We'd had a nice week, especially compared to the killer one we had a few weeks back when we had six doctor's appointments between the two of us. We'd gone out to lunch on Friday at Bay Breeze with Alice and Ken, and Mel and Phyllis, and I'd enjoyed my baked stuff shrimp so much. We'd also made stops at Walmart (although I'd bought the wrong size of something) and done the shopping and stopped at Ollie's Discount Store to get new rubber tiedowns for the big trunk that's in the bed of the pickup truck. Today James was going to clean up the kitchen a little, I was going to make chicken cacciatore, and he was going down to the mancave for a little bit.

I was on Facebook during breakfast when it happened: someone posted in the Metro Atlanta Geeks group that this weekend was an Atlanta Film Festival event; they would be showing the short film Night of the Cooters based on a Howard Waldrop short story, and that the producer, George R.R. Martin (yes, the George R.R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame) and Vincent D'Onofrio (the star, director, and also producer) were going to be at the event, which was being held at the Rialto Theater in downtown Atlanta.

 

Yes, you probably know how this is going to end. I mean, this would somewhat make up for November and not being able to go to RI Comic Con because stupid Apria needs three weeks notice to give someone a portable oxygen generator. (Hopefully, that stupidity will be covered in another entry.)

So, I looked it up. It was only $15/each! And parking was only $4 with their validation. The only terrible part about this would be driving downtown. Downtown Atlanta is someplace we only go when there's DragonCon. It's not a proper downtown, like NYC or Boston: there are no movies, no department stores, no real other stores except for high-priced specialty shops—it's pretty much all high-priced restaurants, hotels, a few clubs. I had a friend who visited here from NYC several years back and he called me—he had just eaten a meal and wanted to do something interesting afterward, and there was nothing to do unless you wanted to go to the Hard Rock Cafe and get your eardrums drilled out. (The Aquarium wasn't open yet, granted, nor the Ferris wheel in Centennial Olympic Park.) Driving to and into downtown Atlanta is a frank f*cking nightmare; there's always an accident somewhere on the freeway, people race at the on-ramps and off-ramps like maniacs, it's filled with one-way streets. Even when I had my PT Cruiser I never felt safe driving down there (I still have PTSD about that accident and hate driving anymore), and we would have to take the power chair on the truck.

Nevertheless, we lit a fire under ourselves and did it anyway. I cooked the chicken and we ate about 3 p.m., then tried to relax until it was time to leave. We took the back streets because there was indeed an accident on I-75 south, but after turning right, left, and going around Robin Hood's barn to avoid traffic and closed streets (it routed us around Mercedes-Benz stadium, the one with the weird opening roof, which I refer to as "The Origami"), we arrived at the parking garage, parked, rolled downstairs, and discovered James couldn't get the chair between the gates to get into or out of the garage. So we took the elevator back up to three, basically went out the door we were parked next to, and came out a half-a-block from the front of the theater!

We were unfamiliar with the venue, but everyone was super nice. We validated the parking ticket, got checked in, used the restroom—and discovered they were doing a real "red carpet" event like you see at movie premieres, but in a very small space. I had brought James' small camera with me because I didn't know if they allowed photos, but the press was there, and even people there who weren't the press had cameras and phones. I wish I had known and I would have brought my wonderful Panasonic camera, but alas. I did get a few half-decent pictures, but the Panasonic would have been killer.

And yes, George R.R. Martin and Vincent D'Onofrio did come out and they were interviewed by different press people (I saw one woman there from WABE, the Atlanta PBS channel). I was something like three feet from VDO at one point. He looks really good, dressed all in black with a black baseball cap and taupe-and-black sneakers. (Seriously, I ended up with one photo of his hands; he has such damn beautiful hands, and almost always in motion.) The real photographers were nice to me and let "Miss Miniature" get in a couple of times. I ended up taking most of the photos with my phone, though.

Finally it was movie time. We took the elevator up to the mezzanine, and then James had to get in the wheelchair lift to actually get into the theater proper. (The wheelchair lift lady was really sweet.) We got seated right behind the loge and had a nice clear view of the screen, which was apparently brand new and we were watching the first showing on it. There was an introduction to the film and a welcome to the guests (the host listed VDO's credits and the two things that got him the biggest applause were Bobby Goren—yay Criminal Intent!—and Wilson Fisk), and then we got on to the movie.

VDO talked about this film a few times on Twitter and I had read about it and watched the preview. The film is 35 minutes long and is funny, wry, irreverent, and absurd, but delightfully entertaining. It takes place concurrently with the H.G. Wells story The War of the Worlds and also riffs slightly on both the famous 1938 Orson Welles adaptation and even what I thought was a little nudge at the 1950s film version. The film is rotoscoped in a way that combines the live action with some animated inserts, giving it a graphic novel type of look. A Martian cylinder lands outside the sleepy small town of Pachuco, Texas, where previously the only problems were Sheriff Lindley's terrible case of constipation and two small kids in town who swiped a bunch of peaches. The sheriff, deputy, and other townspeople must determine the best way to fight this menace. We were chuckling throughout, and even on the way home and getting ready for bed were quoting lines from the story.

Afterwards there was a Q&A with D'Onofrio, Martin, some of the other cast member/production staff about making the film—questions about working against a green screen, getting funding for short films (movie "angels" typically want to fund long films that will play around the country, not short films that only are seen in certain cities—you know, we have all these streaming channels right now; why not one just for short films, the kind that get nominated for Oscars every year but no one ever sees because they only play in NYC and LA?), filming in New Mexico, etc. This is a particular project of Martin's, as he is filming three other Waldrop stories in the hopes of one day combining them into a full-length film.

Anyway, we had a great time; when the Q&A was over, we just trotted the half-a-block back to the parking garage, followed the line out the gates, beat the phone GPS into submission (she wanted to take us home through I-20 and I-285; with all the trucks on I-285, a nightmare route), and finally got on the freeway–

–only to run into an accident on I-75 northbound. We amused ourselves by repeating favorite Cooters scenes and lines on the extra 30 minutes it took us to get home.

So, to put it mildly, "A good time was had by all."

Labels: events, excursions

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:39:00 PM

Comments:

Thank your for sharing your write up of what sounds like a very enjoyable event. I am glad to see you posting after a hiatus. I know you post regularly on FB, but I don't read there very often these days, so I miss things.

# posted by  Elaine : 8:13:00 AM

 

Oh Linda, that sounds absolutely wonderful! I'm so glad you're writing again. I did miss you. :D

# posted by  Emma Redmer : 8:59:00 PM

 

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