Well, this past Monday we held our cast and crew screening here at the Plaza Theater on Ponce de Leon Ave. Notice The Fountain is playing here. In the sitcom Seinfeld, George Costanza cried when he saw Ponce de Leon, a fictitious film that chronicled the hopeless tragedy of the title character's search for eternal life.
Adam P. used evite.com to send out invitations for this private screening. Our final evite tally reads: Yes-78, Maybe-7, No-6, Not Yet replied-23.
It was an uplifting showing with plenty of laughs and applause at the end. I hugged a lot of people. I only had to ask two people who I had met before for their names. Everyone looked good, some better than they had a year ago when I last saw them, some the same(I certainly did anyway.). I wasn't nervous before the screening because I had two poorly mixed rum n' cokes, but as soon as the credits rolled, the caterpillars in my stomach became butterflies and they didn't settle down until the after-party at Manuel's Tavern on North Ave. I'm serious. My stomach is a habitat for caterpillars. I'm serious.
I stood up in the back for the entire movie, and I only had to shift my weight twice, once from my left leg to my right and then from my right leg back to my left. I have a couple vivid memories that really stood out that night. The first is visual; the second, aural. Before the screening started, I went up into the projection booth where Jon S. and Alex O. were calibrating the digital projector. The movie was frozen on the title card, which is superimposed over a shot of a manhole cover(I think.). I peered through the little windows of the projection booth and saw the red letters of Blood Car on a movie screen for the first time. A movie screen. The same exact movie screen where I saw Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense years earlier and watched the dozen or so people in the theater stand up and start dancing like it was a Talking Heads concert. Unforgettable. Hugh B. was there. The exact same movie house and movie screen.
The next memory was the sound of laughing of a few certain people who will remain nameless, but whose laughs I could pick out of a lineup, detective. Their laughs make me laugh, though there was one laugh that was not present that I believe all the makers of Blood Car know was sorely missed. That laugh was in a different state.
I received two gifts at the Blood Car screening. Here is one. This is my family. There are no superlatives bright enough to describe them.
Chris B., second from right, is wearing a shirt that references this very blog, though the first letter is not quite discernible. It reads 'blutauto'.
The second was a CD of photos taken by Blake M., one of Blood Car's FX leaders and Capt. of the Blood Team. There was one particular photo that stood out.
It looks like it was taken in the mid-80s from an old 16mm camera with film that was just sitting in a box in someone's attic.
On a side note, I have not shaved since the morning of the screening.
