just for once, found it all right for kicks.
But now you found out that it's a habit that sticks,
and you're an orgasm addict." – The Buzzcocks

The new movie Choke, adapted from the Chuck Palahniuk novel, is about a sex addict (Sam Rockwell) who, in one element of the plot, hooks up with other sex addicts who attend the same Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings as him. Ah, the irony. The same thing happened to Sam Malone on Cheers, if I'm not mistaken, which makes the joke around 20 years old. Yet, despite that fact, sexual addiction as a term and a (non-DSM-recognized) medical problem seem fairly new to cinema.

Sure, there have been sex addicts in films for many decades, but they were more likely to be described as nymphomaniacs, lechers or typical men. Think of Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind, a number of the female characters created by Tennessee Williams and certainly the locked up nymphos in Shock Corridor. In the past few years, however, there have been a slew of actual "sexaholics," both male and female, though some aren't exactly referred to in such a manner.

Remember when I said I was swearing off Main Street? That vow has been broken already. Saturday night, I headed down to the Delta/WireImage Lounge (no, I wasn't making that up in yesterday's post -- it actually exists) for FILMMAKER Magazine's 15th Anniversary bash. 15 minutes after the party's official start time, the slow-moving line to get in was already trailing some ways down the block. Inside, revellers (including various members of the Four Eyed Monsters camp, filmmaker Caveh Zahedi, and SXSW Film's Matt Dentler and Jarod Neece) enjoyed free Absolut and Stella Artois (served up by bartenders dressed as porntastic stewardesses), as they attempted to chat over the blare of Coldplay and The Shins. Here are some of the hot topics of conversation:

A.J. Schnack, director of They Might Be Giants doc Gigantic and About a Son, the forthcoming doc about Kurt Cobain, discussed the difference between opening a film at Toronto (as About a Son did), and opening at Sundance. "At Toronto," Shnack says, "It's like everyone is there to find out, 'Are these Oscar buzz films good enough?' I mean, we got enough press, but Toronto is a festival where it's still possible to play under the radar. Unlike Sundance, where everyone's like, 'What's the great discovery? Where's the new talent?'"

This week's AFS@Dobie collaborative series entry is the film I Am a Sex Addict, playing throughout the week at Dobie. Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi will attend the 7:30 screenings on Friday and Saturday to introduce the film and hold a Q&A afterwards. Also at Dobie, actor Scott Mechlowicz will attend the 7 pm Friday night screening of Peaceful Warrior, in which he has a costarring role. Other limited-release films opening around Austin this week include Wordplay, Krrish, and the Sydney Pollack-directed documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry.

• The Paramount's Summer Movie Classics series is back on schedule this week. The musical Cabaret screens on Sunday. An Al Pacino double-feature on Sunday and Monday includes Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico. And on Thursday and Friday, Marlon Brando takes over the screen in On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire.

On today's episode of our brand-new daily news recap: My Space does something about Sex Addicts; Comcast does something *for* horror fanboys; and Hollywood pounces on Terri Sciavo. Remember: we're still looking for your ideas for a name for the show, so do your worst in the comments.

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Hosts
Karina Longworth

Editor
Randall Bennett

Music
Love as Laughter - I'm a bee

Format
4:48, 40.5 MB, MPEG4 (iPod / PSP compatible)

Program
00:00 - MySpace says 'no' to 'Sex Addict'
01:35 - MovieTickets.com inks deal with MySpace to sell tickets
01:49 - Comcast and Sony to launch horror flicks on-demand network
02:37 - DeVito partners with Freeman's 'Clikstar' to run ignored documentaries
03:27 - Schwarzenegger 'won't be back' for another 'Terminator'
03:54 - Rights to Terri Schiavo movie purchased

 

After over fifteen years in the making -- and making Malick look rushed -- Caveh Zahedi's I Am a Sex Addict opened in Zahedi's own Bay Area this week, at the Balboa. The notable, quotable Neva Chonin has the best piece, from The Chronicle. The first weekend's screenings also include an extensive series of in-person appearances by Zahedi and his fellow filmmakers from in front and behind the camera; The Balboa's Website has more information. And, fascinatingly, the release of I Am a Sex Addict also had the nice side-effect of inducing a media-mogul slapfight that's based around ownership of the film's future rights; we have the story, if that look behind the curtain appeals to you in any way, shape or form.

