Memoirs of a Film Festival - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Wednesday, November 01 @ Mountain Standard Time by Duane

Note: Images from the festival are located at the bottom of this article.

I can't believe it's over. It's been building up for months now and it seems like it's gone in the blink of an eye. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll clue you in...

Sometime in early 2006 I was contacted by Wayne Clingman. He wanted me to write a script for him. You know, great... So I worked out the details with him somewhat and started working on the script. A bit later, he started talking about wanting to put a film festival together in his hometown of Racine, Wisconsin. Again...great. The script thing, even though it's still a work in progress, sort of fell along the wayside as Wayne became more and more involved in putting together his festival. The initial idea was to put heavy emphasis on Wisconsin film makers, but that idea changed before too awful long and it became a festival where independent genre films were welcomed from all over the country.

Early on, Wayne started consulting with me over various things to do with the film festival. One of our earlier conversations involved the guest list. He wanted to know what guests he should invite, what I knew about them if anything, either by reputation or through my dealings with them in the magazine, etc... So I pondered that for a while and threw a few names at him. I told him he should definitely have Debbie Rochon, and if he wanted some great film makers there who were really into their craft and who could do great classes or presentations, he absolutely had to get Mike Conway ("Terrarium", "The Awakening") and Paul Solet ("Means to an End", "Grace"). There were some other names that I threw out there as well and wayne set to work on contacting various people.

Well things kinda of snowballed from there. See, the one thing that sets the indie genre film community apart from everyone else is that there's a great sense of family and a desire to help out other people in the industry who are trying get things done. Debbie Rochon in particular was a great help in the fact that she got Lloyd Kaufman to come to the festival, and possibly others as well but I don't really have first hand knowledge at this particular moment to be able to reliably tell you any of the other people she hooked him up with. Other guests hooked Wayne up with other people in the industry and suddenly he had formed up a guest list that would have any festival director beaming with pride.

Early on as well, during my consultations with Wayne, he asked me to put together the website for the festival. It was initially supposed to be me building the website and then I would hand it off to someone else to maintain and host. Ultimately however, I hosted it myself and maintained it throughout the course of the year, making constant tweaks and additions as new items and information became available.

Wayne had lots of problems getting the festival together, and more times than I can count I got to be his agony aunt, listening to each successive rant about how people were flaking on him and businesses weren't coming to the table and so on and so forth. This was a position I took up happily because I really like Wayne and I wanted the best for him and this festival. So if I could listen to him bitch and moan about all the crappy that kept happening, I was more than happy to be there for him.

Wayne did his best, with the help of James Neibaur, William Zenobia, and many other great people from the local area to pull everything together. Unfortunately, he kept running into problem after problem. First, the Mariott hotel refused to work with him on special room rates for the festival patrons and guests. So that went back and forth for a long time. Then he tried to work with Midwest Express and possibly some other airlines to get some special rates on travel arrangements. They were less than cooperative. It was one thing after another, but for every bad thing that happened, a few good things happened, and the festival gradually came together. The Raddisson Hotel came through with some special room rates for him, some local businesses agreed to sponsor the festival, he got a grant for advertising, etc... Sofiya Smirnova, who seems like an absolute sweetheart even though I didn't really get to talk to her, helped him out with some fundraising as well.

Just as a note, More people helped him out with the festival than I'm naming here, and all of their efforts were highly prized and appreciated. If I don't mention various people here it's either because I have no knowledge of their contributions or I know they helped out in some way but I can't remember what they did. Remember, I was basically just kind of a consultant and friend to Wayne throughout this process and I don't live anywhere near Racine, Wisconsin, so I was out of the loop on a lot of things. So again, if you helped out and I don't mention you, please don't feel bad.

Anyway, as things came together and more and more guests were added to the roster, certain problems started to develop. Most of the problems were minor, but there was one more notable guest who was basically un-invited for reasons I won't go into here, some who pulled out, and some who flaked completely, like Sazzy Lee Varga, who just seemed to vanish without a trace after saying that she was coming. Basically though, with only a few notable changes, the guest list remained in tact throughout the lead up to the festival, and it was full of some really great people.

