Yesterday, in honor of the 2009 SXSW Festival (which starts today and runs through March 22), we posted our tribute to some our favorite music documentaries. Inevitably, a few choice items slipped through the cracks, one of which was Festival Express, a 2003 film that documents a traveling road show that shot through Canada in 1970. The idea was to stage rock shows in four locations: Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, and unlucky Vancouver, which got scratched off the bill as a result of the city's Mayor and professional jackass Tom Campbell's fiery campaign against "hippies." But instead of subjecting the stars to the rigors of jet lag, the promoters, Ken Walker and Thor Eaton, decided to have them travel aboard a chartered train. This meant that the festival's core lineup, which included the Band, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and the Flying Burrito Brothers, were allowed to kick back and hang loose, spending the time between shows enjoying each other's company and the Canadian scenery as it sped past their windows. The promoters subscribed to the idea that a well cared-for musician is a happy musician and that happy musicians are good box office, so when it looked as if the contents of the train's liquor cupboard had been drained dry, this horrible development was treated as the code-red occasion that it clearly was. One of the movie's highlights is seeing the survivors' teary-eyed recollections of the moment when the train made an emergency pit stop at a liquor store to refuel. One gets the feeling that they were used to dealing with employers who would have handed them each a Diet Coke and told them to suck it up.

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When contemplating a subject for the “Vanishing Act” column, I often find myself wondering, “Why hasn’t this person worked in so long?” In the case of Michael Cimino, I did not ask this question. My query was more along the lines of, “How many incriminating photos of which top Hollywood executive blowing what particular kind of farm animal did this person have in order to keep working for so long after Heaven’s Gate?”

Indeed, Gate is such a storied, monumental flop in the annals of motion picture history, it’s some sort of credit to Cimino that it took him so long to vanish. This is particularly true when you consider a slate of aborted projects that makes Terry Gilliam look prolific and bankable by comparison. For instance, did you know that at one time, Cimino was actually hired to direct Footloose? Personally, I would like to see documentary footage of the meeting at which this decision was reached. I’d much rather see that than ever again sit through Desperate Hours or Year of the Dragon, two Cimino films that actually were made. (Quoth Footloose producer Craig Zadan: “Cimino wanted to make a darker movie. We wanted to make an entertainment.” And Kenny Loggins rejoiced.)

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