Adventures in First Nightery

Kinda bittersweet, reading all these old posts. Almost like looking at someone else I really want to root for, but already know how he's going to turn out in the end. These were exciting days. Wednesday, July 19, 2006

It was last night, the first screening at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival of "Mars Needs Bibles!"

It opened (if you'll pardon the expression) for the feature "Creatures from the Pink Lagoon," and is that not the perfect title to be twinned with mine? I wish I'd thought of it. Although I'm sure I couldn't have done with it what was done by director Chris Diani, whose short film "Rabbit's Foot" (created in two days for the Seattle True Independent Film Festival's Weekend Film Challenge) is a little chunk of unalloyed funny.

As any dedicated director would be (and I was not), Chris was at the screening last night. He spoke to the audience, and was kind enough to give them my regards. And kinder still, he wrote me this morning (well, I read it this morning) to tell me that it went over quite well. He complimented me on my balloons. Which, if you've seen the short, makes sense, but perhaps sounds dirty if you haven't.

I've had scores of screenings locally for my shorts, and even for my sadly neglected feature. Enough, in fact, that I suspect I've gotten a little jaded about it. Frequently, I'm working on the movie right up until the disc is put into the projector (or however these things work, I still have a hand-cranked VCR), and don't have time or energy to get nervous. Whatever the reason, I tend to approach these things with a sense of sang-froid. My collaborators and loved ones tend to be more excited about it than I am. Which, at least to my bloated ego, is exactly the way it should be.

And yet, I was just bordering on frantic about this screening. Maybe because it's the first where I wasn't going to be present? No, that's not it, I missed the screening of "Lucky Numbers" at the Seguin festival. Although I was rather removed from that project, being as it was a "re-release" (after a lot of post-production work on my part) and could only be viewed by me as a partial success (due to the dissatisfaction of the original writer, who asked that her name be removed when I changed some elements). I'm a lot more attached to "Mars Needs Bibles!", that has to have something to do with it, sure. Maybe because it's at a big time film festival, and all the rest have been relatively small (no offense to those who have been kind enough to project my work, but you don't have the word "International" in your names, now, do you?). Maybe it's because I risked offending my audience even more than usual, and my punk-ass liberal guilt was nagging at me?

Whatever the reason, I had a hollow in the pit of my stomach all night. And Chris knew this (and honestly, I hardly pestered him at all about it), and let me know how it went. What a guy!

My east coast debut... damn. Shows again Saturday, if you hurry, you can still make it.