Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon chat about all things Loverboy with indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez (Photos: STV)

If you have never been to the Hamptons, I presume it is not an uncommon reaction to feel as though you are totally lost about three-quarters of the way there. Unless you are tucked into on of those Hampton Jitney buses with some veteran driver, or you have some dashboard GPS guiding your way (I somehow even doubt that would be enough), count on a few miles of stop-and-go traffic and doing a lot of neck-bending for directional signs that just are not there.

The one sign that IS there, of course (and thank God), at the furthest western edge of the Hamptons, is the one demarcating the 13th annual Hamptons International Film Festival. That's where The Reeler spent a rainy Saturday checking out the community and its event that draws who-knows-how-many thousands of filmgoers to these green, affluent climes.

The bottom line: You need more than six hours to really "get" this place. But that does not mean I returned empty handed. After all, I got in for a glimpse of the festival's Centerpiece conversation with Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, the formidable married duo who brought their starring/directing/producing collaboration, Loverboy, to the Hamptons last week. I think at 29, I may have been the youngest attendee at Guild Hall, but indieWIRE's own Eugene Hernandez made us all feel young as he energetically led the chat onstage.

Bacon, whose insights into working with Clint Eastwood on Mystic River demonstrated some of the influence behind his own directorial style, told the audience he knew he would direct Loverboy almost immediately. "Kyra read it and gave it me," Bacon said, referring to Victoria Redel's source novel about the times and travails of a possessive mother. "I read it, and I think that if you read a piece of material and start to think filmically, you start to see the shots and hear the music and think about the casting and think about developing the screenplay, then in a way, it's telling you that maybe it's something you should direct, as opposed to just something you're going to act in or produce or whatever. So I immediately just had a lot of ideas for it."

Meanwhile, Sedgwick reviewed the nuts and bolts of co-producing her second film in as many years. "As a producer, my job is to say, 'I'm around a lot' and to hire the right people for the job," Sedgwick said. "And I think that when you're acting in something, you can't be as hands-on a producer as you would be if you weren't acting in it. It's not like you're there every day with your producing hat on. I was more so on Loverboy and more so on Cavedweller than I was the first time I produced. Basically, I found the material, I was involved a lot in the rewrites and a lot in the casting, and then in the cutting process and looking at dailies and looking at notes and stuff like that. But a lot of it is letting go of that producer hat ... and not stressing so much about making the day. It's hard to be acting and then stressing about that."

(L-R) Bob Balaban, Kathy Russo and Roy Scheider gather to read and remember Spalding Gray. (Not pictured: Huge bowls of peanuts and cases of cold beer)

I cut out of the theater and redirected myself down Main Street, where Bob Balaban, Roy Scheider and others joined Spalding Gray's widow Kathy Russo at Bookhampton for a reading from Gray's unfinished last work, Life Interrupted. Gray, a Sag Harbor resident and quintessentially New York figure, committed suicide last January, leaving behind a rough outline and several chunks of a monologue that Russo helped edit into shape this year. "When we realized there were only 50 pages of monologues," Russo said, "We asked Francine Prose to write the intro and asked people to contribute what they wrote for the memorial. That was how that came about. So this book is really a labor of love."

As such, those on hand toasted to Gray's memory with bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale while snacking on peanuts in the shell. "It was Spalding's favorite," Russo told the crowd before the reading, adding later that plans are in the works for a Spalding Gray Festival next June in New York, Los Angeles and London. Next fall will see Gray's unfinished monologue hit the off-Broadway stage, and of course, Steven Soderbergh is developing his Gray documentary for HDNet to release in 2007.

Speaking of Sag Harbor, The Reeler crashed the preview screening of the Hamptons' closing-night film, The Weather Man, at the pleasant, old-timey Sag Harbor Cinema. You have seen all the ads for this flick: Nicolas Cage, all hair plugs and capped teeth, plays the luckless title character whose life unravels amid family dysfunction and various other existential crises. The Weather Man brings to mind the phenomenon of the "interesting" film: Not so good, not so bad, but rather operating on a level that butts genuinely funny moments up against genuinely grave moments (Michael Caine's rumination on "this shit life" somehow emerges as one of the year's unlikelier uplifting monologues--I think) while overworking to defy a "dark comedy" label that Paramount probably wanted nothing to with.

Out of The Weather Man and into the weather: Indoor umbrellas at the Independents Ball

Of course, it would be too easy to ascribe The Weather Man's inconsistency to a meddlesome studio, but this quality also arouses a more fundamental question that carries over from the last frame: What is a happy ending? Am I giving too much away to ask how The Weather Man leaves you wanting more and less of the same things for its characters, even as (at face value, anyway) everybody pretty much gets what they want? It is so weird--or maybe just uneven. You tell me.

Perhaps I should have asked Hope Davis, herself a Sag Harbor resident who introduced the film, walked home to put her kids to bed, and returned for a post-screening discussion. Invoking Davis' other Hamptons film, The Matador, an audience member asked how she balances her busy, blossoming career with family life. Davis' answer was more than cryptic. "It's very complicated. Luckily, my kids are still little, so when I work, they come with me and they travel with me. But soon, they're not going to be interested in doing that, so this may be it for me. I don't know."

She shrugged and followed with about three or four seconds of awkward silence that pierced my heart too sharply for me to conjure a follow-up. So I took my devastation and my misty eyes down the street to the Independents Ball, where the pouring rain invaded the covered patio and former NYC PR maven Seth Carmichael reminded us how much we miss him with his tireless exhibition of stunning dance moves. Insiders traded buzz about some of the fest's biggest titles, the most oft-cited of which was probably Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight. But that is about all I can summon from the event. What am I forgetting? Am I supposed to remember more? Jesus--just be glad I remembered how to get back to the city.