For part four of our series, our regular SpoutBlog writer Bill brings us this very creepily delicious Halloween day post.

This Halloween my 10-year-old son hit a milestone in his life. He was finally old enough to wander through his first haunted corn maze. Yeah, a haunted corn maze…not a haunted house. We live in a small town surrounded by big fields, so this is what we get (and we get excited for it and are very happy with it).

So, Saturday evening I loaded up the family roadster with my wife, son, and two of his friends, and we drove to the maze. Although typically mild-mannered boys, the trip to the maze dripped with male vibrato:

“I’m not going to be scared.” “We’re going to run ahead and try to scare other people.” “Dad, maybe you should get the pink glow stick.” (This is what they give people who are weak at heart or a complete sissy.) “I’m going to ditch everyone and go by myself?”

Although my wife and I did our best to build up the suspense and general sense of impending doom, the boys would have none of it. They were unbreakable.

And then we got to the maze…

By the time we arrived a short line had already formed, so we had a bit of a wait. Allowing no opportunity for scaring to go to waste, the purveyors of the maze projected horror movies onto a large screen for those of us waiting in line. The were the usuals, including the original Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Ring, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Jeepers Creepers.

Cutting to the chase (literally?), they showed only the most horrific and terrifying scenes from these films. Heads severed. Running damsels caught…and mutilated. Intestines exposed. Although showing just these short clips didn’t give these films a chance to build suspense, they certainly primed the adrenaline pumps of three 10-year-old boys.

By the time we entered the maze, all the boys needed to see were the characters–in a dark corn field, wielding whatever power they used to create mayhem in the films we had seen snippets of–and they were terrified. There was certainly no going by themselves. And they all wished aloud that they had received the pink glow sticks themselves. We spent the next 45 minutes with my wife leading the way (sure, why not sacrifice her first?), boys in the middle, and me at the end, left to whatever creature might sneak up from behind.

I gotta tell you, it was GREAT! Although Paul might argue otherwise (see his recent post), being terrified–and not just being a little scared by watiching a film–is a good thing. It provides a release that can come from no other source in our lives. But not only that, being terrified also provides some perspective. The conversation on the drive home that night was no longer about male vibrato. It was all about camaraderie. And isn’t that a lesson to be learned from ALL horror films? Don’t split up! Stick together! Help each other! And for goodness sake, don’t EVER turn around while running away from something creepy.

Ah. Fear.

The sudden sensation of having my gut gripped in a vice and lurched up into my throat as I sit in a dark theater. Slowly unclenching my muscles as the credits roll after spending 90 minutes suppressing the most primal of my instincts: fight or flight. Waiting weeks for the tingly tremors going up my spine every time I go into the basement to subside. Waking up in the middle of the night to two teenagers talking outside on the sidewalk and thinking they’re a duo of escaped convicts in my living room. These are just a few of the side effects I get from watching a 90-minute horror flick.

As a boy, I once overheard some kids at the back of the bus talking about A Nightmare on Elm Street. For months afterward I sang “Jesus Loves Me” every time I made the walk from my bed to the bathroom. Herein lies the real lasting effect of horror. It’s simply not a 90-minute “roller coaster ride,” as so many people might say. Your imagination never conjures up a roller coaster jumping out of the closet with a knife while you’re babysitting. Horror sticks with you like an ice pick in your consciousness. Forever.

Ever notice most horror movies only need 90 minutes to mess you up, while most dramas need over two hours to engage you? There’s something unhealthy about that. To people who say horror fulfills a natural desire to get spooked, I say, “Sure, and Red Bull is a natural source of vitamins.” And how old the movie–or the viewer–is has no bearing on whether or not it’s scary. In The Innocents (1961), when the ghost of the butler suddenly glides into the window behind a little boy standing in a dark greenhouse, I popped. I’m thirty freaking years old and later that night, as I tried to go to sleep, I couldn’t convince my adult brain the butler was not gliding up next to my bed.

For all the squeamish whose horror-loving buddies always talk you into midnight shows, quit cold turkey. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is plenty enough for your spook supplement. Want more? Agree to a TBS showing of the original Halloween with all the freaky parts cut out. Dying in a car accident, catching the West Nile virus from a mosquito, finding Mercury behind the furnace, these are all legitimate fears we endure every day without having to lose sleep over whether or not a butler will be floating over me when I open my eyes.

