the 941

According to scientists, the film festival’s opening night gala at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art began in a single point of matter-energy. Over 13 billion years that point expanded, moving incredibly fast but making slow progress, growing steadily more complex until somewhere on the fringe we find a horde of gaily festooned party guests gibbering at each other amid stone male nudes, a ziggurat of cupcakes, and silent, skin-suited dancers with big-goggled eyes. Hits from the ‘70s and ‘80s fill the vast courtyard. Barely dressed women lounge on tables among various meats, and everything is streaked with lasers or flooded by spotlights.

I am myself a part of the film festival, both atomically and journalistically, so I drove uptown in my bedraggled Volvo. I approached the event warily from my non-valet parking spot a few miles away until finally, after about half an hour, I reached the grand edifice.

A magnificent fountain was flanked by two brand-new V12 Mercedes. Why the cars were inside the museum’s iron gates I couldn’t tell. A jazz trio played on the steps, the musicians shutting their eyes in diligence.

I was struck with the sudden certainty that I would not be able to get in. What did I have but for this little ticket? The woman at the gates must have been a sympathetic outsider because she quietly wrapped a band around my wrist and sent me along. I took a flute of champagne from the champagne display, where blue-lit smoke flowed out of dry-ice prisms, and ducked inside.

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