MOI magazine
The story that you’re about to read is based in truth. I’ll admit that some of the memories are a bit hazy, but I’m pretty
sure that they all happened. That said they, can all be denied.
Thursday, 21 April 2016 11:00am. At MSY we wait to board our flight to Dallas on our way to the USA Film Festival.
PEOPLE, a film shot in New Orleans, will have its world premiere. With me are the Director and writer along with one of
the actors and one of the producers.
At the gate we mark our territory and take a large corner of the waiting area as our own. Eric Sella, one of the producers,
leaves us as Shane McGoey tells us about the new trailer he’s working on. In this trailer his intention is to feature all the
film festivals that have rejected the film. Next to him is Margot Bienvenu, one of the actors in the film, and the two of
them are laughing about the rejection letters that the film has received so far.
When Eric returns he has a cocktail in his hand, “Who cares what they think?”, says Eric as he takes a sip from his
cocktail and sits down. This establishes the attitude of the rest of the trip. None of this matters.
Boarding the flight the crew pushes to the back of the plane, the traditional place on the school bus for all the bad
kids. We take our seats. Eric tries to push Shane’s buttons by insulting the editing in the film, but Shane pays him little
attention while he scrolls through his Twitter feed. Currently there is a Twitter war happening with another film screening
at the same time with a similar name. That film is screening at a rival film fest that some how is taking place at the same
location as the USA Film Festival. I don’t know if I ever really understood how that happened.
Sitting next with us now is an outsider. A very large man, strangely wearing a long overcoat/raincoat, he doesn’t say much
but he does grunt a lot. He gets a few side-glances from us but we don’t say anything about him. The doors shut and we
assume that we’re ready to take off but then there’s an announcement asking for one of the passengers. It turns out it’s the
raincoat man that they are looking for. Eric’s badgering stops as we watch them open the door to the aircraft and escort
the man off the plane. We never see him again.
Eric returns to pestering Shane and in the middle of Eric’s badgering Shane stands up with an announcement to the
passengers of flight 2308, “Prince is dead!”. You can hear grumblings among the passengers as Shane repeats the
statement. One of the flight attendants walks over, “Excuse me”, she asks. “They just found his body at his house, he’s
dead”. Looking around it seemed like everyone is on their phones fact checking his statement. Shane goes back to his
phone reading more then looks back to the flight attendant. “Never mind, they just found a body at his home, sorry about
that”. Shane sits and the flight attendant gives him a dirty look. It’s not until we land that we find out that Shane was
right. Prince was dead.
Upon landing we’re off to our hotel in downtown Dallas. There are very little people walking the streets of downtown
Dallas, but our Uber driver assures us that come 5 o’clock the streets will be crowded. I never found this to be true. The
downtown Dallas area seemed like an empty apocalyptic city, the remaining population of a “Left Behind” scenario.
Eric stays at a different hotel than the rest of us. We all take some time to get ready because in a few hours we’re going
to see a movie called Little Men. Shane want’s to see this because it has Alfred Molina in it, and he’s a big fan of his, I’m
not sure anyone else cared but off we went. Eric’s hotel is across from the theater where the film is screening. We meet
up with him and have a few cocktails before walking over to the theater.
People in Dallas
At this point Eric tells me his basic philosophy in life. Push the boundaries as much as you can, then push them a little bit
more.
Going into the film we brought in a bunch of wine to watch the film. Before the movie screened the festival organizers
played a tribute video of Alfred Molina’s work. It felt sort of surreal to me. It was as if I was in a movie and in the movie
they played a tribute of an actors work. What I mean by that is that it felt over the top and a bit outrageous. After the
screening of the tribute Molina stands and is very gracious. Even that added to the ridiculousness of it all.
by Renso Amariz
At this moment I will give you my review of Little Men, the wine didn’t help.