BagelHot: Darryl's Film Fest

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Darryl's Film Fest

The Bloor Theatre

Saturday, October 14, the day of Darryl's Hard Liquor and Porn film festival. The chaos began with the submission of the 69 film challenge films. The original plans were to drop them off on the second floor at the Pauper's Pub located conveniently across the street from the theatre between the hours of 1pm and 6pm.

Signage up close

The problem was the the second floor was not accessible until 6:30pm. I ended up waiting around the pub from 1pm on the main floor hoping that someone would see my HLAP T-shirt and pass me a CD.

The second obstacle was that the door to the Bloor theatre was locked. If I did get a CD in order to bring it to Darryl, located on the third (or forth floor) in the projection booth, there had to be someone in the lobby to see me to open the door from the inside.

The third little bump in the road was that the films had to be edited into the show for the 9:00pm screening. Since most of the movies would arrive at 6:00, now 6:30pm, that would only give Darryl two and a half hours to screen the submissions and plop them in. I've worked on playback gigs with better scheduling than that.

To add to the crazy editing schedule Darryl was also supposed to meet up with the press at the pub at 7:00pm. Eeek. Obviously he can't be editing and talking to the press at the same time.

Darryl installs the Macintosh

In the end everything worked out. I got a lot of exercise running submissions from the bar to the projection booth and Darryl, in the end, stayed in the booth editing. A wise move if I do say so myself. At about 8:30pm there was a small panic when someone on one of the walkies noticed that Darryl was leaving the theatre in a taxi.

Then at around 9:00pm I heard "Has anyone seen Darryl?". Having his show start without him would have been bad. Peter and I dreamt up of ways Jill, the producer, could get on stage and maybe start juggling or introducing her baby to the audience to stall for time.

Kyoko scores some of the free pizza

It's good to share.

Amanda with her photo gear

Bob, the projectionist

A few minutes after 9:00pm the walkie screeches "I see Darryl!!!". You could almost hear the sign of relief. I talk to Darryl over the walkie to verify his last minute time line editing changes, cue up the machine, then poke my head into the tiny projector window and watch Darryl get up onto stage. Bob operates the sound intros and microphones. The show goes off without a hitch.

Darryl appears in the nick of time to welcome the audience

Once the screening of the 69 hour film challenge, Darryl's past favourite movies, this year's new entries, the comedic stand up Jeff Richards (from MAD TV and Saturday Night Live), and the awards, were over Darryl invited the audience over to the Dragonfly for the official after party.