Quendrith Johnson

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

What most people will remember from last night, when Penny Marshall was handed the Cinema Icon as Honorary Chairperson of the Hollywood Film Festival, is Marshall’s shoe comment regarding women: “You can’t direct in high heels.” And this opening night was kind of like that, a swag bag of unforgettable lines. Not just from Penny Marshall, who’s bona fides as the first $100 M female director for Tom Hanks breakout film BIG are indisputable, but also from the unlikely source of Bai Ling, who once starred in ill-fated cult classic The Crow with Brandon Lee. When asked “What do you think of the Presidential Election, what Donald Trump is saying?.” Ling first leans in with a bemused look topping a barely-there postage style red bandeau over a literal Hollywood sign miniskirt held together with two pins. “Who is that?” When you repeat “Donald Trump!” 

She pulls an adorable movie-star pose and holds forth with “He is very passionate, like Martin Luther King… but I don’t know his philosophy.” While she is talking the shooter for Penthouse TV videobombs my interview, literally capturing the moment paparazzi-style, while catching a strand of hair in his haste. “You should sell that to TMZ,” he whispers afterward. “You just pulled my hair.” “You walked through my shot earlier,” he hisses back.

Well, Filmfestivals is a much more credible source, so you heard it here first: Bai Ling actually compared The Donald to the venerable Martin Luther King, Jr., in all seriousness while pitching her new film “The Key,” now showing at The Hollywood Film Festival at the Arclight on Sunset Blvd. in Downtown Los Angeles.

Next David Arquette is a runner, slips by on the red carpet, Peter Bogdanovich is a no show, and Penny Marshall, surrounded by a posse of friends, powers through to Theater 9 upstairs where she will receive the well-deserved award.

It’s one of those memorable Opening Nights in Hollywood, and the crowd surrounding the red carpet buzzes with a instant public opinion poll on Penny Marshall’s rare outing. “She’s in workout clothes!” “Is she wearing… sweatpants?!” A security guard waves away a quick mass of folks who try to tag along upstairs. “She’s already had one guy following her around. No photos,” he squeals to an adoring clutch of fans, including fan-journalists.

Most on the red carpet are decked in the usual pneumatic-cleavage fueled body-hugging sheaths with nosebleed heels. Some of the shoes are truly remarkable, harking back to the days of foot-binding, so our Honorary Chairperson’s comments are actually spot on. “All she talked about was heels, seriously,” a couple banter back and forth after The Cinema Icon has collected her award in record time, in a speech so short it would make the Oscar Producers proud. Then Penny, still surrounded by her posse of protective friends, takes a seat and stays through a short film about a rock musician whose life is changed by babysitting his brother’s little girl. Then she leaves during the credits on this double-bill, mid screening, in a move that is so Hollywood it is elegant. A few years ago, at the Writer’s Guild Awards, her brother Garry Marshall had warned me in advance about his director/producer sister, “She likes to sit home,” he sighed, “she should get out more.”

Opening Night at the 19th Annual Hollywood Film Festival held at the Arclight was one of those super rare occasions, and here was Penny Marshall showing up in support of women filmmakers, for women who want to direct, from the woman who cracked the money ceiling on the $100 M Boy’s Club back in 1988, with nothing to apologize for in her very director-y outfit of loose fitting check over comfy pants with a soda in hand.

Visit The Hollywood Film Festival for showtimes and tickets, and more exciting developments as they announce the films that will win this year.