Also this week, the weeklies have some nice film-related stuff, including a discussion of Jim Jones and the new documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple in the  Bay Guardian. The ever-ready Cheryl Eddy has a review.

Plus,  Adam and Steve opens at The Castro, with writer-director-actor Craig Chester and actor Chris Kattan in attendance Friday night; man, can you go to a movie in this city without the director present this weekend? And, sure, you can; I was just exaggerating for effect.

San Francisco had 25 days of rain in March. Twenty-five days of rain.

Winner of the Snakes on a Plane Award for most forthright title, Caveh Zahedi's fictionalized documentary I Am a Sex Addict has come to the big screen after fifteen years of production, setbacks, disasters and difficulties. The passage of time hasn't changed the tense of the title -- Zahedi may be recovered for years, but he's still got impossibly conflicted feelings and desires about sex -- and in many ways the slow crawl to the finish line enabled I Am a Sex Addict to have a sweep and scope that a lot of modern navel-gazing self-made films lack. 

As a subject (or leading man – the film straddles the line between the real and the re-created), Zahedi's a pretty unlikely figure: Bold but bashful, larger-than-life but small of stature, smart enough to be incredibly aware of how stupid many of his actions are. Those dichotomies run throughout the film, making I Am a Sex Addict repellent-yet-riveting: You don't want to watch Zahedi open up the aperture of the camera and spill his guts onto the frame , but he's so open -- and fascinating, and frank about his self-destruction and majestically pathetic -- that you can't help but watch. Of course, the fact that Zahedi's got a slow-fuse, deadpan delivery that makes him look like a neurotic Buster Keaton doesn't hurt his watchability. …

Despite the fact that over 70 million homes receive his HDNet channel, Mark Cuban is still not making any money on his HD dream. Part of the problem (I'm not going to get into how many/few homes have HD TVs and receivers) is that some major cable companies -- including Comcast -- still refuse to carry either HDNet or its sister channel, HDNet Movies. In fact, a couple of years ago, Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner collectively created an HD channel of their own called INHD, which they conceived as "a Cuban-killer." (He's still here. As is HDNet.)

Because of Cuban's feud with Comcast, as Karina mentioned in her column, there were rumblings that his Landmark Theaters, the biggest independent chain in the country, might refuse to show films that were part of distributor IFC Films' day/date release deal with Comcast. No official, public statements were made, however, so things continued as normal, and Caveh Zahedi's I Am a Sex Addict (part of the day/date deal) was scheduled to open at a Landmark theater in Berkeley on Friday, April 7. Then, yesterday, Zahedi heard from IFC that the film had been pulled by the theater because of Cuban's beef with Comcast. Not surprisingly, Zahedi was upset, and (quite reasonably, it would seem) blamed Cuban for the affair. According to Cuban's comment on the above post (scroll down the page a little, and you'll find it), however, IFC knew the film would not be screened at any Landmark theaters and schedule it anyway. Hmm.

No matter who's to blame, the fact is that a little indie film is caught up in something much, much bigger than it is. Can you even imagine how frustrating this must be for the filmmakers who, after IFC's deal with Comcast, were thrilled at the prospect of (relatively) wide distribution for the babies, only to run into this roadblock? Man alive, what a nightmare.

 

The most shocking moment of Sunday night's Oscar ceremony came early in the evening, long before Three 6 Mafia or Crash scored their twin victories for mediocrity. An hour or so after losing the night's first award to George Clooney, Jake Gyllenhaal trotted out on stage to ostensibly announce one of the night's many disposable montages. "They're called epics," he near-monotoned. "Extravaganzas. Spectacles." With that last one, Jake's voice took an unexpected up-turn. He went on to list a few (oddly amalgamated for mass cross-generational appeal) examples of the genre in question – "West Side Story. Star Wars. Ben-Hur." – before delivering the kicker: "You can't properly watch these on a television set, and good luck trying to enjoy them on a portable DVD." Gyllenhaal punctuated that embarrassingly over-scripted slice of Academy propaganda with a desperate, self-referential giggle – a composure break that lasted long enough for an insert shot of Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams, Gyllenhaal's Brokeback Mountain co-stars, just two members of what sounded like a large chunk of the audience laughing along with him. It was rather amazing, a pure, bumbling moment of transparency that neatly struck down whatever was left of Sid Gannis' sad house of cards. The new takeaway for the evening: If Hollywood can't take its own last-ditch propaganda seriously, how can we?