Cinequest - Day 2 - Pulling a Bogdanovich

I woke up to a phone call this Friday morning from Dan Brune, my father's first cousin, who lives 'over the hill' near Santa Cruz with his wife Christy. There has long been a war between the East Coast Brunes and the West Coast Brunes, much like the oft-cited rivalry between hip-hop/rap artists from the opposing geographic coasts. What our feud has lacked in attention from the mainstream media outlets, it has made up for in violence. Dan and I have brokered a cease-fire and we will be setting up two-party talks after the BLOOD CAR WORLD PREMIERE TONIGHT AT 1030PM. The West Coast and the East Coast will hopefully reunite. I am looking forward to the talks.

Day 2 - Our first stop today was a filmmaker's luncheon treated by the festival director, Mike, and a group of other filmmakers with films in the festival. There were more people in our posse than other filmmakers combined, but I chalk that up to the other filmmakers not having arrived yet or excessive partying. We dined on raw oysters, shrimp, cheese bread, bruschetta, and those were just appetizers. And Cinequest treated. Now I doubt this will be a regular thing, but it was quite flattering be wined and dined...really just dined. Just imagine if you were someone like Martin Scorsese. I bet he hasn't paid for a meal in twenty years.

The second Blood Car wave arrived today, including Adam P., Hugh B., Jon and Amanda S., Chris A. Apparently, Chris Campbell arrived sometime late that night, but I have yet to see him in person. I know he didn't make it to the hot tub party later that night. The person wearing pants in the hot tub in the foreground is Chris A. the film's gaffer and co-producer.

But hours before clothes started coming off and the jacuzzi jets fired up, a group of us traveled up to San Francisco for an appearance on a pirate radio station called Pirate Cat Radio, 87.9. In the studio were Alex O., Jon S., Adam P., Katie R. and myself, mediated by none other than DJ Blurt, who looked a little ruddy from a recent sunburn, except for pale sunglasses-shaped area around his eyes. The radio station was above a warehouse in a two story non-descript building with one door and no name to speak of. The picture sort of embodies the clandestine feel of the place. This woman asked us for a password and we had agreed on the drive up if the question were ever posed, to say, "Submarine." The real password was 'nuclear submarine', but she cut us a break.

We walked right upstairs and met the host and sat down in the studio and started chatting before we went on air, when she asked us about our record. A chorus of 'uhs' followed and we were promptly ushered out of the radio station because we were not a New Orleans brass/guitar band dressed like a Commedia dell'Arte troupe.

Next door at a taqueria we waited for our guy. We had arrived a little too early. We ate some super tacos that could only be consumed with silverware. Call me old-fashioned, but I like tacos you can hold and, more importantly, control. DJ Blurt arrived and we went back upstairs to the radio station. They welcomed us in true flower child fashion. You can hear the podcast here. It's about an hour or so and pretty entertaining. I speak in a British accent for the first twenty minutes or so of the interview so don't be alarmed. Well, you can be alarmed about how bad the accent sounds. It didn't sound so bad at the time. Thanks to Tova, who set the interview up, and to DJ Blurt and his cohorts for giving us airtime.

Back in San Jose that evening, we split off into promotion teams armed with postcards, posters, and Blood Car keys. We spray painted a bunch of keys yellow and then splattered them with fake blood and tied key rings to them with our screening times. We tell people that one of the keys opens the Blood Car, which is languishing in inertness back in Atlanta, and if they come to the Atlanta Film Festival and bring their key and it opens the car, they win the Blood Car.

Adam and I went to see a film called Swedish Auto starring Lukas Haas and January Jones. It's about a Swedish car mechanic and his voyeuristic love of music. The director was present and answered questions after the film. There was a good My Morning Jacket song over the end credits and I liked Lukas Haas and the scenes with the violin player.

While we sat in the movie theater, Alex O. met Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers and Peter Bogdanovich of the garage that Orson Welles lived in for a few years. Unfortunately, Alex did not have a video camera or we would have taped Peter B. saying "Hello, I'm Peter Bogdanovich and I might have gone to see Blood Car if I wasn't leaving town tomorrow."

The after party was strangely a deja-vu of the one the night before, with a couple of notable exceptions: Free drink tickets, and about six of us sporting Blood Car t-shirts. People continue to tell us that they've heard of the film and that there is buzz about it. Tonight is the big night. Let's wait and see.

'Pulling a Bogdanovich' -- a film phrase in which a filmmaker who is riding a wave of critical and commercial success splits with his wife, (in the Bogdanovich case, Polly Platt, who went on to produce Bottle Rocket), and takes up with another woman (in his case, Cybill Shepherd). His career soon after takes a nose dive while the wife's conversely takes off.