Now, as you know, time passes incredibly fast. One day you wake up and you're 35 years old and it just seems like yesterday you were sitting in your 2nd grade classroom staring out the window on a rainy day and you realize how time slips away from you in bursts that are so large as to be inconceivable. Basically, before I knew it, I was on a plane headed to the festival as one of the special guests.

My flight to Milwaukee was long, but basically uneventful. William Zenobia, who made the travel arrangements for the festival after someone else flaked out on the job, is an absolutely awesome guy and he picked me up at the airport when I arrived. The plan was for him to meet me and then for us to wait another forty minutes for Chris "Mars" Crites to arrive. So we sat down and talked for a while while we waited.

Forty minutes passed quickly, and soon it was time to head over to Chris' arrival gate. So we did...and there we waited...and waited...and waited. Finally William went and had him paged. No response. Then after I suggested that maybe Chris missed his flight, William went down to the ticket desk to try to find out if he was on the plane. They didn't want to give him the information at first, but finally they did. Chris wasn't on the plane and had in fact missed his flight. Now this was on Friday, which was the first day of the festival. I had already missed a huge chunk of the first day just as a result of my flight arriving at around 2:30pm, but then waiting around for Chris to show up, plus the half hour ride back to the hotel ate up even more of the day. It was during the ride back however that William received a call from Chris on his cellphone. Apparently, Chris had made the unfortunate mistake of leaving a bottle of aftershave lotion or something in his bag and security, probably because of the way he looked, used it as an excuse to flag him for a more in depth security check. Now when I say because of the way he looked, I don't mean anything negative by that at all. He is a big, burly kinda guy though and looks like the kind of guy who would be right at home attending a metal concert or riding on the back of a big, mean motorcycle. Appearances aside, I met him finally on the very last day of the festival. He seems like a really nice, likable guy. I regret the fact that I was unable to meet up with him and have the chance to talk with him some before that. Anyway, by the time the security guy got done SLOWLY going through all his stuff and jacking him up for no reason, Chris got to the ramp just in time to watch his plane pulling away from it. They refused to bring it back in to let him on, so basically he was stuck at the airport for NINE hours waiting for the next flight out, all because some jerky security guy, who actually was a jerk to him on a personal level as well, decided to jack him over a stupid bottle of after shave.

So now we're driving through Racine on the way to the hotel. I get to the hotel and they don't have a reservation in my name, even though Wayne assured me the arrangements had been made. So the guy asks us if it could be under another name. William asked him to look under Wayne Clingman. Sure enough, Wayne had made the reservation under his name. So I told the guy I was a special guest of the festival and that must be the room he reserved for me. Now this is the part that shocked me. The guy gave me the room! Didn't ask for ID. Didn't call anyone to confirm I was a special guest of the festival. Didn't take any info or anything from me. He just gives me the keys and asks me if I want to change the room into my name in case there are any room charges. I told him no because I wasn't going to be using the phone or anything, so there wasn't any point. He did anyway though, as I later found out on my checkout slip...and he spelled my first name wrong. In any case, it's no big deal, but I was just shocked that he handed me the room just like that without any hassle at all even though it wasn't in my name. I could have been anyone who just walked in off the street, threw Wayne's name out there and got handed a room. Sheesh! The room was nice, but they really need to get DVD players hooked up to their TVs. They also need to get more channels. I think there were maybe 20 channels or so and that was it. Most of them weren't even worth watching.

So basically at thie point I'm way late for the festival. William's going to give me a ride up there, so I toss my bag in the room, relieved myself of a little excess pee, and then like a total dumbass, bailed out the door leaving my digital camera behind in my bag. So basically I didn't get any pics from the first day or from the gala party that night. I'm still kicking myself over that one.

Once we left the hotel, Willam and I went up to the festival. I finally got the meet Wayne in person. Wayne is one of those guys you have to meet in person to fully appreciate, because he truly is one of life's characters. I don't in the slightest bit mean that in a bad way either. He's just one of those people that if you meet him, you will remember him.

