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03/25/2006: "Highlights from the screening by Christopher Folino"

It was a great showing and we had a packed house, I got to the Fine Arts Theatre around 5PM and met Tito, our director of photography and executive producer so we could do a tech run with the theatre. Suddenly, I hear our main lead’s voice Kevin Kirkpatrick’s and I see him in the restaurant scene up on the big screen.
I looked over at Tito and just kind of smiled and soaked in the moment. It took twenty years to get here, sadly I had to be looking at Kevin Kirkpatrick, however, the moment wasn’t lost.

It just got better from there, the next thing the theatre did was place the words “Gamers” on the movie marquee and the movie posters on the front. I took pictures of it with my camera phone and then Kevin Sherwood arrived and it was nice to sit in an empty theatre with the three guys just chewing the fat and talking a little bit about how things would go.
I told Kevin I was going to make him stand-up and I would plea to all the talent agencies to take him on as a client. I kept my word on that bad boy.



From there it all happened pretty quickly, old friends, mentors, and co-workers all showed up. I’m talking old school friends from Interplay, Nativity School, Bishope Amat, KELM, and my real estate agent from Irvine Pat Roberson.
And some industry folks started coming in and then the actors arrived. John Heard came and he told me that this was his first time ever at a screening for a movie he’s been in.

My dad showed up with T-Shirts he had made for the night and he handed them out to some of the actors and crew. It was pretty damn cool, and I had my wife and daughter there and I sat next Virgil and Tess Thompson from Address One Post. The main actors Dave Hanson and Scott Allen Rinker brought a lot of friends and it was cool to see a very mixed audience.
My brother Michael flew in from Chicago and my brother Steven came with our good friend Jeff. However, we had a lot of folks I’d never seen or met before and that was cool, I didn’t want a totally friendly audience.

I spoke a little bit before the movie started and all I could remember was thinking “Man, this is a full house, and these suckers better laugh!”

The movie began and we had them laughing from start to finish. There was only one scene where it died and the next day I called the post house and had them remove it. It’s a flashbacks scene in Africa with some Pagan kid’s, we moved it to the end credits, because, it really killed the flow of the movie.

After the movie I had three distributors come up to me and talk about the film. They gave it a great review and I took their cards and we are sending them a screener copy to show their bosses and to get some offers. We are also sending out 30 DVD screener copies to various distributors who couldn’t make the screening.


I would guess in two weeks we will know exactly what will become of the movie and our goal is for theatrical distribution.

The day after the screening I woke up like I do every day and went to work.
It was cool with me, I got to make a movie and watch it with a real audience and we made them laugh. I’m not sure what’s going to happen next, however, I do believe the ride is just starting.

Tomorrow, I'll share some stories about my phone call with Harry Knowles from "Ain't it Cool News" and how we got a screener copy stolen of the movie. It was a strange 48 hours after the premiere.