This past weekend, at the 10th Annual Provincetown International Film Festival’s Awards Ceremony, Jane Lynch and Gael Garcia Bernal received awards for career achievement in acting and Quentin Tarantino was honored with the festival’s 2008 Filmmaker on the Edge Award. At a presentation in the non-air-conditioned auditorium of Provincetown High School (attendees received complimentary church lady hand fans), the celebrity guests received trophies in the shape of P-Town’s famous, phallic Pilgrim Monument Tower and spoke about their respective careers in a series of casual sit-down interviews and audience Q&As, during which Lynch revealed the status of the next Christopher Guest movie, Bernal got emotional for reasons that were suspected but not confirmed and Quentin Tarantino broke some news about his long-awaited (and much delayed) Dirty Dozen homage, Inglorious Bastards or Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France.

1. Just before receiving the Faith Hubley Memorial Award (named for the Academy Award winning animator who passed away in 2001), Jane Lynch was asked if she had any news about the next Christopher Guest improv all-starts project. The news was not good. According to Lynch, “It’s getting to be about the time we’d start talking about the next one,” but when she spoke with Guest recently, the actor/filmmaker/fake rock star revealed he has no current plans to create another ensemble comedy in the vein of Waiting for Guffman, Best In Show, A Mighty Wind or the 2006 disappointment, For Your Consideration. On the plus side, he may adapt Guffman as a Broadway show (unless he was just pulling Lynch’s leg with some of that trademark deadpan humor of his).

2. Gael Garcia Bernal is an attractive little bastard. That part isn’t news, of course, but it’s worth mentioning: in person, he’s the sweetest, tiniest Mexican you’ve ever seen, with lips and eyes like Julia Roberts and a sultry accent capable of seducing straights, gays and maybe even the occasional lesbian. While accepting his P-Town Festival award for Excellence in Acting, Bernal got surprisingly choked up...surprising, that is, until he mentioned something about how the honor made him think about all the exciting things in his future and how “one person in the room knows what I mean.” Then he went back to his seat and embraced a beautiful lady who looked an awful lot like Bernal’s current squeeze, actress Dolores Fonzi, who, according to internet speculation (and Screengrab’s deductive reasoning), is almost certainly preggers. Congrats, Gael!

3. And then there was Quentin. Let me start by saying QT often comes across (especially in Jane Hamsher’s Hollywood tell-all Killer Instinct) as a pompous, annoying ass, and after all the pop-culture-spouting protagonists and stylized violence spawned in the wake of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction (and after the underwhelming, unintentional self-parody of Death Proof), it’s easy to take the writer/director (and part-time actor) for granted. But seeing him in the flesh reminded me of an R.E.M. performance I witnessed at the all-day outdoor Austin City Limits music festival a few years ago. I haven’t bought a new R.E.M. album in years, it’s easy to mock Michael Stipe and I’d gotten out of the habit of thinking of the R.E.M.s as one of my favorite bands...that is, until they kicked my ass with a blow-your-face-off set of, like, a thousand songs I suddenly remembered I fucking loved. Same with Quentin: the man has given me far, far more enjoyment than grief over the years, and he’s a riot live...especially when being interviewed by fellow film geek raconteur John Waters, as he was on Saturday in P-Town.  As it turns out, Tarantino and Waters are buddies and I could have watched their odd couple bantering for hours. (Seriously, IFC: get these two a weekly show!) After chatting amiably about topics ranging from the best gifts QT ever received from his fans (short answer: pussy, but the Pez dispensers shaped like Jules and Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction were nice, too) to the directors’ shared love of torture porn as one of the few true remaining forms of exploitation cinema, Tarantino revealed that 24 hours previously, he’d really, actually, finally finished the screenplay for Inglorious Bastards and was hoping to complete the film in time for Cannes 2009...so stay tuned! 

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