This was it: the GRAND MASTERFUL SERIOUSLY COOL FESTIVAL PREMIERE OF THE BEST SHOW IN THE UNIVERSE, THE WAZOO SHOW! (It’s already been world-premiered twice now—there had to be some other way to demonstrate its significance…) It was the culmination of our trip, the results of all our “hard” work and the chance to show off how sweet we were to more people than local Minnesotans. I think it went fairly well. People were laughing, so it couldn’t have been too bad.
I wish I could say the same for a couple films this afternoon. Since we were here for the comedic portion of the festival, there were a few comedies playing this afternoon that we felt the urge to attend. We all had to waste an hour or two before heading to the theater, so Bob and I went on a walk and decided to peruse some of the goods in the Hollywood Hustler store. It was… educational.
Aside from all the videos, sex toys and t-shirts/hats/etc., they had some little stuffed animals. Well, technically, the little penis wasn’t an “animal,” but I imagine it would have looked good with a stuffed animal collection. I imagine the same could be said for the little anatomically correct stuffed dinosaurs. They had some anatomically correct action figures as well, but I figured it might be better to leave G. I. Joe and his hard-on on the shelf—young kids could poke their eyes out with that thing.
From there, we took a quick stroll through Beverly Hills, where we saw a lot of security warnings that warned of “armed security.” I’m not sure whether that meant they had little turret guns that would pop up like sprinklers on the lawn and blast your legs to shreds below your kneecaps, but I wasn’t willing to find out. We made it down one road (without stealing any celebrities’ newspapers), then turned back to the hotel and got back in time to clean up a bit before heading to the theater for a two-hour perusal of other clips that may have competed against ours for the Comedic Short award. After watching those little films this afternoon, it was fairly obvious that if any of them made the ballot, we’re in pretty good shape to win.
Honest to God, they were bad enough to not want to describe them in here. All I want to say is that the first one was an hour long, but I didn’t suffer too much because I was falling asleep through about half of it. There was one good part, but it wasn’t part of the movie. Before the screenings, the directors have the chance to get up and talk a little bit about their work—in this case, the guy told us that he wanted to use that clip to develop a series with HBO or a similar network, making it something like Tales From The Crypt (single stories, no plotline over the course of the season). I’ve decided that not only was it not funny enough for a TV exec to look at it twice, it wasn’t bad enough to be funny enough for a TV exec to look at it twice. Maybe the director’s dreams will be shattered, but the rest of us will sleep better because of it.
Once the suffering was over, we went back to the hotel to clean up again, only this time it was so we’d look really nice for the premier and show up in style with a grand entrance in a limousine. It was a pretty lush ride with nine people inside (us WaZoo! folks plus three guys who made Almelund). Sure, we weren’t allowed to stick our heads out of the sunroof and scream, “I’m king of the world!”, but it was still a pretty cool two-hour ride around the city.
Although it could have been cooler. I personally don’t drink, but I was still a tad pissed because we were told that the limo would be stocked with brandy, vodka and champagne. (Fortunately, there was pop and bottled water for people like me as well.) When we got inside, we saw the canters for the brandy and vodka… no champagne. We had to stop at a liquor store to buy our own. Even worse, we stopped at a fast-food restaurant to get some dinner and the chauffeur wouldn’t let us bring any food inside the limo. We had to eat as fast as we could, then jump back inside to preserve as much of our time as possible. (I don’t like wasting food, but I don’t like wasting time, either—the driver cost me a lot of patience and a fairly large quantity of french fries.) Naturally, we took a chunk of that irritation out of the driver’s tip. Jerk…
So we arrived at the premier in style and had a decent crowd waiting for us around the theater. I’m not sure how many were family and friends and how many were just people at the festival, but why spoil the results? There were more than seven people inside, so the turnout was a lot better than some of those afternoon shows. Once the film started rolling, it was even better because people weren’t getting up and leaving in the middle of it.
Just to fill you in on a slightly related story, I went through a neuropsychological exam a couple years back and it proved yet again that I’m a pretty good actor. After talking with the psychologist for a while, she came to the determination that I have a “degree of grandiosity” and “a reluctance to admit personal short-comings and the possibility of inflated self esteem.” When I first read that report, I was feeling really depressed until I was walking to my car after a soccer game—we won the game and I didn’t suck, but I kept brooding about the times when I messed up. That’s when I realized that regardless of that previous analysis, I’m probably my biggest critic.
This is worth mentioning because in the festival cut we played, the first sketch is “Poultry-Geist,” a spoof of Poltergeist that involves chickens instead of regular ghosts. My job as the father… was to scream. A lot. Like a little girl. Whenever I watch it, I keep thinking my performance is so-so, but after the screening was over, there were a bunch of people who thought that sketch was the best one. Maybe if I scream for the next psychologist who comes to visit, she’ll realize I’m a lot more grounded than previously suspected…
Anyway, it went over pretty well: there were a bunch of people in the theater, they were laughing in the right places and they seemed to have enjoyed it afterwards. (Almelund turned out to be a pretty good movie as well—the guys described it as “a musical about Bigfoot,” though I don’t think they got as positive a response as ours. Mwa ha ha ha!
I was feeling good afterwards, though Tom from the U.K. was playing at the Whisky A Go Go shortly after our screening was over. We all stuck around to talk to people afterwards, get some pictures, stuff like that, but when it was over, we drove over to the club really quick. And we missed Tom’s set by about two minutes. Shit.
We stayed there until closing, then moved on to the Red River Bar, which was a couple blocks away from the hotel. During the remainder of the evening, I found out that Tom had been approached by a promoter from Epic Records after his set. One of the guys (whose name I’ve forgotten) had a birthday on the 4th, so one of his friends was checking out his watch and we sang “Happy Birthday” about four minutes after midnight. (Of course, that meant it was just past 2:00 in Minnesota, but better too late than too soon in this case…)
There was probably more that went on today, but it’s approaching 4:30am and I’ve got some sleeping to do before breakfast at 10:00 (especially since this’ll be the last day of our visit and the last time I’ll see these guys for a while). When reflecting on the whole trip, I think it was a blast. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but I had a lot of fun in all the right places and have a bunch of great experiences to look back on when I head back home. And Minnesota will remain home. This was a wonderful place to visit, but it’d be way too hectic and fast-paced for me to live here. Plus I’d eventually have to start making my own meals instead of eating out all the time and that just wouldn’t be cool.
