And relax.
What a weekend… Saturday was as much fun as I’ve had in as
long as I can remember, as we welcomed an insane amount of people to the cast
and crew screening of Zombie Resurrection.
Cast, crew, zombies, post-production guys, people from the various locations at
which we shot the bugger, the guys that did all our set catering, investors,
IndieGoGo supporters, mentors, friends and family. All in one place to enjoy 76
minutes of gore-laden sweary silliness.
And it was terrific. 180 people laughing in mostly all the
right places, with the freshly-graded film looking and sounding lovelier than
it ever has done before. And we got to hang out with a bunch of pals that we
hadn’t seen in fourteen months.
Not that anything ever goes completely smoothly. The cinema
was hosting the thematically-perfect Third International Death Day Conference
beforehand, and when we arrived to set up at 6:00 they were showing no signs of
letting up. And bitter experience insists that you’re never beyond the mercies
of technical SNAFUs until you hear the last strains of the end-credits.
But when the lights went up at the end of the screening I
could smell the stress evaporating.
Sure, it’s a wedding audience – a room filled with people
willing the best-man’s speech to be that much funnier than it would otherwise
be. Someone would have to be supremely un-classy to go up to a couple of
filmmakers at their first screening and berate them for the idiotic way that they’ve wasted
two years of their lives, but from my vantage
point at the back of the cinema people did genuinely seem to be enjoying
themselves. Jake and I lost all sense of perspective on the movie a long time ago, but until
we get told differently we’re taking Saturday as an indication that we’ve done
something right.
And it was at this point that I may have slightly
over-relaxed.
As the audience de-camped back to the bar, and with our
responsibilities finally discharged, everything inevitably degenerated into the
kind of extended session that my body hasn’t been able to cope with since I was
25. Sat in my flat at 4:00 AM with the last of the stragglers pillaging the forgotten bowels of my booze collection, I should have known that Sunday
was going to be a struggle.
But that aside, it’s a massive Charmed thank you again to
Christian for organising the cinema, and to everyone that turned up on Saturday
night. We wouldn’t be here without all your support and generosity over the
last couple of years. You’ve made two happy people really old.
Sadly, photographs from the evening are in short supply (and
if you have any good shots please feel free to post them on the Charmed
Apocalypse Facebook page), but I did get sent one truly disturbing MMS from my
brother yesterday. Blog readers with good memories may remember
a rather foolish bet that Jake and I made with each other in January 2011, a
bet that we were finally able to make good on last Friday.
So, so wrong. Please don’t this be the only record of an
otherwise excellent evening. Muted.
Oh dear god.
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