Boycott horror. For the children.

Here’s part 3 of our Halloween series, from Julie, who leads our marketing team at Spout.

See, I’m just not into horror flicks. Just not. Psycho never scared me. I could not think of a reason to watch Freddie or Chuckie. The extraterrestrial beings might make me jump, but they don’t really give me a reason to go to the movies. Ghosts and mummies and angry hybrid creatures and biological experiments gone terribly wrong….

Yawn.

On the other hand, I lust for vampires. There it is. And I’m troubled by that. When I take a loose poll among my friends, people I admire, thoughtful people, I find it tends to fall out this way–the women of my generation are hot for vampires.

We are the pre-Buffy vampire generation. That may have something to do with it. I’m not sure. I have yet to see the Buffy movie or the shows. They’re on my want to see it list, for sure. I think Buffy might save me, help me to evolve a bit. That is, if I want to be saved….

I inherited my vampire lust. My mom was addicted to the TV daytime drama Dark Shadows. She and her friends were Navy wives, whose husbands were gone for long stretches. Barnabas Collins became an object of extreme focus for them, and I watched some of those episodes myself, at the ripe old age of, oh six or seven or something. Barnabas Collins may have been my first crush, in fact.

But my first real-boy love was for a boy named Doug. I was eight or nine, and he was 10 or 11. We lived on a naval base in the Philippines, where the only thing in the world to do at night was go to the movies. They were free, so we all did. Often we saw the same movies over and over. It was one night around Halloween, when The Horror of Dracula was playing, when Doug honored me by punching me hard on the shoulder as he walked by, near the base theatre. I sat in that movie, nursing my bruised shoulder, breathless in the knowledge that Doug knew I was alive, and watching women succumb to Christopher Lee’s domination–rather gladly. I was in thrall over both things.

How sick is that? On any scale of perversion? High, wouldn’t you say? Yes, indeedy.

So I’ve been thinking about this vampire thing, and yesterday called up my friend and former lit professor, Kathleen. She has spent some time looking into gothic and monster lit. And I just wanted to know, why are my friends and I hot for vampires?

She was quick to point out that the bloodletting themes in folklore and literature are very much a form of sexual iconography. That the death by vampire bite is a thinly veiled metaphor for sexual climax. She talked about how vampire traditions really only make sense in countries where there is a wide understanding of Christian themes, because the Dracula stories are mirrored Christian stories. Dracula takes blood, Christ gives it. Both promise eternal life, but very opposite pictures of it, etc.

“But,” she says, “for you and your friends, it’s probably all about domination.”

What?!? But, but, but…. We’re talking working women here. In their 40s and more. Grownups. Good feminists. Women who have worked hard not to succumb to male domination. We’re talking about a generation of women who don’t need men to survive in the world. Attracted to domination? What the…?

“Yeah,” says Kathleen, “there’s the us we want to be, we wish to be, and then there’s the part that hasn’t evolved. Or the dark side. We all have a dark side, right?”

Sometimes, I hate the truth. It’s so inconvenient.

Why do we love vampire movies? They go where we don’t want to go in real life, I guess. Or where we pretend we don’t want to go. They tickle at repressed desire. And heavens help me, I love them. Especially this one.

Horrifying? You bet.

For part two of our Halloween series, we welcome Dodd Alley as our guest writer. Dodd, who provides lots of content at spout.com, is a student at Ohio University, where he’s working on an M.A. in Film Studies and writing a thesis that analyzes the presence of video game technology in contemporary horror films. You can check out his movie review blog posts on his spout.com film blog. - Kristin

Halloween is right around the corner, which means making way for a few traditions. A bowl of candy is sitting on my table ready to be attacked by strange kids in Napoleon Dynamite costumes, and a sloppily-carved jack-o-lantern is glowing on my front stoop, just waiting to be smashed by a girlfriendless teenage boy. Yes, some things about Halloween will never change. Or will they?

I am sure that many of you reading this blog know that Halloween stands for something else: watching films. With every house on the block emitting spooky sound effect from their web-covered windows, it sets the mood for horror. It only makes sense for us film buffs to give in to the magic, by grabbing a bag of Milk Duds and bringing on countless horror titles. It also makes sense that cable television networks should deliver that content directly to us eager viewers. Unfortunately, it seems that most networks no longer appreciate tradition.

