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It’s been quite a week here in Rodent Land. Before you read on, if you haven’t already read Monday’s post, now’s the time to get caught up on the week’s drama.
So after Monday’s drama, I think we were all supposed to feel a bit disheartened—like we’re all just a bunch of worthless hacks. But it’s actually been a really fun week. After the initial shock and outrage over the whole thing, this whole fiasco turned out to be one of those amusing little things that we can all sit around and laugh about. In fact, we’ve learned to embrace our status as rodents, and we’ve all bonded over it. The week has just been one rat joke after another.
Fortunately, we had all kinds of opportunities to discuss it—because we had five screenings this week. We had screenings on Monday and Tuesday morning—after which Clay and I had to scramble to write up our show, since we had to record on Wednesday morning. Fortunately, it all went off without much of a hitch. All of the writing was done (miraculously, really) by 5 or 6 on Tuesday. And we were sure that it was going to be a good show.
On Wednesday morning, I got up and raced out the door at 8—in time to fill up the tank and make it to the studio in time to meet Clay at 8:45ish. We rehearsed once, only to find that, unlike last week’s show (which started out way too short), this week’s show was way too long. So we sat down and started trimming things down. Then, at just after 9, we set up the studio and got ready to go.
Now, I’m not a morning person—and, similarly, my voice is not a morning voice. First thing in the morning, I’m a little bit phlegmy—and it’s even worse during allergy season. Clay happened to be having the same vocal issues, so we ended up getting off to a late start, since we’d had to spend so much time hacking up a lung. Then we had a few false starts, after realizing we’d written some pretty good tongue twisters for ourselves (try saying “filmmaker Morgan Spurlock” a few times). Then, however, things finally came together. Our sound levels were right, our time was good, and we didn’t trip over each other nearly as much as we did last week. So then we got the show edited and ready to go. By 10:30, we were out the door and on our way to the North Star Café to celebrate over coffee and the world’s best morning glory muffins. We finally got the hang of things—just in time for John to return from Greece.
I must say, though—this week’s show was one of my personal favorites of the 14 I’ve done. You can here it for yourself at WCBE.org.
On Wednesday night, I headed out to see The Forbidden Kingdom. When I got there, I met Jason and his girlfriend, Milu, at the door, and we wandered down the hall together. Even though it was still 45 minutes before the screening was scheduled to begin, they had already started letting the crowd in. That didn’t strike us as a problem until we got inside and made our way halfway up the stairs, only to discover that our usual seats had been taken. None of the others had gotten there before us—and the reps hadn’t saved our seats (either that, or those people who were sitting there had taken the “Reserved for Press” signs off and helped themselves). So we ended up sitting at the very end of the row, in seats that didn’t make us happy at all. And I ended up sitting next to some guy who somehow managed to get a cell phone into the theater (despite the fact that they’d apparently been very strict on the no-cell-phone thing), and it kept ringing throughout the entire movie. And if his phone weren’t ringing, he was having some very loud conversation with the guy next to him. I was tempted to hit him—or perhaps grab his phone off his hip and turn it off—but I didn’t.
So after Wednesday night’s screening, we were back at it on Thursday morning—for CJ7—and then again on Thursday night for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. At the Thursday morning screening, we got to hear all of Neil’s stories about his adventures at the 88 Minutes screening on Wednesday night. Apparently, some drunk guy ran into the theater, jumped down from the balcony, and sat down in the press seats. Neil politely told the guy that he might want to move—so he did. Not long after that, a whole bunch of security guys came in and dragged the guy out. I really feel bad that I missed that one—but from what I hear about the movie, I made the better choice for Wednesday night screenings.
I did, however, also miss out on the new rep accusing Neil of making up Film School Rejects on the way into the theater, just so he could claim to be press—because she’d never heard of him. Nice.
And that takes me to Thursday night’s adventure. My husband, Paul, joined me for the Sarah Marshall screening—and as we were making our way out of the parking garage, we ran into Jason…and then we met Kevin in the lobby. So we all made our way into the theater, where we found David, sitting in the middle of the back row of the bottom section of the theater. There was a whole bunch of confusion over the press seats, though, since one of the reps had put down “Reserved for Press” signs, but then she’d written names on them—because she was apparently bringing her whole family. So after we finally figured out the whole seating situation, we settled in to compare notes on the week. Just as we were chatting, some woman from a couple of seats down got up and climbed over us to get out. On the way out, she apparently made some comment to the rep’s mom, inquiring, in the nosiest way possible, who she was. When she came back from her bathroom break, she then took aim at us.
“So you’re the press,” she said in an accusatory tone. “And who are you with?”
We all just kinda looked at each other with that Is she for real? look.
David replied by explaining to her that we all write for various online publications. She huffed.
“And you?” she continued, focusing her gaze on Paul and me. At this point, I was pretty much done with the woman, and I just wanted her to finish climbing over me, so I could go back to sitting comfortably, instead of scrunching up so she could stand in front of me and accuse me of stealing press seats.
“Same,” I replied.
With another huff, she returned to her seat, just two seats down from Paul, and announced loudly, “They’re not press.”
I swear David was about to get up and punch her. In fact, he told me to go slap her—since I could get away with it, being a chick and all.
So, clearly, it was a big week for Internet writer discrimination. But it seems that rodents (while prolific), are also pretty tough. I’m pretty sure we’ll survive. And, really, what doesn’t kill us will only make us stronger.
This week was definitely an exhausting one, but I must admit that it was also a whole heck of a lot of fun. I can’t wait to see what new drama unfolds next week—and I look forward to seeing the movies, too.
