Sedona Film Festival: Days 1 & 2
/Early in January while at home one afternoon, I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize. It was Patrick Schweiss, director of the Sedona Film Festival personally calling to congratulate me for the acceptance of Don’t Tell My Mom as part of their official selection for the 2016 festival! From this immediate first impression (the ordinary festival would've just sent an email), I could tell that this was going to be a special festival experience.
On top of being accepted, I was offered 6 free nights of lodging (!) and 2 all-access passes. I recruited my composer and former roommate Bryan Hume to join me on this adventure, and on Sunday February 21, we hit the road for a weeklong excursion in Sedona. We were in for a delight in every way possible!
Sunday
Best license plate ever
Starting with a fantastic drive, 8 hours of catching up after months of Bryan and I not seeing each other, we made our way from LA/OC to Sedona, and made it to our lodging in time to catch a beautiful sunset. We stayed at the Briar Patch Inn, which was essentially a Zen mountain center: tucked away to the North of Sedona with beautiful grounds and a creek running by it. The woman who gave us our keys added to this mystique by the way she described the place. We’d learn that most of the other filmmakers were staying at more conventional hotels, some how we lucked out and stayed here!
After checking into this fantastic getaway (and plenty of honeymoon jokes) we treated ourselves to a delicious dinner at Pisa Lisa, a locally owned restaurant that we went to merely because it was close to the festival headquarters but it had some of the most delicious pizza flavors I’ve ever had! We loved it so much we ate here again later in the week.
Pisa Lisa pizza
Now we checked into the VIP Lounge, got our passes, and enjoyed our first of the nightly parties hosted by the festival. Every night there would be a 9pm party at a new venue with free drinks and food! And we found out that lunch and dinner was served in the Lounge every day: including our breakfast served at the Inn, we wouldn’t have to pay for a single meal for the week! This is where the festival began to feel like an idyllic alternate reality.
We found from the very first night that the parties were a fantastic way to meet a mixture of filmmakers, festival board members, VIP guests, and local residents. We befriended board member Lew Hoyt the first night and he’d continue to be one of our biggest supporters through the fest – he pitched our film better than we did! The festival currency was Lobby Cards (see photo below) and I am thankful to Eric Otten for the suggestion that I bring them to Sedona as a way to get the word out about the film. Things only could get better from here!
DTMM Lobby Card front and back
Monday
Kicking off our first day with a 12pm showing of our film, Don’t Tell My Mom. This one was in the small theater and every seat was filled! The audience laughed at every joke and applauded tremendously: I’ve come to realize the film plays the best among crowds of people who have kids of their own. Screening followed with a Q+A with some great questions about writing, budget, production, music, credits, and more: we made sure to ham it up and make as fun of answers as possible since those are my favorite types of Q/A. When asked if we had told our moms about the film (a recurring question through the fest), Bryan got the biggest laugh when he said “My mom is pretty much the mom from this movie.”
Our screening was followed by the documentary Very Semi-Serious, which is an in-depth look at the New Yorker cartoons and cartoonists. As someone who grew up with New Yorkers always around the house, this was an excellent look at their significance and creation, and how each one is an expression of the eccentric artists behind them. I also have a connection to the film’s DP Kirsten Johnson, who directed Cameraperson which was one of the best movies I saw at Sundance.
Next up we attended the world premiere of Lost & Found, due to the fact that we had met the director Joseph Itaya in line the night before: one of the best parts about the festival was meeting filmmakers and then scheduling their movies afterwards. Lost & Found is essentially a Hardy Boys novel come to life, with some great family-friendly mystery and spectacular locations in the Pacific Northwest. Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, Saw) plays the ultimate Scooby-Doo style villain and has a blast doing so. The film was accompanied by the short We Detected Your Footage May Be Shaky, and I loved how the festival usually programmed shorts with features as an opportunity to see more projects!
We enjoyed catered lunch and dinner in the VIP Lounge with a new restaurant every day – only one day didn’t provide vegetarian options, but otherwise the food was always delicious! Equally as important, these were the best chances to meet people throughout the week.
Next up was a program not in the world of film but that of theater: Dr. Keeling’s Curve is a one-man-show starring Mike Farrell (who I admittedly hadn’t heard of but was a star on MASH) as the scientist who first started researching carbon dioxide. The play was a terrific exploration of one man’s life in parallel with the increasingly dangerous climate change and global warming. I appreciated how up-to-date the play felt, including mention of the effect of the meat industry, the frozen methane, and the current refugee crisis which are all related to the bigger issue at hand. I hope that this message can reach audiences all over the country, and had a chance to meet Mike Farrell and thank him at the after party.
Mike Farrell in "Dr. Keeling's Curve"
By the 9pm party it had already felt like we’d been here for a long time but it had barely been 24 hours! We’d often run into the festival director, Patrick Schweiss, who is the heart and soul of the Sedona festival, and his exuberant energy exemplifies how wonderful an experience this place is. A huge highlight of this night’s party was that I met Christa, the manager of Horsin’ Around Adventures. After a nice conversation, she set us up with a horseback ride for the next day!