It seems like only yesterday that a man named Ted Turner gave me a reason to love horror cinema. The presence of horror movies on television was not an act of selective programming on the night of October 31st. Instead, it was like Woodstock. TV Guide even issued an entire annual issue dedicated specifically to mapping out every horror film on every network throughout the week leading up to Halloween. TBS “Lock Your Doors Week” taught me about The Birds and The Bees, while USA “Up All Night” educated me in the cult of The Evil Dead and Hellraiser. TNT even celebrated the Creepshow films back-to-back. Like a football fan on New Year’s Day, I could only clutch the remote in overwhelming happiness.

This is not to say that horror is impossible to find on television today. AMC is running their annual Halloween marathon, while niche networks such as Sci Fi are sticking to their guns. However, programming choices over the years have dried up throughout Halloween week. While TBS used to clear its entire schedule for non-stop terror, their “We Know Funny” slogan will this year produce reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond. USA has killed “Up All Night” to instead bring us reruns of Law and Order on Halloween evening. As for TNT? They have traded in the great George Romero for a basketball game.

In a time of hundreds of channels, one would assume a massive selection of horror films would be scheduled during Halloween, but this is hardly the case. It seems networks have lost faith in the power of horror. I write this piece as a tribute to a time when television networks felt the Halloween spirit. On the thirty-first, when all avid horror fans stand before a Blockbuster shelf crying at the unavailability of The Howling and Poltergeist, it will reflect a time when watching horror flicks on basic cable was a warm tradition.

Do you think horror films are sufficiently shown on TV, or is the Jeepers Creepers marathon just not doing the trick? I’d love to hear your comments.

Happy Halloween!

Our Halloween series focuses on horror films and our hopeless draw to what scares us. For this kick-off post, we welcome Geoff to SpoutBlog. As one of Spout’s creative directors, Geoff has already gotten his hands messy with everything behind the scenes, but he can’t hide back there forever… -Kristin

In light of our upcoming national celebration of spookiness, we took a random sampling around the Spout campfire, asking, “What was the first (or most memorable movie) that had you scared s***less?” The results and discussion around the films were very telling. At our formative years in life, many of the cinematic images that terrified us Spout folks defied the logic of our then immature minds.

Other horrific images we saw on film were stored, and projected into the possibilities of real-life terror in our waking, alone moments; our most memorable scary moments were scary because our minds rationalized, “This could happen…”

What’s also interesting to note is the absence of bloody, grisly hatchet-bearing type horror in our informal poll. Maybe because we avoided it, or perhaps because it lacked the believability factor that our freaky minds latch onto. Regardless, fear–and, in general, emotion and it’s intrisic ties to movies–can’t be underestimated as a possible lynchpin connecting people and films.

At Spout, we’re exploring these connections and working hard to bake them into our site. But it will take the community’s shameless sharing of fear, joy, pain, disgust, gutbusting laughter, and inspiration to make Spout really work.

Here’s what we have for you. Do you have any experiences to share with us?

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

- Something about the way the mother was pulled in through a window going horizontally defied logic. Also, the scene where Freddy in sihouette is walking down an alley and his arms stretch longer than natural, with claws scraping against the walls had me frozen in fear.

- When your dreams start to be able to hurt you–now that’s scary. And as a kid, hiding under your covers seemed like protection. But in this movie, that’s not even safe anymore.

The Amityville Horror (1979)

- The scene where the toilets fill up and spew black goo really scared the [crap] out of me.

It’s Alive (1974)

- It was the TV ad for this flick in 1974 with a single claw hanging out of the baby carriage had me imagining the claw appearing everywhere (behind my pillow, at the end of the hall, etc.).

Poltergeist (1982)

- I watched it at the movie theatre and refused to put my feet on the floor for fear of someone grabbing them and ripping me out of my chair. “Come to the light, Caroline…”

- I hid behind the couch at my Aunt’s house catching snippets while the adults watched… I think I was 4 or 5. Couldn’t sleep for a week, wet the bed, woke up screaming… disaster.