I talked with Wayne a bit about how things were going and kinda scanned the room to see who I could see. Pretty soon, Brian Morton comes walking up. Now this in and of itself is a momentous occassion, because in the over four and a half years the Rogue Reviewers have been together, and the over two and a half years that Rogue Cinema has existed, no two members of the group have ever met each other face to face. I gotta tell you too, it was awesome. Brian is just an incredible guy and hanging out with him was just one of the huge reasons I had so much fun at the convention. The other reasons will be noted in a moment.

It wasn't long after I met up with Brian, that Mike Conway came into the room. Now Mike's film Terrarrium was one of the earliest screeners I got for the magazine, and he was, actually my first interview ever. Since then I've reviewed his latest film and he co-hosted an internet radio show experiment thing I tried to do through the magazine. Unfortunately, I forgot to start the recording before the show and ended up with absolutely no record of the event. Something else I've been kicking myself for for ages. Anyway, basically he's always been a totally stand up guy, very friendly, and always willing to help out or do whatever. He's just one of those great people in life that you meet up with and instantly feel like you've been friends with them for years. He also has a beautiful wife named Shiela and three great kids back home in Vegas. He also has an $8,000 synthesizer I'm totally jealous of, but since I'm a bass player and don't really play keys all that well, I think me having an $8,000 synthesizer would be just the tiniest little bit of overkill.

Anyway, so he was wandering around and didn't recognize me right away because being a writer, my photo isn't really something a lot of people see around much. So after Brian and I got done talking to Wayne, we walked over to where Mike was. I was like, "Hey you." He looked at me and there was this momentarily baffled look on his face followed by a quick change to a look of recognition. He grabbed my hand and shook it and then pulled me over and hugged me. He was even more awesome in person than I could have imagined. He really is one of those great people that make you want to be around them because they're so totally cool and nice. So that was basically the third member of my little group that we hooked up with. See, we didn't hang with Wayne too much because he was buzzing around like a big ol' tweaky bee trying to make sure everything was happening as it should and that things were going as smoothly as possible. So over the course of the day, my little group had begun to form, and it was soon after that we met up with two more members of what would be our fun little group.

Frank Delle and his completely awesome wife Laurie came to the festival as a little vacation. They are two of the nicest, coolest people you'd ever want to meet and all of us had an absolute blast hanging out with them. Frank's film, Beer Drinkers in Space as well as his documentary about the making of it called Keep Drinking Men! were both shown at the festival, and Frank won the award for best sci-fi script for a script that he entered in the competition. I was so totally happy for him. I actually knew he had won a long time before he did, but I couldn't tell him. God it sucks having to keep a secret like that.

So that was almost everyone for the group I hung out with at the festival. There was only one more person who would round out the little group, and he would show up at the gala party that night. That person was film maker and all around cool guy, Paul Solet.

In person, Paul's very laid back and extremely knowledgable about the horror genre. He was basically schooled in it from a young age and Eli Roth was even one of his camp counselors when he was a kid. What amused me about him is how shocked he was when he'd be talking about some horror movie or other that had been popular or that was something that "everyone" should have seen. I kept telling him, "Dude, I got over 1,600 DVDs, but I can't own everything. Plus I don't really rent movies, and in fact, being a reviewer, I've gotten to the point where I just don't watch a lot of movies for pleasure anymore because I'm so drained from watching all the other movies I have to review." There were at least a few we talked about though that I had seen or had knowledge of, so it wasn't too bad.

Anyway, that brings me to the gala party on opening night. Brian and Mike and I were some of the first ones in there. Naturally we went straight for the food. They had a nice spread laid out including chips and salsa, italian sausage in some kind of a tomato sauce, meat balls in some sort of a really good red sauce, some open faced slices of bread with meat and cheese on them and an open bar with sodas and beer. Now the bar I mention for two reasons, the second of which I'll get to in a bit. The first reason is because I was thirsty as hell. So I go up to the bar and ask the girl serving (which is the second reason...but again, I'll get to that in a sec,) if they had any diet soda. She said they had Diet Coke, and gave me one. Mike had a Sprite and Brian had a Beer. In fact he had several beers...but not as many as someone else I'll mention in a minute here. Anyway, the mixture was wrong on the Diet Coke and it wasn't getting enough syrup, so the girl dumped it and gave me another one. Still bad. So several cups later I told her not to worry about it and had her give me a Sprite instead. Mike was all, "See, you should have had Sprite to begin with. I told you." ...yeah yeah...bitch. Anyway, you may be wondering why I'm mentioning all this. Again, there's two reasons. The first of which is the fact that the girl who was serving the drinks was incredibly pretty and extremely nice and since I'm a dirty old man I was completely infatuated with her. Never got her name, but damn man.... *sigh*

