Good news, no news
Production and festival updates
EXT STRIP MALL PARKING LOT - DAY
Pam and her best friend Larry are walking towards a kosher vegetarian Punjabi restaurant. Pam reaches into her coat pocket, takes out her phone, and looks at it.
PAM: Oh, it’s Rocco. It still cracks me up that I get messages from an Italian film director named “Rocco.”
The bigger news first. We did not make SxSW or Sundance. It’s disappointing, sure. Also. Sundance had 17,435 applicants and accepted 150 films. We had a barely one percent chance of getting in based on numbers alone.
I can’t speak for the rest of the production team, but I was not emotionally invested in these festivals. Don’t get me wrong, it would have been beyond amazing to have our film make the cut. I’d have lost my damn mind.
But I didn’t expect to win because I never expected any of this to happen in the first place. My glass was overflowing that first day on the set so it’s not like these rejections pushed me down a well. It’s my first film ever and the team that made it thought it worth submitting to Sundance and SxSW. I’ll take it.
Status-wise, the film still isn’t officially out of post. That’s what Rocco called to talk about. The first two sound companies couldn’t take the work and the last round of edits were delayed. I’ve been sitting on my hands for a few months now, trying not to pester the production crew for news. I know it’s out of my hands, that they would get to it when they could do it right.
So I was psyched when Rocco told me there’s a sound house now, and he’s adjusting a few things with Tony (the composer); that next version I see will have credits and everything. That’s when I’ll be able to share it, when I’ll be able to have a private screening. I can’t wait to invite you to that.
We have a long list of festival applications on deck, this game is not over yet. I am holding out for Seattle; we made the film here, after all. I’ll be disappointed if we don’t make that. I remain hopeful that the short will act as a launch pad for other things. In the short term, I try to remember how much I learned over the past two years.
It’s just over a year since Producer Amy said to me, “You need to write something else. Now. While I’m shopping the feature script, people are going to ask what else you’ve done. What else have you got?” Now we have a film. That’s where I keep my focus — on the fact that a year ago, I sat down to write my first solo screenplay and now we have a film with a cast and an original soundtrack and locations and there’s a plane in it, an actual airplane, I know the plane is real because I touched it and talked with Ken, the pilot. That’s crazy fast. A little over a year from the time the writer (oh, wait, that’s me) sat down at the keyboard to an edited version I could watch start to finish and that the team could submit to festivals.
Good news, no news, that’s how I’m taking all of this. The festival rejections are no news, a bummer like not winning the lottery is a bummer. The good news is that post is back on track and the next cut I see will be the last one.
I still feel full of such promise about all of it.
So damn excited to see this with you!