Death and the DIVA...

The Death of Theodore Graham will screen at the 2nd annual OpenLens Short Film & Video Festival this saturday at 8pm. The festival is happening at the Center for the Downtown Initiative For the Visual Arts (The DIVA) in beautiful Eugene, Oregon. You can go the OpenLens Website if you need more information. Celeste and I will both be there and we hope you will too, it should be fabulous.

Death Premiers on the Small Screen...

I thought I might share this with everybody because it's pretty cool. I signed up for one of those freepay promo sites for a free Video Ipod and I actually got one! Then I converted a copy of TDOTG (along with all of my other student films) to play on the thing. It's awesome. You should check out the FreeiPods site and get one for yourself. Also, if anyone has a video ipod (or is getting one) and wants an iPod compatible copy of the movie just let me know and I'll send it to you.
That's all.

The Triumph of the Film...

So I didn't become the next David Hasselhoff, more like his less talented brother Barney Hasselhoff. But that's not bad.

The Munich festival went great. By far the most impressive festival that we've been to. They treated all of the filmmakers with such regard and respect, it was amazing. When we landed they picked us up from the Airport in a brand new BMW that TALKED, took us to the Film Museum, gave us a giant cookie and our festival passes and then took us to the hotel (which had an awesome breakfast spread.) We spent the first day wandering around Munich with our new South African friend Gilli (another Director attending the festival) looking for the perfect place to have our first real German meal. After about an hour we found what we were looking for. It was good.

That poor cookie never stood a chance.

The quality of the other films was ridiculous. The production value and style of some of these works made us look like George Michael Bluth video taping himself using a broomstick as a lightsabre in his garage on Arrested Development. It was almost discouraging, but promising at the same time since the jury felt that our little movie belonged amongst these great films.

The schedule for the screenings worked perfect for us. We'd wake up super early every day, check out all the sites, and then cruise by the Film Museum to check out a few shorts at night. Here are some of the highlights:

It snowed the whole time, so Celeste started a Stinkerball Fight.

This is where Sauron lives.

Celeste and I took a train to Neuschwanstein to visit crazy King Ludwig. This isn't a camera trick. Everything was blue, it was that cold.

Celeste is apparently in a competition with my sisters to see who can become an old lady first.

I got excited because I thought Celeste said we were going to Castle Wolfenstein, not Neuschwanstein. It was still pretty neat, I guess.

When we went to the closing ceremony we were pretty relaxed. We usually have some shred of hope that we might win an award at one of these things, but this time we were sure we weren't going to hear our names. Good thing we were wrong. In the middle of all the action, there were our names on the big screen. Celeste and I were nominated for Best Screenplay, which was pretty fitting since Celeste was there representing the film as a writer. This was the first time that we were in the running for a prize that she could take credit for (well, half credit). We didn't win, but it was very exciting since we had no idea we were nominated until our names were on screen, and to be one of three nominees for best writing out of the 50 to 60 incredible films there was quite an honor. Something interesting, they played a clip from the film after they announced it's nomination and it actually got a decent response and I realized I had never been in a situation where a group of people (or even one person for that matter) watched a scene from the movie completely out of context, and the scene worked. That was pretty cool.

I can't express how much fun this Festival was. I actually don't really ever enjoy myself at these things, but this one was pretty fun. I only wish more people that worked on the film could have been there. Both screenings of the film sold out, and it was really interesting to see how an audience that consisted mainly of people who understook english as a second language reacted to the film. It was actually quite different that any other screening. People seemed to be laughing more at the subtleties of the performances and the awkwardness of the scenes than the dialogue or the physical comedy. Colin and Jon would have been proud.

After Munich, Celeste and I went to Paris, but who cares.

Death Goes to Munich (finally)

It's finally here. Tomorrow Celeste and I are off to Munich to attend the 25th Annual Munich International Festival of Film Schools or as they call it the INTERNATIONALES FESTIVAL DER FILMHOCHSCHULEN MÜNCHEN 2005. But before I talk more about the trip I have a treat for all the Teddy G supporters out there. I've been working on this for too long and I'm almost done putting the final touches on it but I thought I'd share it with everybody a little early (err... late, however you wanna look at it.) Celeste, Jon (Theodore himself) and I got together while we were in Vancouver for the Vancouver International Film Festival and shot a few photos for the official Death of Theodore Graham poster. My original plan was to make a bunch of these things and give them out to anybody who made a donation to Celeste's Munich Fund, but then I called Kinko's and it turns out that they would cost about $15 dollars each to print. No thanks. Instead, here it is for everybody to enjoy, print and copy at their leisure. I hope you like it. (If you click on it you can see the full size image and you can save it by right clicking on it.) I don't know whether to call it a work in progress or to call it done. I guess we'll see how long I'm unemployed when I get back from Europe.

As for that whole thing....

We leave tomorrow at 1:20 PM and land on Saturday at 10:something AM. I don't know exactly how that works, some sort of Donnie Darko space-time continuum thing. But I bought a portable dvd player with three extra batteries so I'm ready for anything.

So we'll be in Germany from Saturday until the next Sunday, then we're off to Paris for four riot filled days of Danger and Adventure. Hopefully those rowdy kids get word that I'm on my way so they can all practice falling down and flying through windows before I get there.

I'm not quite done packing yet, so I'm going to cut this a little short. I'm going to do my best to keep a journal of what happens during the trip, and if' it's interesting enough I'll post it here. We'll be back home on December 2nd, so check back around that time to hear all about how I became the next David Hasselhoff and changed the face of German filmmaking forever...