Marathon, man

INDIE – like so many ineffable, unquantifiable, and at times magical sensations – is what happens on the other side of a closed door. At least that's what crossed my mind, along with fond thoughts of Beard Papa cream puffs, while lining up at 2:30 a.m. at the entrance of the Matador/Beggars Group after-party's closed VIP/basement rec room at NYC club Scenic during the last week's CMJ Music Marathon 2005. Upstairs, cute, skimpily clad hipsters aggressively milled to unidentifiable grime as one sweat-drenched clubber after another tromped up the stairs, out of the VIP room, eyeballs rolling, tongue lolling, issuing disgusted warnings like, "You don't want to go down there."

Oh, those magic words. There's only one answer to that: Why, yes, I do! Tell me I can't do something – and Captain Picard and I are gonna make it so. So I slithered through when the door guy was sweeping up all the broken glass. Ah, "in" at last. And yes, it was so packed I think I swapped bodily fluids with at least a dozen strangers within minutes upon entering. I wedged my way to the other side of the hot box where so many appeared to be focused – to behold a bearded, long-haired good-looker in a lighted booth. I never thought coat check would be so popular.

"Coat check guy is hot!" shouted the tall dude in an ironic Hawaiian shirt beside me.

"It's Jesus," his friend answered.

"I'm a believer!" replied Magnum P.I.

Despite the great repartee going down in the thick of the crowd, I had to get out of there as quickly as possible. Like so many others, I had a totally awesome podcasting panel to attend the following morning.

I jest, of course. Like its Texas kin, South by Southwest, CMJ is all about parties and shows. Throughout the sparsely attended keynote speech by the legendary Reverend Run of Run-DMC, everyone, in their reptilian back-brain, was wondering when the next Arcade Fire secret show was gonna happen (Mercury Lounge, apparently, after Ambulance LTD).

Perhaps the shifting ground between indie and, um, nonindie, and the aboveground vaults by bands like Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie had something to do with the small turnouts. I may have been on shrooms, but I remember CMJ HQ being so much busier back in the late-'80s/early-'90s days of college radio. Still, healthier numbers of attendees turned up for "The Guerilla Girls' Guide to Surviving the Music Industry" and "All Mixed Up: The Great Mixtape Debate" (timely also because NYC's venerable Mondo Kim's music store was recently busted for mixtape sales, with employees arrested and the shop temporarily closed).

Sold-out shows abounded, but where was the wild-eyed excitement, apart from getting into the swiftly badge-capacity Mercury Lounge show for the loudly buzzing Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Twenty-five years along, CMJ felt fairly quiet in contrast to its influential pre-Internet heyday.

CMJ Networks CEO Bobby Haber didn't believe things had changed for ill. "The weather was our main competition," he told me, Monday morning quarterbacking and reminiscing about great shows by Devendra Banhart and !!! He said it was their best year ever, with 12,000 badges distributed, 1,050 bands performing, and 65 venues participating. "We've seen no drop-off in college radio attendance whatsoever. All of our numbers are up."

Run out of gas or not, the marathon was definitely more diverse than years past, I'd venture, with underground hip-hop represented by a small but strong pack including Blackalicious, APSCI, Lady Sovereign, Aesop Rock, Blueprint, a nd Atmosphere. Deerhoof won hearts at the petite Cake Shop; David Bowie dug out his Let's Dance summer ensemble for three songs with Arcade Fire at Rumsey Playfield (quiet but chatter-worthy Belle Orchestre opened). Dungen and Diamond Nights piled them in at Bowery Ballroom, leaving all us latecomers outside, wallowing in free hot dogs courtesy of Adult Swim. Ah, if only I were three or four, and I could catch Sub Pop's soiree with Wolf Parade, Fruit Bats, and Rogue Wave; XBXRX in their pink sailor suits; Blood on the Wall; Tom Vek; the Joggers; Troubled Hubble; and that evening with Conor Oberst's label, Team Love.

Instead, I headed out to Red Hook via the subway, skulked past some shadowy and sketchy projects to the Hook and a noise show where the small audience pressed and played a distortion-generating fiber art created for the recorder-wielding Lucky Dragons. Later, I hunkered down at the Kill Rock Stars/5RC showcase on all three floors of the Knitting Factory to see jumped-up and spazztastic Japanese band Limited Express, the purposeful The Planet The, a woodsy yet psyched Excepter, jovial and oh-so-Irish Sport Murphy, a crawling and knob-twirling the Robot Ate Me, and the ever-fab Gossip, unveiling hot, minimal disco.