Now for the second reason... The Mayor of Racine was at the gala party. Now when you see the mayor of the town at a gala function, you expect to see some dude in a suit walking around doing the whole grip & grin thing and acting like a dignitary at some political function. However, none of that snotty crap for Racine's mayor. No sir. He was walking around like a normal guy, shirt hangin out, poundin' down beer and gettin' all liquored up. Basically he had a good ol' time from what I could see. Me and my little group were highly amused by that fact. There was a state rep there too who was going around and meeting everyone. Seemed like a really nice friendly guy. Can't think of either one of their name's offhand, but I guess maybe I can ask them at the next festival, since I'm sure I'll be at that one as well.

As things started picking up at the party, Paul Solet walked in. He's a totally cool, mellow guy, which I talked about earlier. Great sense of humor and totally great to hang out with. I introduced him to Mike and Brian and we all hung out together and had a great time. That party was really rough on me though, because being the dirty old man that I am, I kept sorta swinging my glances back and forth between Elske McCain, who looked unbelievably hot, and that really cute bartender girl. Damn I wish I had taken my camera with me.

The music at the party was way too loud and everyone was trying to have conversations but were having an extremely hard time hearing each other over the music. I mentioned it to Wayne and at some point it got a little better but not much. Unfortunately, the acoustics in that building are horrible to begin with, and when you add overly loud music to it, it just makes things worse.

Wayne, being the character he is, thought it would be cool to have some entertainment at the party. Enter the two belly dancers he hired to entertain everyone. Now here's the thing. I thought it was a cool idea and a lot of fun, and the girls themselves were good dancers and the whole thing was very entertaining, but hardly anyone paid attention to it because they were all wrapped up in their own conversations and what not. I think it was so hard to hear each other that people were kinda forced to focus more on hearing the people they were talking too and couldn't really pay attention to the other stuff going on around them. Mostly I just felt bad for the girls. They came out and did a great job but no one hardly responded when they were done. There was a little clapping, but again, everyone was so focused on their conversations that the girls didn't get the recognition they deserved.

Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention was that Brian introduced me to Lloyd Kaufman at the party. He strikes me as being a very nice guy and very friendly to everyone he meets. He's also a complete and utter publicity whore, taking it to an absolutely hilarious level. I mean, there were flyers for his new movies Poultrygeist plastered everywhere in the building. Even in the bathroom stalls! I think they'll be finding those posters in that building in every obscure crevice for the next five or ten years. God that was funny. But man, you really can't fault him on any of it. He's got the touch and he knows how to promote himself. He's really brilliant in that way, and his personalty makes pretty much everyone who meets him walk away feeling good about the encounter.

Someone else who showed up at the party was the guy who was in American Movie. Can't think of his name right now, but I've never seen the movie, and I've heard no end of crap about that from everyone. "Oh you haven't seen that? What the hell rock have you been living under?" Well, they didn't say that, but that's what it felt like. They described the movie to me, but I must confess that it didn't exactly push me any farther in the direction of wanting to see it. In fact, it made me want to see it even less. Needless to say, I'll probably never see it, which is about as much chance as I had of seeing it before I even knew it existed...so there you go.

After the party, Brian, Mike, Paul and I all went back to the hotel. There's a restaruant / pub there called The Chancery that's attached to the hotel, so we went in at close to 11pm to grab some food. Fortunately they were still open. I got myself some fried mozzarella sticks and fries and the other guys each got whatever they had. Can't remember what they had offhand, but Paul had some weird thing with a german name. I think Brian went up to his room when we got back to the hotel and it was just me, Paul and Mike in the restaraunt. So we talked for a while and then went back to Mike's room and hung out and BS'd for a while, and that was basically the end of the first day.

