Saturday, April 25th came after a VERY late  night of partying for pretty much all of the filmmakers.  An impromptu hotel party made it’s way outside the hotel and lasted until about 5:30AM and included a brief encounter with some VERY nice police officers and a breakfast at IHOP.  The day of our premiere we pushed one last surge of promotion and then our entire group had dinner together at the Okie Steak House and Saloon.  Then everyone headed over to the ROXY to watch a couple of shorts made by our new friends “BOSTON” (6 awesome cats from Mass.)

We made our way to the venue and anxiously awaited the start of SWS.  I think everyone was pretty nervous/excited.  Then, as big groups of people started arriving, the nerves got better and worse somehow.  ’People are coming, that’s a relief.  What if they hate it?’ Everyone pushed into the venue, sat down, the lights dimmed, and the movie started.

My heart sank.

The volume was horribly low.  So low, it was hard to hear.  We were told the volume was up all the way.  I thought I was going to vomit.

But then something wonderful happened.

People started to laugh.  People continued to laugh.  Everyone stayed and the room was insulated with silence between blasts of laughter.  The audience was engaged.  Even though the volume was way too low, people connected with the movie and we hooked our audience.  It was an amazing feeling.  The respect of an audience to stay involved in a movie even when it’s difficult to hear is such a compliment.  It felt amazing.  As the movie wound down, I felt good.  Very good.  We had done it.  We had finished a movie, shown it to an audience, and engaged them with the storytelling.

There was NO Q and A scheduled, so we had our own ‘pow-wow’ style Q and A outside in the warm Muskogee air.  A lot of new friends and strangers stuck around and talked with us about SWS.  We heard a lot of compliments and questions about how we made the movie or how we thought of this or that.  It felt really great.  Other filmmakers genuinely interested in your work is nice.

Relief.  We migrated to MAX’s GARAGE, a bar downtown, and spent the night socializing, talking about SWS, reliving old times, telling stories, laughing, and smiling.  It was a great night. Suddenly, we went from being the guys with the clever promo masks, to the guys with a great movie.  It was unexpected but wonderful.  We went to bed content…

post premiere pow-wow