Saturday meant settling down for a down-low daytime show at 169 Bar, in Chinatown, to see Mick Barr slay solo as Octis and Barr (yo, are those two related?)spit rhymes, play didger idoo with a power-downed AIDS Wolf, and make some noise with the Punks. And what better way to end a conference than to spend it, standing on chair, holding it down with the Hold Steady, reliving the glory days of childhood with '70s rock riffs and Minnesota Twins T's, amid the torn-flyered, air-conditioned, and pee-scented glory of CBGB's for what might be the last CMJ ever there. Lost their lease? "We're fighting it. Here, have a flier," the door guy said. Hmm, Sept. 23 featured Dead Men Walking (the Damned's Captain Sensible among the punk codgers) and Sept. 28, Helmet. Looked like someone had a new lease on life – which may be enough to bring out even Lauryn Hill, who was supposedly swanning around in glam disguise at Of Montreal's show earlier in the week. Maybe Miss Education's missed studio LP will someday grab some fizz off Canada's cool goofs?

Mike Mills doesn't suck And neither does his new film, Thumbsucker – I was amazed with the time it took to instill its characters with h uma nism and compassion and draw great performances out of stars like a hilarious New Age-damaged Keanu Reeves, frumpy mom Tilda Swinton, and newcomer lead Lou Pucci. Dude goes from finger-licking nerdy to meds-enhanced overachiever and back.

Appearing at a showing of Thumbsucker at Resfest 2005, the onetime aspiring pro skateboarder simply wanted to "create a little space f or people just to be, not treat their foibles and problems as failures but to look at their flaws as part of just being human and try to create a little humanistic message or a pro-vulnerability message."

Mills – who was born in Berkeley and lived in the Bay till he was four while his father, Paul, worked as the director at the Oakland Museum – could relate personally to the Pucci character, which, he told me, kept the film going for six years as he collected rejections from every film production company in North America (and encouragement from red-carpet types like Reeves). "This film started right after my mom passed away, and when I was adapting the book I quickly realized how much the relationship between Justin and Audrey replicated or echoed the relationship between me and my mom, and it became a very personal, cathartic thing," said the Cooper Union grad and ex-speechwriter for Tibor Kalman. "All of a sudden, art history and film history and formal movements seemed silly. A meta-layer wasn't as important. The biggest influence for me was Neil Young and his record Harvest, which was done to get to the most raw emotional place and leave any kind of slickness behind."

Music played a big role in the film, from the fact that Mills used songs to explain the film's moments to the actors and crew, to the instance when Air wrote a song for his film and, despite t he movie's delay, went ahead and included it on their last album. Inspired by Harold and Maude's Cat Stevens soundtrack, he had enlisted Elliott Smith to compose the score because "to me, Cat Stevens was Harold's inner voice in that movie, and Elliott was perfect as Justin [Pucci]'s inner voice." Smith's death a few weeks into editing left the production crew distraught, but his cover of Big Star's "Sixteen" made it into the film.

Now working on a documentary on the development of antidepressants in Japan and another feature (and, word has it, dating filmmaker and artist Miranda July), the 39-year-old Mills is moving away from his past in graphic design and videomaking – he designed album covers for, famously, Sonic Youth, the Beastie Boys, and Cibbo Matto and directed videos for Ornette Coleman, Frank Black, and the Blues Explosion. And he continues to recommend aspiring filmmakers go the indie route. "That's the good thing about film – it's really just a big pirate ship, and it's like saying, 'How do you become a good pirate?' Well, any fucking way that you want. Just find your way to do it. I would put a huge vote in for doing it yourself and not believing things made at home and made for cheap or things made on video and without movie stars aren't worth doing. That's a total contradiction, coming from someone who has a film with Keanu Reeves in it, you know. But that' s what I believe."

Thumbsucker, with Mike Mills in attendance, premieres at Resfest 2005, Wed/21, 8 p.m., Metreon, 101 Fourth St., SF. $10. Mills also gives the director keynote Thurs/22, 6 p.m., Palace of Fine Arts Theater, 3301 Lyon, SF. $10. "Two by Mike Mills" shorts program screens Fri/23, 4 p.m., at Palace of Fine Arts Theater. $10. Call (866) 468-3399 or go to www.resfest.com.

No sleep till Red Hook – or Budweiser. E-mail kimberly@sfbg.com.

Contact Kimberly Chun at kimberly@sfbg.com.