The second day was not only freezing cold, but in the evening it rained. I'll get to that part when I get to it. I came down and met up with Brian down in the lobby. We went over to The Chancery to get some breakfast and ended up meeting Frank Delle and his wife there. They asked us to join them and we all had breakfast together. Brian paid for mine, which was super nice of him. So again, thanks Brian! Anyway, I had a ham and cheese omelette, hash browns and toast to start my day. The food was great and when we finished we met up with Mike and headed on up to the festival. I had called Mike earlier and he wasn't even out of bed yet, so he ordered room service I think, or just went hungry. Not sure really, but in any case we all ended up at the festival. Paul hooked up with us too somewhere, but again, certain memories fail me from time to time, so I'm not sure exactly when we hooked up with him, but we did at some point.

This was the day Mike and Paul were to give their classes upstairs, while Fred Olen Ray and Lloyd Kaufman were giving their classes downstairs. Mike's class on old school special effects was to start at 1pm and Paul's class on making an independent film and getting it out there and seen was to start at 2:30pm I believe. By this point, Brian had split off from us and was watching movies somewhere, and I'm not sure where Frank and his wife ended up, but I was hanging out with Mike, trying to help him let people know about his class going on upstairs and getting things set up. So while the event staff were setting up the chairs, Mike went and found a monitor he could use to play various clips for his class and I made a couple of signs and stuck them up so people would know the class was about to start. Both Mike and Paul's classes went extremely well and both were really informative. The attendance in their classes too was great. Far better than even expected. Mike showed lots of great clips of various things he's done with special effects and explained how he did them while Paul basically kicked everyone in the ass with his lecture and inspired them to go out and make their own movies. I felt really fortunate to have been in attendance at both of them.

So after the classes were over, we were hungry. Mike and Paul and I decided to go out to get something to eat. I looked around for Brian so we could take him with us as well, and also for Frank and his wife, but I couldn't find them, so we just took off in search of some grub.

It was cold as hell as we walked down the dreary streets of Racine. There was virtually no traffic on the street, probably because of the weather, and everything seemed kinda quiet as we walked along chatting happily about various things. They were both in utter shock and disbelief that my wife told me it was ok if I got me some at the festival, as long as I used protection. I didn't get any, but just the fact that she said I could was just amazing to them and their reaction to that was just hilarious. It was a total combination of disbelief and jealousy I think. Whatever it was, it was funny.

So I'm freezing my ass off at this point. I tolerate the cold really well and often walk around in the snow in just a t-shirt, but damn it was cold! I was the only one without a coat, and I was sick of walking around looking for a place to eat. Finally we came across this little chinese restaraunt on the corner and we stopped in there. The food was very reasonably priced and both Mike and I enjoyed ours. Paul really didn't care for his all that much and left quite a bit of it. Most of the conversation during the meal revolved around horror movies and such and we all had a great time.

After the meal, the three of us walked back to the hotel. Paul went up to his room because he wanted to do some writing on a script he was working on and Mike and I each went back to our rooms to call our wives. About an hour later, I met Mike downstairs and we were going to go back up to the festival. So I go to walk out the door, and it's pouring down rain! Brian had been kinda giving us rides to and from the festival, but since he wasn't around, we had to walk it. Basically, we walked the equivalent of about six blocks in the freezing, icy cold rain to get back to the festival. Mike had a hood on his jacket at least. I had my leather jacket on and ended up looking like a drowned rat.

So we get back there and find out that they had the awards presentation early and we missed it. Unfortunately, Paul was leaving at like 7am the next morning too, so we missed saying goodbye to him as well, which was a double suck. So if you read this Paul, you got a goodby in absentia from us.

Around 8pm we all went in to watch my buddy Dave Wascavage's film, Zombies by Design. It was supposed to show in the room downstairs, but they needed that room for a large group that came in to see a different film, so I had to run around and try to track down the DVD because it wasn't where it was supposed to be. After much searching, I finally managed to find it and brought it up to the room where Mike, Brian, Frank and his wife Laurie and a few other guys were waiting to see it.

