CineVegas: Parties, indies and a few somebodies

The Cannes film festival has ball gowns and paparazzi. Sundance has Robert Redford. The Las Vegas film festival? CineVegas goes like this:

A few days ago, one movie director stepped out of his Jacuzzi just in time to show up for his film's Q&A wearing only a towel, a T-shirt and flip-flops.

On Thursday after midnight, an official CineVegas party went down at Sapphire strip club. If you haven't been to Sapphire, it's like a Sam's Club, but dark and stacked with topless strippers who poke you in the belly and look you right in the eye. ("Hello!")

The Sapphire party was less like a party than a bunch of dudes and a few women lounging by a bar in the back.

"These guys at the bar?" stripper Vanessa Fuller told me while pointing at CineVegas partiers. "They've been standing there three hours. Which is cool. We want them to have fun and hang out. But if you're going to hang out" -- and not spend money -- "just go to a bar."

FYI: Fuller still had a good night, and a good night brings $400 to $1,000, via $20 lap dances and $130 VIP dances that last 15 minutes. Also, she's pretty and she kept pinching my nipples during my interview. Just thought you should know all that.

The weirdest part of CineVegas so far (it ends tonight at the Palms) wasn't the red carpet where a random couple got married by a minister from A Little White Wedding Chapel, surrounded by male and female dancers from "Chippendales," "Thunder From Down Under," "Fantasy" and "Sin City Bad Girls."

No, the weirdest part came on Sunday, when actor Willem Dafoe showed up at club Rain at the Palms for an awards show, and told a few of us in the journalism pool this was his first visit ever to Vegas:

"Oh man, my head is buzzing," Dafoe said. He had a big smile on his face. His eyes looked glazed and crazed and confused and excited and wow and "What?"

We all thought: A celebrity who's never done Vegas? That's weird.

Dafoe came only to pick up a "Vanguard" lifetime achievement award for his work in "Platoon, "Mississippi Burning, "Shadow of the Vampire and "The Last Temptation of Christ."

I asked him if his trip to Vegas was the "Last Temptation of Willem Dafoe."

"No, no, that's not gonna happen this trip," he said, looking far less menacing in person than in his death-spiral films. "I'm just gonna do some things."

Hmm, "some things."

Right behind Dafoe, comedian Bobcat Goldthwait couldn't believe Dafoe was a first-timer.

"That is kinda bananas. I come here all the time. Mostly I come see Cook E. Jarr," the Vegas performer, Goldthwait said.

Oh, I should mention: CineVegas had a bunch of independent movies for people to see.

Film buzz was good this year. A first-time CineVegas-goer who wanted to remain anonymous for no good reason (hence I will call her Anonymous), saw 10 movies from Wednesday through Sunday and judged two of them "great," four of them "very good" and the rest "underwhelming." She loved the fest and was impressed.

"Every theater I went to was filled, even at 1 o'clock in the morning," she said.

But she did get tired of some of the pretentious Hollywood types. She saw the director in the towel and thought, "Huh?!" She was turned off by another director who complained at his Q&A that an audience member asked a two-part question.

"Typically, when people ask two-part questions, they preface it with: 'I'm going to ask a two-part question,' " the director griped (according to Anonymous).

"I'm over the 'I've just graduated from film school but now I'm an affected director' thing," Anonymous said.

Goldthwait -- who directed a movie called "World's Greatest Dad," starring Robin Williams, which screened on Sunday night -- said CineVegas is "more of a party atmosphere, but in a good way," compared to other film festivals.

Why? Because some CineVegas films already have found distributors, and other films are being self-distributed, unlike Sundance, where filmmakers are looking to sell their movies.

"Sundance is the getting accepted into college, and CineVegas is the graduation party from college. You see a lot of the same faces, but a lot of us are going, 'Whew,'" Goldthwait said.

"I get to meet other people who make indie films, and actually hang out, and it's less stressful and it's more fun. And it's more about the movies and less about people freaking out if they're gonna get a distributor or not," he said.

During Sunday night's awards, hundreds of filmgoers packed club Rain, drank free vodka, and lounged in leather chairs in the black-walled room, as plumes of pyrotechnic fireballs burst above them.

One director on stage said Sunday's awards were the first time he was sober since getting to town. Another director suggested sobriety wasn't in his cards.

"I haven't been sober since I got here," said director Doug Tirola of "All In -- The Poker Movie." "Every hangover I've got here has been worth it."

A lot of people who went to CineVegas were actors, directors and crew members who worked on the films. Many appeared either perfectly L.A. -- sleek clothes, coifed hair -- or perfectly New York -- expensive designer clothes meant to look authentically grungier and worn on less-skinny bodies.

The difference between East Coast and West Coast was a fun contrast to see, said Judith Hawking. She's a New York theater and film actress who co-stars in "Asylum Seekers."

"The New York vibe is like, 'How much can we learn? How much can we see? This is awesome. Let me see what I can take in,'" Hawking told me at a Rio afterparty for her film.

"The L.A. vibe seems to be a little more: 'I look good. You look good. But you don't look quite as good as I do. Let me see your badge to see if I should talk to you.'"

Hawking laughed about that, then told me this story: She is friendly with actor Sam Rockwell, who came for his film, "Moon." She saw Rockwell at a party, in a VIP section, and she tried to get past a red rope to hang out with him.

But a woman working the VIP area wouldn't let the actress jump the rope.

"Are you 'someone'?" the party woman asked the actress, who was stunned.

Just then, Rockwell saw Hawking standing there in bewilderment. He walked over and escorted her into his apparently very important area. Then Rockwell made a joke to Hawking that finely fit CineVegas, Las Vegas and the Hollywood wells:

"I too have been 'someone,'" Rockwell said, "and 'no one.'"

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.