- For me, the worst scene was the clown puppet…makes my skin clammy to this day.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

- I crapped my pants cause I was leaving for a hunting trip the next day and had to sit in the woods alone for about 5 hours a day. I think it was the camera work…not really knowing what was going on…just hearing stuff in the background when they ran through the woods.

Carrie (1976)

- The prom scene where the bucket of cows’ blood came cascading down on Sissy Spacek.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

- The scene where the child catcher came into the town with the net. Terrifying!

The Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

- Larry Drake, who played Bennie on LA Law, plays a similarly disposed person who hides inside of a scarecrow from a half-dead ghost/killer with a pitchfork. The camera angle as he looks out through the holes in the mask in terror as his slayer approaches him is perfect.

Dreamscape (1984)

- Dennis Quaid is a child psychologist experimenting with swanky new technology which will take him into his patients’ dreams. Obviously, these kids suffer from chronic nightmares. Super-scary stuff. All I have to say is “The Snake-man.” As I analyze myself, I realize I had a mortal fear at age six of a being which was part-man, part-snake. A giant white snake is a Jungian archetype for the monster/strength a boy must master to become a man. When you put arms and legs on the snake and it chases little boys around trying to eat them, it doesn’t represent so much a passage into manhood as it does a scaly, white-boy-mutilator.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

- I was 7 when it came out and my parents took me to see it. I was fine until the little guy turned all white and sickly and we had to leave the theater because I was so scared. Ever since seeing that movie I have had a fear of closets, piles of stuffed animals and Reeses Pieces.

Jaws (1975)

- When I was a kid, we had goldfish. When they died, we flushed them down the toilet. My older brother used to tell me, “That’s what happened to Jaws–that’s how he got to be so big. His parents flushed him down the toilet and he became a huge fish underground.” I think I was 8 when I saw Jaws in the movie theatre. I learned to “squat” shortly therafter.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

- It’s the story of an ex-con who endears himself to a widow with two kids because he thinks she has money stashed somewhere from a robbery her deceased husband committed. Mitchum’s character shared a cell with the husband and when released presents himself to the family as a preacher. He’s sweet to mom but terrorizes the kids on a regular basis. I saw this film in college but it was still scary to me to think about how a stranger could come into your life and and turn your world upside down. The idea that what’s so obviously wrong to you is not always apparent to others is a very powerful idea. Good won over evil in this case but I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I wanted those kids to know that we knew what a creep Robert was.

Signs (2002)

- I walked out of the theater into the cool, crisp, dark night spotted with tiny bright stars. The world was different, I could feel it. I let my mind think about those crazy aliens taking over world. I had to. I knew if I didn’t let my mind think about it that I would be spooked by every little thing–branches blowing in the breeze, a quiet click in my car, the too quiet darkness of my house.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

- I had nightmares about that whole flick! Especially the oompa-loomas freaked me out with their orange complexions.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

- You’re all going to laugh, but this movie scared the crap out of me as a kid. Flying monkeys? That’s just not natural.

- I think those gray flying monkeys in bellhop costumes are universally scary.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

- The giant squid. Repeating nightmares that the squid eats my dad. Some very expensive ship-to-shore phone calls to try to get me to sleep through the night. But I don’t think I did until Dad came home again. Kind of typical Navy kid problem, I’ve since learned.

Back to the Future (1985)

- Not the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, but I remember being, as a very young lad, absolutely terrified of the scene in which Marty puts on the radiation suit and blasts some Van Halen from his walkman in his future father’s ears to wake him up and scare him into asking his future mother to the prom. I avoided wearing my headphones in bed for a long time after seeing that scene out of fear that I would be awakened with screeching hammer-on guitar licks and then open my eyes and see man in a yellow suit trying to talk like Darth Vader.

Some of us first saw Shakespeare Behind Bars at film festivals more than a year ago, but others were watching for the first time. Either way, it’s the kind of film experience that draws you in and hangs on tight–even more so because it’s real. Listen in on the conversation Bill, Kristin, Dave and I had after watching the film, then go out and rent it, buy it at spout.com, whatever. Just see it.

(For more on this film, read my blog post.)

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If you don’t listen to Elvis Mitchell’s radio program on KCRW, The Treatment, you should start. A while back he interviewed Todd Field about his new film, Little Children. As Field laments how taxing it is to direct a film involving so many characters, Mitchell compliments Field on how attentive he is that each character act differently around each of the other characters. It’s a subtle nuance in Field’s films, but it’s one of the things making Little Children and his earlier film, In the Bedroom, so distinct. And, unfortunately, it’s a rare thing to see in cinema.