After we watched that movie, Hank Carlson and his group from the Independent Film Guild and Autumn Night Studios showed their film called The House Call and then did a great Q&A afterwards. They're a really great group of people. His producer Matt Vaessen was a super nice guy and even came out and joined in some group shots I was taking of the gang at the end of the last day. There was a funny story about him breaking his toe or something carrying some girl up the stairs. Beats me what the hell that was about. Wayne seemed to think it was pretty funny though. Anyway, their film, The House Call, was pretty slick and the Q&A about how it all came together was really interesting. I love seeing people like that who really work together as a team and basically create a family type of environment to bring their visions to the screen.

So after all that, we stuck around for a bit and then Mike and I headed back to the hotel with Brian. Brian went up to his room to crash and I ended up hanging out with Mike until like 2:30am talking about movies and music and his family and you name it. I had an awesome time, but by the time 2:30 came around I was so tired I was getting a headache and Mike looked like he was about to pass out too, so I headed up to my room for the evening.

Now in these rooms at the Raddisson hotels, they have sleep number beds. Are they everything the commercials make them out to be? Not really. I just adjusted the firmness until it was comfortable and then it was just like sleeping in any other bed. I didn't see anything all that special about it.

So I set an alarm for 8:30am the next morning, because I have to check out by noon and I wanted time to get ready and run down to get some breakfast before I met up with the guys to head to the festival. Might have worked too, the alarm that is, if I had actually set it for AM. It was dark when I set it so I set it for PM accidentally. Fortunately, I woke up in the morning at exactly 8:32am. I was rather tripped out by that, so I thought I'd mention it. It's funny how our internal clocks work.

So I head down to The Chancery for breakfast and I didn't see anyone I knew down there. I got a table and ordered the ham and cheese omelette again because it was really good the day before. I gotta tell you though, there was nothing in that restaraunt better than the view. There was this one waitress who was probably just a few years past half my age that...well, suffice it to say, she would never need implants. Damn she was beautiful. There were a lot of beautiful waitresses in that place, but that one in particular really caught my attention. So I walked out of there stuffed with breakfast and feeling like a dirty old man again. It's cool though, because I'm working my way through the seven deadly sins, and it was about time for me to start working on lust anyway.

After breakfast I headed back up to my room and packed up. It wasn't quite time to leave yet though, so I sat down and watched part of that movie, Robots on HBO. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There was some really clever stuff in it. Anyway, I ate up the rest of my time with that and then close to noon I headed downstairs and met up with Brian. We waited around there a bit for Mike to come out and after he did we went back up to the festival.

Things were winding down, people were packing up, but there were still guests doing the guest thing and movies being shown. We hung out a while and met up with Frank and Laurie Delle again. We all decided to catch another movie together since it was the last day and all. So we headed downstairs and caught Dr. Horror's Erotic House of Idiots. It was a fun movie with some really good performances, but it was also about a half hour too long. We kept waiting for it to end and it kept going like that friggin' Energizer bunny. It actually became a joke after a while and as each new scene came up it would get a laugh from us as we rolled our eyes. Eventually, and mercifully, it finally ended, and we all headed back upstairs.

Hanging out in the main hall, Mike was approached by a guy from the IFG group. He had borrowed an extension cord and power strip from the guy the day before for his class and borrowed a TV / DVD player combo from the cable company people that were there as well. Unfortunately, when the cable people picked up the TV, they also took the cord. At least, I assume they did, because we looked all over and couldn't find it. Well Mike needed to come up with a cord and power strip for the guy, so he asked Wayne where the nearest hardware store was. Wayne gave him directions that you'd need a GPS unit to follow, so basically that idea was out. Then suddenly, this guy who worked at the hall where the festival was held said he'd give him a cord and strip from there to give the guy. That was way cool and totally saved Mike.

After all that, I kept trying to get people together for pictures, but I had a hell of a time getting everyone together all at once. Frank and Laurie were taking off, so I ended up having to grab a couple of shots of them by themselves before they left. I was really sad to see them go, and like everyone I hung out with at the festival, I'm really going to miss them.

