Tromadance: The Utah Experience Part 3

An online diary of the journey to & from the Shpadoinkliest film festival!

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Now here’s the part where I once again appreciate the beauty of writing down things right after they happen. See, when you do that, you don’t forget what went on all day because you decided to write about it two months later!!! I truly don’t remember now. I think other than fliering, promoting on the street and waving at Troma fans, I ate lunch with Evie and.. damn what was his name? WHY DIDN’T I WRITE THIS DOWN EARLIER? Anyway, then nighttime came. I couldn’t go to Saltlake for the midnight screenings @ Brewvies because I wasn’t old enough. So I sat around like a loser hanging out with other under-aged, underprivileged children like myself. Then the peeps from Salt Lake came back late at night. Then Doug was drunk and sleeping for a long long time. At some point, some people decided they’d play with his body since he was almost catatonic and couldn’t be woken up. Tromadance stickers were plastered all over his body and a dildo was shoved in his mouth several times at some point.

Okay, so Lloyd Kaufman calls and I pick it up. I get immediately nervous because I am on the phone with Lloyd Kaufman and he wants to know when Doug is going to take us down to the Phat Tire to set up everything for the third and last film fest day that would begin tomorrow morning. I explained, in feined calmness, that Doug was out like a light and no one could resurrect him. However, we had been notified that the Phat Tire had changed our setup time from 10pm to 1am because of a private party taking place at that moment. Lloyd seemed to take that well and reminded me to let everyone know they’d have to go set up in a couple of hours.

This was not something I looked forward to. It ended up being only April, Rudy, and me (I knew April from Jedi Apprentice; she also lives in San Diego county) ended up going down the cold and icy road, stairs and street to the Phat Tire. There we began posting flyers up and decorating the place at a depressingly slow rate. About 2 hours later, everyone else showed up to help! What a relief. Well, that is, until people started complaining that we had put up the fliers too spaced apart and that we needed to move them all so they covered the entire walls. Ha! That criticism was fun to hear from people who had showed up 2 hours late to help! Rudy and the guy whose name I don’t remember put up the Film Threat banner; they were one of the official sponsors of the festival.

Later, I think it was around 5am (now January 17th), we trudged back up to the condo. My out-of-shape health condition was all too apparent while I panted in agony as I climbed the stairs further and further up into the tiny town that was already 7,000 feet above sea-level. Finally the Troma Condo appeared like a shining beacon of promising warmth and much needed rest. We found a nice spot on the floor in between the bathroom and the balcony to sleep. It was rather cozy. We slept for about 2 hours and then went back to the festival. The time had come!

Wait… Looking at what I wrote, I painted a pretty grim picture of the whole day. I assure you, I had no bad days at Tromadance. Even when I was tired, cold, or both, it always feels good to work for a cause. This cause being the TRUE spirit of independence in cinema and helping to offer the only FULLY FREE film festival and parties on Main Street.

So, as I was saying, I was very excited about my turn at the Tromadance Film Festival finally getting underway. I was also very nervous about how my movie would play. I knew I had never even intended this film to get this far. I had done it for practice. Purposefully choosing a rather silly concept, I had only hoped to get the film played at the school’s film festival. However, the Tromadance audience wouldn’t know that. Would they hate it and think it amateur? Would they even be coherent enough to notice my film was on the screen? Well it was screening during the daytime so everyone should be pretty sober still.

I would just have to wait and see…

More coming soon!

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