Screening our movies - "how did it go?"

I will do my best to remember, but honestly my memory feels spotty, and I feel like I'm trying to remember a dream now that I've woken up. Here, to the best of my memory, is an accounting of how the screening went...

I got in town a few days early. The first few days back in New York I slept on couches, stayed out late and got up early, and fought off a cold; I spent my first night in New York looking in vain for a cellphone charger. I went to see Jace in "Heartbeat of Baghdad" at the Flea. It thought it was great. I ran into my friend Kaki on the street. New York is still everything I always thought it was. At one point, on accident, I ran into Sam and Bryan on one block. Bryan came to town from Toronto with his girlfriend Janice, and showed his movie "A Quarter-Life Love." This was a very good weekend even before it got started.

The days before the screening Sam and I cold-called agencies and production companies. It was a good thing to do, since everything else was ready to go. But still, it's a terrible way to spend a day... We sent out emails and faxes of our press release and our press kit. All of this led to exactly one person showing up -- who we already knew. But then, maybe we are out of touch thinking that the film industry types would be interested in our work. Or maybe someone else is out of touch...

Regardless, we stuck to our plan and sent out our emails (and our spam emails) and called everyone we knew for the fifth time.

And then... we didn't know what to do. Honestly, every other screening we have done we have been struggling up to the last minute to finish the films. This time we had our shit together. We had made the best movies we knew how. We put months into it, and we didn't lose focus for a moment. Before the screening even happened, I was proud of us. I was proud of Sam and Jill and Justina and Jace and Bryan, and Dom and Pete and everyone else who followed through and helped finish these movies.

My big job the day before was to get red carpet. This I found in Chinatown.

Before the screening we had friends and family helping us set up. Lexi and Kate were our hot ushers, handing out programs, making signs and in general being wonderful. Sam, Bryan and Dom did the sound and picture check. Jill and I set up a table with handouts and things. And we practiced our speech, which was a very difficult thing. Jill was on fire by the way. She looked great and couldn't have been happier. Before people started walking in we took some pictures on the red carpet.

I was so happy to see the people who came: like Ian Cohen, Ishai Setton, Mark Arywitz, Barbara Malmet, Riley Gallagher, and far too many more to mention. Lily's mom, aunt, uncle and cousin Beth came. My parents were there. Remnants of the NYU hockey team showed. People I didn't know at all, reached through NYU or some other mysterious means, came out of the woodwork. The actors and their friends piled in, and before we knew it we had a completely full 300 seat theatre, and it was time to give our speech.

After that it's a little bit of a blur.

And then after the movies we hung around a little and talked to people from the cast of The Wire, who came to check out what we were up to. Then we went to a bar around the corner and stayed there until it closed down on a Sunday night. Then, I think the few people left (Sam, Jace, Kate, other people, me I suppose) went to the Blind TIger, which amazingly was still open. And then we stayed there for awhile. I just didn't want the night to end at all.

The next morning I woke up early in my parents hotel in midtown, and stayed up all day, continuing my new philosophy in New York of waking up early to beat my hangover. It was a beautiful, cold, New York day. The kind that makes you realize where you stand, what matters to you.

Today's it's raining in Burbank. My life has not changed drastically, as I imagined it might on occasion. But things are looking good. I recently got a job out here working as a Post-Production Coordinator for "The Great New Wonderful." So I'm working on that through Christmas. And I'm sending "How I Got Lost" off to festivals...

And that is how I got lost and where it left me.