A bit later I finally did manage to get the rest of the gang together, and I also got Matt Vaessen to join in for the group shots as well. I regretted not having the chance to talk to him more at the festival. He was a really nice guy with a great sense of humor. Anyway, I got them all outside and took some great shots with Matt, Mike, William, Wayne and Brian. I tried to get some more indoor shots after that as well, but those lights they used inside were really messin' with my camera. I couldn't get a good white balance set and most of the pics ended up coming out crappy. It's going to take a lot of adjustment and cleanup work in Photoshop to see if I can clean them up.

So the end of the day was coming. I think we were all sad to see it come, though we were all probably looking forward to getting home where we could sleep in our own beds again. Mike and I grabbed our stuff out of Brian's car and said our goodbyes before he took off, and then we headed back up to the main hall to wait for our ride. William Zenobia was supposed to take Mike Watt, Amy Lynn Best and myself to the airport. Mike was going to end up having to take a shuttle or something as he was leaving a couple of hours after I was. So we got one of the volunteers to take us to the airport together, where we planned to have something to eat and relax a little before we said goodbye.

While we waited for our ride, we said our goodbyes to Wayne and talked to some film makers and other people that were hanging out in the lobby area. It was at this point that I finally met Mars. I talked to him for a minute and told him about the airport thing and he felt really bad about it. Wasn't his fault though. I didn't know what to expect with him, but he turned out to be a really nice guy and seemed very friendly.

Another thing I want to mention is regarding Elske McCain. As she was leaving, her and her boyfriend passed me as I was walking into a side room looking for Wayne. I smiled at her and she looked at me and smiled and said something like, "Oh, I didn't get to meet you." She came up and gave me a hug and introduced herself and I introduced myself and it was just a nice little thing. We said a few words and then parted, but you know, that little moment left a lasting impression on me. Anytime anyone asks me about Elske McCain from now on, all they're going to hear from me is that she's an absolute and total sweetheart and just super nice.

See, that's something I really regret, and something that I WON'T let happen next year. I never talked to Elske until that very moment, when what I should have done was introduce myself that first night and spent some time talking to her. I'm really shy about introducing myself to people for some reason. There were a lot of people that I either met briefly or that I wish I had met, but I was just too shy to really do it. The thing that really irritates me is, these were all really nice, friendly people. I met Eddie Deezen and he was nice. Elske was a sweetheart. Debbie Rochon and Sofiya Smirnova were both nice, and I heard all the others were nice too, but I either didn't meet them out of my own shyness, or if I did meet them I didn't really spend much time talking to them even though I really wanted to. I don't know why I'm like that, but I'm certainly not going to let it happen again.

Anyway, our volunteer showed up to take us to the airport, so I said goodbye to Wayne and gave him a hug and off we went. I don't remember the volunteer's name, mostly because I really suck at remembering people's names, but he was a nice young guy and Mike and I had a great conversation with him on the way to the airport. He was telling us that he was never into horror movies and stuff before, but after running the movies all weekend and seeing what a total sense of family there is in the indie film community, it totally turned him into a fan. It was awesome to hear, though not all that surprising. There really is something special about feeling like you're a part of such a close knit community, whether you're a film maker, an actor, a writer or even just a fan. Everyone can be a part of it, and the community is always there welcoming them with open arms.

So we get to the Milwaukee airport. We're short on time and I'm not even sure we're going to be able to get anything to eat. I checked in at the e-ticket thing outside and I was ready to go. Unfortunately, Mike had a bag full of hair products in addition to his carry on, so he had to go in and go through the check in thing inside. I hung out with him while he did that and then we headed upstairs to find our gates. Fortunately they were right next to each other and there was a couple of food places close by, so we walked back to the Pizza Hut Express and got some food. Some extremely overpriced food. He got a couple of personal pizzas, which was the only size they sold there. I got a combo of a personal pizza, three breadsticks and what was basically a medium sized drink. The little personal pizzas are tiny. Basically four little slices. The combo came to like eight dollars and something. Christ, for that kind of money I could get a large take and bake pepperoni from Papa Murphy's, a huge sandwich from Quiznos, or pretty much stuff myself on Chinese food at any Chinese buffet. The price was just ridiculous, but basically there wasn't much else around so we were stuck.

