Day Six--Friday  Flashback 1984

Had to make a tough choice today--but since I slept in a bit, decided to miss "Lovers of the Arctic Circle" (a foreign film which I have since heard good things about) and instead went to see the "Adventures of Sebastian Cole" which was a pretty cute film set in the times of my childhood--the righteous old eighties.  Sebastian embarks on his adventures so he can live before he can write--just like Hemingway I suppose--and the eighties backdrop was for me most of what made this film kind of interesting.  Having grown up with all of the eighties John Hughes films, it was interesting to see a Molly-Ringwald free indie film reference that time and even those films as part of a subculture that we were not quite as aware of while it was going on.  While this was certainly not the strongest of the films I saw, it was sweet, and captured the times in a story unique enough to hold my interest.  Got the musical vibe going, reminded me of people I knew then etc.  Nostalgia...but as a study of what was going on as the world transitioned from the free-wheeling 70's to a much different kind of decade.  Next up--the panel about the actors role in indie films, which basically reminded me that all of us actors have the same problem of finding good roles. Stars like Alec Baldwin or Ally Sheedy are no exception, and though they have access to a larger quantity of better scripts, most still are not what they want to find, and the industry is no less forgiving of them in spite of all the work they have done.  The What Have You Done for Me Lately system is alive and kicking, but these folks are not sitting around feeling sorry for themselves, and are instead out there looking for solid opportunities.  Advice all actors should follow--no matter where they are in their careers.