We all act differently around different people. We naturally gauge things, like how intimate we are with somebody, what their education is, if we share things in common, if they scare us, bore us, excite us, and whether or not they’re somebody we want to impress. All these little processes happening beneath the surface influence how we act around a person.

In most movies, though, the protagonist walks through life acting the same way around everyone they see. (Maybe it’s one of the things we admire in a hero, their ability to be unwavering–something we wish we were better at.) But these characters who don’t alter which parts of themselves they present to different people are..well…unbelievable. They’re caricatures.

“We go to the movies to watch people,” Field says. Regardless of how beautiful the cinematography or music may be, most of us are there to watch people. Todd Field provides some of the best people-watching out there. For that, I think he’s one of the most distinct–and hopefully influential–filmmakers of our time.

(I was able to have a very brief conversation with Field at Telluride, where I also wrote a post about Little Children.)

I just started reading a lengthy article by Malcolm Gladwell in the October 16 issue of The New Yorker, and it already has me all hyped up. My mind is spinning.

The article is called “The Formula” and carries the sub heading “What if you built a machine to predict hit movies?” (Unfortunately it isn’t available on line.) Essentially, the article asks why certain movies really resonate with us while others, although they may be “good,” don’t move us to laugh or cry or feel. Then it takes that question, which probes at human nature and emotion, and looks at how a group of people have been working to create a formula to explain which combination of elements hit us. Ultimately, their work is geared at predicting which films will deeply move the largest number of people.

Here’s an excerpt from the first pages of the article:

“…each additional narrative detail has complicated emotional associations, and it is the subtle combination of all these associations that makes us laugh or choke up when we remember a certain movie, every single time…

“Of course, the optimal combination of all those elements is a mystery. That’s why it’s so hard to make a really memorable movie, and why we reward so richly the few people who can.”

Gladwell goes on to ask if it’s truly possible to put together an “international team of story experts” and figure it out. A very intriguing question to me. We’ll be back with more on SpoutBlog after we’ve had a chance to read and digest…

Food is such a universal gathering mechanism. So are bonfires. We had both last weekend, which attracted about 20 of our friends and a good handful of their kids. It reminded me why community–coming together around common needs and loves–is so important.

The occasion was nothing more than a welcoming of fall. Six friends brought their special-recipe chili, and others brought corn bread, really amazing desserts, and plenty of beer. We had a regular chili cook-off and even voted and gave out prizes. Then we all migrated to the bonfire out back, where we sat around telling stories while the kids ran in and out of the warm house and cold night wearing dress-up clothes. It was just what I needed on so many levels.

But, before I go any further with this, I want to recognize the danger of trying to celebrate community without romanticizing it and making a good number of people roll their eyes. I realize my own little idyllic domestic scene isn’t going to warm the cockles of your heart, so I won\’t bore you with any more details.

I do think, though, that whatever was at the heart of my little party Saturday night is at the heart of what warms us all. Not the chili and the fire as much as the desire to share something with others. It translates to so many types of moments. I’ve gotten glimpses of this at film festivals, and I certainly felt it during Spout’s 51 Birch Street event and outside on the sidewalk afterwards (here’s a podcast of that conversation, in case you missed it). It can even be apparent as you walk down a busy sidewalk with strangers during winter’s first big snow. You don’t necessarily interact but you’re somehow connected.

What I think we want, as humans, is to experience something–whether it’s the mood of a conversation around the fire or the mood of a powerful film–then look around at the people who have experienced it with us, sharing a moment with them to remind us we are not alone.

Film lovers lucky enough to live in one of this country’s great film cities, Austin, not only have loads of great theaters to see movies in. They also have a PBS program called “SXSW Presents.” Every Tuesday evening, this program–which is in its third season and is hosted by the SXSW festival producer, Matt Dentler–offers up an out-of-the-way, must-see movie. For free! In the comfort of living rooms all over Austin! Must be nice.

We can’t all be talented enough to jerry-rig our antennas and pull in Austin’s public television signal. Sigh. But luckily the show has started putting its after-film panel discussions online, where we can all listen in. For now, that’s just going to have to do. (Thanks for giving us a clearer taste of the great films we’re missing!)