We got our food and sat down and talked for a while while Mike watched the football game up on the tv that was mounted over the trash containers. Eventually the moment came where it was time to head over to my gate and wait for boarding. They had overbooked the flight and were asking for volunteers to take a flight out the next morning. Basically because of that and god knows what else, there was a big delay in boarding, which gave Mike and I a chance to talk a bit more. Then some lady started talking to Mike about Las Vegas and some gambler there who owns a limo company. She kept going on and on about it, and I was getting irritated because that was like the last chance I was going to have to talk to Mike. Eventually...and way late, the flight finally boarded. We ended up leaving about 45 minutes late for whatever reason, and I basically left behind the best weekend I've had in many, many years and some of the most awesome people you'd ever want to meet.

The flight from Milwaukee to Minneapolis was uneventful, but extremely late, which was ok because I had a two hour layover anyway, so it ate into the amount of time I'd have to sit in the airport before I took off again. So the plane lands and I get off and check the board for my next departure gate. It was F3. Ok, got my gate and I'm ready to go. So where's F3? Well, it was literally about a quarter or a third of a mile from my arrival gate. My god that was a long walk. Especially with as much as my carry on bag weighed. It was like packing an extra midget over my shoulder or something.

So I finally get over there and I get myself an ice mocha from the Caribou Coffee place. The prices were good, so for once I didn't feel like I was getting ripped off in an airport. I sat down with my coffee and tried to call home, but there was no answer. So I called my mom and talked to her for a while. When I was done talking to her, I tried to listen to my portable radio. Let me tell you something. I got about two AM stations from where I was sitting, and weren't neither one of them coming in clearly, so I switched over to FM. Not much there either, but I listened to one classic rock station for a bit while I waited. Unfortunately, I was sipping on my coffee and I waited too long, because I was only about a quarter of the way done with it when my next plane started boarding. So I tanked it down as fast as I could, which naturally gave me the cold headache I deserved for drinking it so fast. Anyway, I boarded the plane and headed for home.

Fortunately, the plane home wasn't as loaded as the others and we had room to space ourselves out. I spent some quality time reading the book I had taken along with me on the trip, "The Complete Sherlock Homes," which includes all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Holmes and Watson's marvelous and mysterious adventures. Reading is something I've always loved to do, but I never seem to have the time or the ambition to do it anymore. I think it's about time I did.

So we get back to the Boise airport EXACTLY on time, which was pretty sweet. I get off the plane and...oh, there was something else I wanted to mention about the planes. They don't feed you anymore. They give you drinks but that's it. If you want food you have to pay two bucks for about a third of a can of pringles and five bucks for some crappy snack pack with wheat thins, oreo cookies, dried fruit and trail mix. Whoopie! What the hell ever happened to the peanuts? Sheesh! And jeez people, just charge five bucks more for the friggin' tickets and feed us. I mean really, how cheap can you get?

So I get off the plane in Boise and after a long walk to the departures area, I see my beautiful wife standing there waiting for me with a big smile on her face. She ran up and threw her arms around me and gave me a big kiss. Now I was home. Again, happy to be home, and yet sad that I had to leave my friends behind. Fortunately, the one thing I'll never have to leave behind are the memories I took with me. I only hope that I'll get to see the same people there next time around, so we can once again have the amazing time that we experienced at this year's It Came From Lake Michigan Film Festival.

Once again, thank you to Wayne Clingman, to everyone who helped him to get it all together and to all the patrons and guests for making it the wonderful event, and the wonderful experience that it was.

Photos From the Festival

From left to right: William Zenobia, Mike Conway, Wayne Clingman, Brian Morton and Matt Vaessen.

Frank Delle and his totally awesome wife Laurie.

Mike Conway giving his class on old school special effects.

Mike Watt sitting at the celebrity table he shared with Amy Lynn Best.

Some cool swag that one of the vendors was selling.