I've been living in New York a few years now and I had never been to the New York Film Festival. I can fully blame it on my working schedule for most of it, but I also think to check for screenings of movies I'd like to see way too late and they'd all be sold out.
But this year is the first year where I heard about their trivia nights. I love trivia, and I know so much useless stuff, a lot of which is pop culture related. Now, I'm not a bar person, so I don't go to bar trivia nights, which is a shame. Mainly because I've never had the chance to compete in a public forum and put my trivia brain to the test.
There were a bunch of different trivia games played, and the one I volunteered for was a game called Filmography. You and your opponent go back and forth naming films in an actor’s filmography, and you go until one of you blanks and then the other person has to name one more to seal the win. The actor I got was George Clooney. And lucky for me, I spent this past summer watching ER, and sometimes when I’m watching a new to me show, I go to the actor’s Wikipedia pages and look at what else they’ve done and look for future recommendations, so I had looked at Clooney’s filmography quite recently, on top of me having actually seen a bunch of his movies. As the game was going along, I felt like I was getting non-obvious picks in. I remembered Good Night and Good Luck, which I have seen, thanks to the new play, and Midnight Sky, again thank you Wikipedia. I also got in Return of the Killer Tomatoes because I've seen enough interviews of him bringing it up, and my brain stores information like that for seemingly no reason other than trivia. So, I ended up winning this game. And the prize for this round was a free ticket to the first screening of Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly, starring George Clooney, at the fest.
Then the final game of the night, where everyone who wanted to could compete, was a game of Movie-Actor. You're given a card with an actor's name and a movie of theirs, and then the next person has to pick another actor in that movie, then the next person has to pick another movie of that actor's, and the line keeps going until someone breaks, that person is eliminated, and you keep going like that until only one is left standing. I managed to make it to the last two people, and I had to name an Elle Fanning movie, and just went blank. Somewhere was my lead in for her so I couldn't say that, and then I kept seeing two different characters of hers but I just could not pull out a title. So I came in second place. My consolation prize was a free ticket to a screening of Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague.
And then going to the screenings and getting to go to the actual festival was so cool. To be in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and see all the NYFF signs around, it felt like more than just seeing a movie at my local AMC. It felt like it was a special thing. I loved it. I can't wait to go back next year.