The St. Louis Rams, as silly as that sounds, have won the Super Bowl and New Hampshire looms ever-closer for our presidential candidates. All of us in the “What I Like About You” gang are back in Austin as I write, our Slamdance 2000 experience now an intense, if already receding memory. It was really a tale of two festivals; the first part of the week spent gearing up for our party and the World Premiere of the film, the second half spent listening for feedback as well as meeting and greeting as many filmmakers as we could. And then it was our last night in Park City. Some of our group took a dip in the hot-tub; one last taste of luxury before the ugly intrusion of the real world. Others spent a quiet evening of dinner and drinks on a Main Street with which we’d all become way too familiar. Still others, myself included, headed up into the mountains on a wildly exhilerating snow-tubing excursion. Screaming our lungs out on about a dozen bone-chilling rides down the side of a mountain on an inner tube seemed like the perfect cathartic way to end the trip. We didn’t hit the homerun we’d hoped for, in that we didn’t ink a huge multi-picture deal. We did, however, hopefully lay the groundwork for a run on the festival circuit which could pay off down the road. After an LA industry screening in a couple of weeks, our hometown SXSW and/or the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival hopefully lay in our immediate futures. After that…well, we’ll see. Regardless of what happens, Park City, that exotic indie Mecca we’d previously all only seen on CNN, has been forever de-mystified. The best part, then, about surviving Slamdance 2000 and Park City Madness may be that no film festival will ever intimidate us again.
Highlights and Impressions: Thanks from the WILAY cast and crew to Peter Baxter, Dan Mirvish, Drea Clark, Kristy Byrd, Margot Gerber and Slamdancers everywhere for an incredible experience, to Film Threat and the Gorey One himself; to filmkitchen.com’s Kirk Harris and Jack Rubio for their advice and support, and (finally) to Ryan Wickerham, one of our lead actors, for helping this Mac/Netscape partisan navigate the mysteries of a PC/AOL configuration…visit our website at www.whatilikeaboutyou.com (especially if you’re a buyer!)…until something major happens, see ya!
