The Stevie Wondershow

the immediate future of SWS

pasley — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:22:13 +0000

As you may know, Ryan, Andrew, and I are moving to LA this weekend. This is of course a big life change. For SWS, it’s also a big change. We made the whole movie relatively remotely across huge geographical distances. It will be the first time we’ve been living in the same place for more than a few weeks. This is exciting.
We will be immediately diving into designing a huge DVD package for SWS packed with bonus features, behind the scenes, deleted scenes, commentaries, blah blah blah. The point is; SWS is about to ramp up in speed.
We have ambitious plans about screening SWS and releasing a DVD. We want people to get to see the movie. We want to bring SWS to you.
I was at Cannes Film Festival last week and it had a profound impact on me. The ways that this impact relates to SWS are many. Needless to say, I learned a lot and was inspired and energized to dive back into SWS.
This is an exciting time for SWS. we premiered the movie fairly quietly (pardon the pun for those that were at the premeiere.) but to a lot of praise and excitement. Soon, we will be launching a huge amount of stuff.
The synergy of the three of us being in one place will be massive. I’m extremely excited and can’t wait to live and breath this movie with Ryan and Andrew.

Stay tuned.

the STEVIE WONDERSHOW : WORLD PREMIERE part 1

Ryan Wehner — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:23:53 +0000

We held the World Premiere of SWS at Bare Bones Intl Film Festival on Sat April 25th. It was a great experience. A large portion of our cast and crew traveled, out of their pocket, from around the country to be there for this event. The excitement and love for SWS is as strong as it ever has been. Andrew, Mike, Jonas, Colleen, Taylor and myself arrived a few days prior to the festival to promote some. We put up posters and began handing out our STEVIE MASKS everywhere! On the back of the Stevie Mask we put all of our screening details, so everyone knew when and where they needed be to see the film! Having the masks was a genius idea (I can say because i did’nt think of it. Mike did). After one day, Stevie was everywhere! It as almost ridiculous! Everyone was having fun being silly, dancing, getting pictures and video with the mask on. When Chris (Stevie) arrived two days later, everyone already recognized him. It was perfect. People were really beginning to anticipate the film, and we managed to get a lot of people commited to coming to our screening! But now we had to live up to the hype.

So we watched some great films, met some really great and talented people, and continued promoting up until our day…Saturday April 25th at 7:30pm, after only 18months since we made a pact to complete this film, and months of consecutive sleepness nights.

We PREMIERED the STEVIE WONDERSHOW!!!!

the STEVIE WONDERSHOW world premiere part 2…

pasley — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:00:04 +0000

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