Unfortunately, Hal Hartley left Sundance before the press screening of FAY GRIM, and I wasn't able to interview him without seeing the film first. So my questions are on the generic side.
I worked with Hal three times as a publicist, on AMATEUR, FLIRT, and HENRY FOOL. FAY GRIM is the sequel to HENRY FOOL, and picks up the same characters years later. It was fun to see some of my old friends turn up in the film, particularly Thomas Jay Ryan, who plays Henry Fool (and starred in a short I did) and Elina Lowensohn.
So much has changed over the years. Parker is now a movie star. I remember the night I first met her. I had arranged for Hal to do one of those online chats with film fans. As Hal was computer illiterate at the time, we went over to Parker's apartment and she did the typing for him. After the fans found out who was at the keyboard, a lot of them lost interest in Hal. I remember what a nice hostess she was, bringing drinks, etc. She told me she had to go to a shoot that night after midnight. It was clear there was no money in it. "I just want to keep making movies," she said.
I love the comic persona that Parker has in the Chris Guest movies, but it's beautiful to see the deeper dimension that she is able to pull out when she stands on Hal's stage.
James Urbaniak and Tom Ryan made their film debuts in HENRY FOOL. Now they are veteran film actors with numerous credits. Among many other films, James played Robert Crumb in AMERICAN SPLENDOR and Tom was in ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and STRANGE CULTURE (shown in this year's festival). Elina let her Louise Brooks bob grow long and she left NY for Paris. Hal moved to Berlin. Martin Donovan lives in Vancouver now. Everyone is in a different place.
And of course FAY GRIM flees HENRY FOOL's home base in Woodside, Queens, to chase all over the continent, to Berlin, Paris and Istanbul. It's a whirling dervish of a movie, with lots more characters and lots more plot twists--it would be chaos without Parker's heartfelt performance to give it a center of gravity. My very personal extra-movie experience of watching the movie was like the old Carol King song lyric, "Doesn't anybody stay in one place any more?"
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