So what started out as a typical event forcing me to get out of bed, get dressed, and get in my car just in hopes of selling a few copies of Rebel Beat and the prospect of meeting a director I greatly admire ended up in an adventure that climaxed with a drunken argument over this:

Is it still ironic?

This adventure started with an invitation from indie directing goddess Allison Anders (Mi vida loca, Grace of My Heart, Gas, Food, Lodging) to show up and sell copies of my DVD at her "Don't Knock the Rock Film Festival" during a screening day dedicated to rockabilly.

The prospect of meeting Allison Anders was enough to convince me to take the over-the-counter sedatives needed to battle parking in Los Angeles.  But today's event had the added lure of guitarist Danny B. Harvey and his roommate steel guitar designer James Trussart, who Allison had so cleverly booked to host a workshop before the movies rolled:

Hot rock sandwich: Left to right: James Trussart, Allison Anders, Danny B. Harvey.

Plus, the screenings were being held at The Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax:
This theater is so unique that I feel I should take a few moments here in my blog to give it its props.

The Silent Movie Theater was built in the 1940s as a space dedicated to silent films.  It's had a strange and somewhat troubled past (which includes an onsite murder), but seems to have a magical ability to lure passionate devotees into taking responsibility for the place, and it's survived LA's cruel disregard for its own history all these years.

Its latest owners have only had the place about a year.  Their loving management started with an upgrade that included installing cutting edge screening equipment and lux bits like cushy couch seating for the front three rows.  But they kept the large, lush black and white prints of silent movie stars, some of which can be seen on the theater's exterior in its movie poster cases.

Inside, they've hit that great indie note of quirky charm and a take-it-or-leave-it attitude:


Here for example is their candy counter, stocked with exotic cupcakes from Crumb Bakery:


Here's their adorable Candy Girl nicely sporting her authentic vintage 70s frock:


And here's her customer, dolling out his own popcorn butter.  Said Candy Girl to her customer: "If you want butter, you're gonna have to do it yourself" (no idea if that's Silent Movie Theater hip protocol or just how Candy Girl rolls)

But behind the theater's comely trimmings is its most beautiful upgrade: putting well-known LA film addict Hadrian Belove (co-founder of the famous Cinefile video store) in charge of its programming.

What was once a theater that only screened movies a few times a month is now a full-throttle film lover's haven, thanks to Belove's aggressive slate of films screening every night of the week.  Belove's strange taste offers LA things like freakish mashups (pairing "Home Alone" with "The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane" for a night of movies about butch kids) to retrospectives of foreign directors that include films you can't even rent in LA.

Scott Foundas put it well in his LA Weekly article here where he writes about Belove's idea to offer a $25 pass that gets you into any Silent Movie Theater screening for a month: Belove’s goal is to make Cinefamily seem less like a conventional cinema — even a conventional revival cinema — and more like one of the Parisian "cine-clubs" of the 1950s and ’60s, where the young film enthusiasts who would eventually comprise the French New Wave came together to bask in their shared love of movies. "Think of it," [Belove] says, "as a gym membership for the mind.”

Cine-tastic Hadrian Belove.

So even just a visit to the Silent Movie Theater is worth finding parking.  But today's event includes the chance to meet Allison Anders and enjoy a guitar workshop with Danny B. Harvey and James Trussart.

Danny B. Harvey happily fingers a James Trussart guitar

Danny B. Harvey lives in Los Angeles, but I first met him in Austin, Texas while trying to pull off an underground screening for "Rebel Beat" during the 2007 SXSW film festival.  Danny was playing with Lynda Kay as The Lonesome Spurs at the Rockabilly Magazine showcase while I was trying to screen my film on a beat up old TV plugged in next to the venue's upstairs bar.  Go here to check out my pix from that trip on photobucket (use the slide show option on the upper left to go through them quickly) or watch my silly slide show on YouTube here.

Danny B. Harvey is a real Texan by birth, but having done stints in New York, London and LA, he is now a mix of metrosexual alcoholic rock musician scenester stuffed into a goofy oversized frame genetically selected for wrangling livestock.  The smile you see in that picture above is vintage Danny B. Harvey.  He's got the charm of a musician who possesses both the brute strength and happy-go-lucky personality to survive as a working musician.  He's been playing for 30 years, having toured with Brian Setzer and Nancy Sinatra.  He was once married to director Katt Shea (he picked her up at the premier of her film Poison Ivy) and produced Wanda Jackson's 2005 "I Remember Elvis" CD.

He has some irksome qualities, but there's two things you can say about Danny B. Harvey: he kills on the guitar, and if you follow him around while he's drinking you're bound to have an interesting night .  But more on that later.

I first met guitar maker James Trussart a few months ago at the Ronnie Mac Barndance.  Well I sort of met James.  I shook his hand, learned he was from France, thought about chatting him up in French, thought better of it, then watched him disappear in a cloud of smoke to a dark corner of the El Cid patio.  James spent the rest of the night chain smoking and furiously arguing with someone on his cell phone, a French diversion I found impossibly annoying, mysterious and attractive.

James and Danny are roommates, and deliciously opposite.  Where Danny tends to don the costumed style of an American dandy, James pulls off the casual chic of a European artist (the inspiration behind all metrosexuals).  For example, before starting his workshop James changed from the shirt he wore to lug his guitars into the theater to a shirt that, to me, looked exactly the same.  Only, as James explained, his clean shirt was from Nashville and had a tear that came with a story about being attacked by yard dogs.  Then he topped it all off with lovely silver bracelets.  You can't put your finger on what's cool about James' look.  Because James has that je ne sais quois.

And while Danny sports the buckish genes of a born and bread Texan, James is a true Frenchmen who, as we know, are all descended from elves and thus possess both their efficient, graceful figures and their snotty arrogance.  Case in point, during his workshop, someone asked James if he was willing to design a guitar to a customer's specifications.  James replied: "Well, you could tell me what it is you want, you could tell me exactly how you want it to look, how you want it to sound, your idea for the color, a picture you might want me to put on the neck or on the body.  But of course I wouldn't do it."

Roommates Danny and James made quite a team for their workshop.  First Danny played tunes with a dizzying variety of styles on a James Trussart guitar, then James took a seat and talked about what inspired him to design guitars coveted by such legends as Rich Robinson, Joe Perry, Iggy Pop, Sheryl Crow, and Paul Simon.



James, his guitars, and his Nashville shirt.

Then on to the movies!  Allison Anders programmed two shorts and the feature-length rockabilly documentary from Canada, "Rockabilly 514" by Montreal director Patricia Chica:

Patricia Chica from Montreal...French Canadians are half French...and thus half elven...if you get my drift.

"Rockabilly 514" was fine, but was more about lifestyles than music, following six stories of Montreal rockabillies (514 is Montreal's area code).  Although it was kind of funny that the film seemed to say there is no rockabilly scene in Montreal: one of its characters spent all his time touring the U.S. and another one eventually just packed up her bags and moved here!

The best part of the movie was the storyline following a good-looking young couple running Montreal's Blue Light Burlesque troop (here's their website...which is in French of course!).  Sexy!  Their story is cute, and makes the movie at least worth a rental.

But the best Canadian inspiration of the day was this chick:

Melissa James, Vancouver director of the short "Shake Rattle & Roll", here showing off her gorgeous tattoo from Austin, Texas.

Melissa made the mistake of saying loudly enough for me to hear: "I'm from out of town and have no idea what to do tonight!"  So I wrangled poor Melissa, her boyfriend, and Danny B. Harvey into a series of interesting adventures.