Phoenix Film Festival – in the thick of it!

It’s Monday and I am still recovering. Steve Briscoe and Uncle Mike flew back East today and things are slowly returning to normal here at home. So let me try to recap Staurday and Sunday, both of which were awesome days.

On Saturday, I did a live TV appearance on Channel 12 News, plugging my film as well as the festival. Great folks over at 12, which is Phoenix’s NBC affiliate.

After Channel 12, I raced up to Scottsdale to pick up Steve and we went over to the Festival VIP Breakfast, hosted by Borders in the Scottsdale 101 plaza. There we got to talk with some more of our fellow filmmakers, as well as a few of the famous faces that graced our Festival this year. Yvette Freeman from “ER” (who directed one of the Festival’s short films) and her husband were delightful to talk to. We saw Dylan Baker again for a short while – turns out he and Ken Dapper know each other for years. I’m looking forward to seeing him in Spider-Man 2.

I probably spent more time chatting with Michael Tolkin than with anyone else. For those who don’t know, Mr. Tolkin wrote Robert Altman’s The Player. We spent a lot of time talking not about that film, but about a film that he both wrote and directed back in 1991 called The Rapture, an “end times” drama starring Mimi Rogers and the just starting out David Duchovny. Personally, I think the film is incredibly gutsy and daring in how it handles highly controversial subject matter, and some of its visuals are among the most haunting I’ve seen. It’s been 10 years since I’ve seen it but there are shots and sequences that still stick with me to this day. So getting to speak with Michael Tolkin about it was a blast. We took a tangent with Duchnovny and ended up talking about “The X-Files” for a bit and that was pretty cool too. All in all I felt we really hit it off and I hope to have the opportunity to converse with this very intelligent man again.

We spent most of the rest of the day heavily promoting the film and passing out postcard after postcard. My team as usual did a great job of getting the word out – so much so that when our screening happened at 5:30, IT WAS A SELL-OUT CROWD. They were literally turning people away we were so packed. I wasn’t entirely thrilled about the picture quality of the projection, but the crowd was terrific. Among those in attendance were Andy Sinur, Brad Doan, and Bruce Hall of Rainbow Studios. They each contributed to pre-production and postproduction in important ways – and Brad in production as well, on location with us for 30 days – so it was great that they could come out for the show. Marcia Wade (“Bodyguard Bruce”) was there as well as some of our investors. And Dick and Ann Ragsdale, whom I had met on the El Charro shoot (they’re the parents of director Rich Ragsdale and producer Kevin Ragsdale), came out to show their support. And of course my family were all there too, watching the film for something like the 10th time. Most importantly, my wife and producer Laura was there, finally attending her first such event with the film. That was the best part!

The Q&A session after the screening was great and I fielded questions ranging from aesthetics to business to technical aspects. The crowd was very well informed, interested in the process of filmmaking, and engaged by the film on a visual level and by the story. I had a number of folks come up to me afterwards and express their appreciation of the film. You could feel the buzz building.

Later in the evening we attended the big Saturday night party out in the tent. Again, lots of praise for the film, lots of positive buzz. I got to raise a glass with Michael Tolkin and chat with him some more. We met many more interesting folks, including Brian A. Green (of “90210″ among other things), who is now a director as well as an actor and had the film Fish with a Bicycle in the Festival. What a cool guy to talk to, very relaxed and down to Earth – not what you might expect from someone who had fame and fortune so early in life. This is a guy who has his head on straight and is really smart about the business. Another person I’d like to talk with again in the future.

We left the Festival on Saturday night on cloud 9. Anything after that would be gravy. Even if 3 people showed up on Sunday, we had a great presence at the Festival and were getting the most we could out of it.

All right… I’ll be back later with the recap of Sunday… the gravy, baby.