This weekend I was flown out to Little Rock for the 3rd annual Little Rock Horror Picture Show.  I had so much fun!

I got in Late Friday afternoon and was greeted at the baggage claim area by Sarah, one of the volunteers.  She Was delightful.  She even drove me around downtown so i’d have an idea where things were in relation to each other.  I saw the outside of the Clinton Library, which everyone there agrees looks like a trailer from the outside.

It really does look like a trailer.

I never had time to see the inside, but everyone says it’s cool.

The hotel gave me a river front view.  This made up for the fact that the new owners got rid of the ducks  that used to frolic in the fountain in the lobby. Why would you do that?  That sounds wonderful! Oh well.  It’s still a nice hotel.  It didn’t even try to kill me! 

The view

I met up with Adam and we picked up my badge at the theater.  It’s brand new, so everything was state of the art. You couldn’t even hear the band they had playing in the lobby.

The Theater

Performing The Monster Mash. (I didn’t catch the band name.)

After getting some food, we went to the screening of Proxy, by Zack Parker. I really liked it. I think the main 3 actresses were great, plus there is a really amazing slow motion scene they pulled off. It was one of those ‘You only get one take’ deals. The second film we saw was Ti West’s The Sacrament. It’s basically Jonestown, but it was still really engaging even though you know where it’s heading.

We got back to the hotel at midnight and the hotel bar had just barely closed.  But the bartender was super nice and gave us a drink anyway. We chatted with him and one of the security guys that worked there for a while. The bartender had lived in LA before and was from England. He kind of looked like Jason Statham if Statham wasn’t all ripped. We never found out what brought him to Arkansas because he was sort of distracted as he closed up the bar.

The next morning we had a great breakfast at the River Market then went to the Actor Panel.  The other 2 people were from the opening night film, All Cheerleaders Die, which was on Thursday so we missed it. Brooke and Tom were really nice and we ended up hanging out with them until they had to leave for the airport. The moderator was a local actor named Willey. There was a better turn out than I expected since it was at 11am. Some people came in late and this one guy in the back raised his hand just to have us introduce ourselves.  I thought it was funny, but others found it to be rude.  Maybe it was. He had his hand up while we were answering other actual questions. All in all I think it went well.  The 3 of us had very different acting backgrounds, so it was interesting to hear about different paths people can take.

After the panel, one of the writers in the audience approached me and gave me a script to read. He also gave me the novel it was based on.  I haven’t had time to read it since I’ve been back, but I will be on vacation later this week, so I’ll get to check it out.  It’s a crime drama set in Arkansas.  It’s the first time someone was like – hey, here is a script you might want to be in. It was pretty exciting. Who knows how far away he would be from actual production, but it’s nice to feel special.

We caught one of the short films (The Pallor) done by a pair of brothers (?) we’d met. Then we went to lunch at this great fish place. (The Flying fish)

Brooke, pining for some fish.

It’s was the kind of place where you can get a whole fish, head and all! One wall was covered with photos of people and fish they caught.  The rest were covered with donated Billy the Bass plaques. I guess you get a free basket o’ catfish when you bring one. I wasn’t hungry yet, so Adam and I split some calamari.

After lunch we were given a tour around the river front area by… Crap, I forgot his name. He’s a tall bald fellow who works for one of the radio stations.  If I figure it out, I’ll correct it here.  Anyway, we walked up the bridge and over the river.  We attempted to find the “Big Rock” which may or may not be what the city was named for, but either way we never found any official-looking rock.  We just decided to pick a rock at random and pretend. I managed not to break my ankle walking around on the grass in tall shoes. It would not be the last time I stumbled over that day.

Tom and Brooke had to leave after that and Zack and Adam had the director/filmmaker panel. Eric England was there for that as well. They also had a good turnout.  I was tempted to raise my hand in the middle to ask them to introduce themselves again. After the panel I told Eric what happened with the hotel at Feartastic and how later a guy died. Then he told us a story about a reporter getting an idea on how to kill his wife from a film they were shooting at the time!  The guy failed to actually kill his wife. But still creepy! (side note- all 3 directors’ most recent films had complex female leads! Yay, those guys!)

After dropping some stuff off at the hotel and picking up the film for a tech check, we went back to the theater for a bit. After the tech was, Adam, Zack, and I went and got some pizza nearby and chatted about making movies and such.

We had a while before our film, so we hung out in the filmmaker lounge for a while.  Got some wine and beers in us. I bonded with Sara Jones over WWE. Hilariously, only the 2 of us ladies in the room knew much about it.

By the time it was time for our screening, folks were pretty well buzzed. This comes into play shortly.

The Screening

In front of our screening they had a magician do a short little trick to promote another show or something.  It ended up being THE WEIRDEST. The trick was pretty straight forward.  There are 4 circles on rotating planks and one has a huge spike coming out of it.  A volunteer covers all the circles with a plastic cup and mixes up the order.  The magician then goes through and crushes each cup with his hand so only the one hiding the spike is left. Pretty standard, really. But he wrapped the trick in a story about a German magician who claimed to be psychic and was brought in by Hitler as an adviser.

What.

He says the trick was designed by Goebbels to test his psychic abilities.

Whoa, man. This fun little magic show is bringing up some dark shit.  The button on the story was that if he was really psychic, he should have seen what was coming, and also it turned out his real name was something else which was “a very Jewish name.”

Soooo – good for him for surviving? I’m not sure what to actually take away from that story. It was just really odd.  But it was at a horror show, so I guess it makes sense?

Anyway, it was then time for our film.  Now, apparently one of the benefactors of the new theater wrote and recorded a song, an ode to the state of Arkansas if you will, which has an accompanying video that goes with it.  The theater has to play THE ENTIRE VIDEO before anything that screens at the theater.  I’m not sure if it’s just the festival, or if it really is anything that plays there. But since it was day 3 of the festival, we had all learned the song.  Those tipsy folks I mentioned (also me) started clapping along and then singing with the chorus.  It was so funny. I was in the balcony, but I would have to assume the rest of the theater was doing it too. I could tell it was going to be a good high energy crowd.

Good luck getting that out of your head.

During the screening the people around me were vocal enough, that I could hear some great reactions.  I love that part of going to the screenings. Then at the end, one of the guys behind me got so startled he threw his phone. It was great.

Our Q&A went well. The theater was still about half full I think by the time I’d walked down there. It’s a big place, so it was a good number of people. We got a lot of great feed back from people in the lobby as well.

We did our post-screening interview up in the lounge and then hung out for a while with the other filmmakers around. I gave some tips that I could to one of the local actors who was thinking of going to Louisiana or Georgia. Eventually, Mallory, one of the organizers, let us know that if we don’t watch at least part of Metropolis, we would regret it.

IT WAS RAD AS HELL. They had a metal band playing live during the entire film.  Someone said parts of it were songs they’d already had, but then they blended them all so smoothly from scene to scene.  It was impressive and the perfect score to the film.  Also that film is incredible. We got there at the point where the scientist is making the robot and then stayed for the whole rest of the movie.

Sound of the Mountain, performing a live score to Metropolis.

After that we decided not to stay for the riffing of the midnight movie and went to find a place for a drink and a snack.  Once again, we walk in when they are about to close.  This time we had 10 minutes to order at least.  I’m not sure if things close early there or if it was just the place we went.  It was like 12:30 when we arrived though.

I got back to the room and settled sometime around 1:30, so I decided it wasn’t worth it to sleep for like 2 hours. I think I dozed for 15 minutes before I had to get up and pack.  I took a cab to the airport because I am not going to ask that nice lady to get up at 4am.  That’s crazy.

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I gotta say it’s been one of the most fun festivals I’ve attended for Delivery so far.  Palm Springs was really fun, but the hotel almost killed us. (Unaffiliated with the festival, but puts a damper on the experience.) I think having a place that I could meet the other filmmakers and actors was really good.  It was also fun to do a panel and meet more people that way as well. Plus the river walk area in Little Rock is super nice!

Here is a montage from Day 3.  They should be posting our interviews soon as well.