Check out the schedule of films and find the panel discussions at the program’s site.

It’s almost time for Filmmaker Independent’s 2nd annual Filmmaker Forum. The title of this year’s forum is “Make and Sell your Film Without Getting Screwed.” The graphic treatment is all two-by-fours and wood screws. It’s cute, but a bit cynical. It’s like a Lamaze class advertising, “How to deliver your baby without getting sliced open and dropped by your insurance.” The fear factor is put to work.

When it gets down to it, I’m not sure how many filmmakers out there look back at the early stages of their career and think about who screwed them over. I have, however, heard many tell stories of how naive they were about making and distributing films in the early days of their careers.

The most recent story is one I came across at Telluride. Rolf De Heer was there with Ten Canoes (now at the Chicago International Festival). For those of you who don’t know, Rolf De Heer is one of a few independents who made a film industry out of essentially nothing–in his case, he created the industry in Australia, where one didn’t exist. As a young director, De Heer’s first three films were commercial failures, not because they weren’t good, but because he just didn’t understand the Market. His first trip to Cannes was an eye opener and a turning point. He showed up with his film under his arm and quickly realized all the other films had booked screenings and parties six months in advance for the Industry folk. Nobody carrying any weight in the Industry even saw his film.

“I decided I was not going to do it [the traditional way] anymore. Each film takes a year or more and becomes the process of me living my life. If the process is miserable, then I’m throwing my life away. I am going to make the films I enjoy making… work closely with a few people rather than very many at a distance. And I prefer to be passionate about the subject matter because if the film goes nowhere it doesn’t matter.”

De Heer keeps his budgets low so investors don’t fear a huge loss. He’s built up his credibility with organizations offering production grants. He doesn’t stake his hopes, like so many other international filmmakers, on the American distribution deal. In so many words, he doesn’t get screwed because he doesn’t make decisions that place his love for filmmaking at the whim of somebody else. Is it really more complicated than that?

All last month I was swamped trying to pull off last week’s event with the film 51 Birch Street. Now I’m in a period of reflection and discovery as I look back on the event and pull together everything I’ve learned.

Ultimately, this event and my post-event examination of it is all a part of a broader goal: I’m working on a way to make grassroots screenings of overlooked films a feasible thing for anyone with a lot of friends and a passion for film. So far, I’m learning it’s doable. With our very first try, we sold over 120 tickets and broke even with the money spent to rent the theater and promote the event. Even though the event wasn’t flawless, it was a definite success. Here are a few of the lessons I learned:

High tech promises a lot; low-tech is reliable
Skype is a great service. But for our Q&A after the film with Doug Block, nothing was more reliable than a speakerphone and an old PA system. Likewise, we would have avoided technical difficulties with the projection had we gone with Beta SP format (for you non-geeks, that’s analog tape).

Even with embarrassing technical difficulties, a crowd doesn’t leave a good film
I’ve seen people pop out of their seat like a snake crawled in their pants at the first sign of technical difficulties at the multiplex. Nobody wanted to leave 51 Birch Street until it was over.

A serious film can be fun if you’re there with friends
I’ll go on the record and say Hollywood has got it backward. They’re gun-shy when it comes to films that make you feel something. But what they don’t get is this: not only are these films not as intimidating when we watch them with friends, but they can actually be more “fun” than something like Employee of the Month (opening this weekend).

Free T-shirts can’t go wrong
No need for explanation.

It’s truly rewarding to see people of all ages start a dialogue
This is where I tear up a bit, and you either you get it or you don’t. Bringing a film that probably won’t otherwise be seen (in this town, at least) to a theater full of people, and then watching them start talking afterward in ways they normally wouldn’t is worth far more than the time and sweat that went in to pulling the event together.

Friends are essential
This one seems obvious, but it’s not. When you truly have to depend on friends–especially those in the projection booth saving you from total humiliation–it’s nothing less than nauseating. It isn’t easy to be totally out of control and dependent on somebody else, but it’s good medicine.

This month and next, 51 Birch Street will have a limited U.S. theatrical release via Truly Indie, with one-week runs beginning on the following dates in these cities:

Oct 18 - New York City (Cinema Village)
Oct 20 - Los Angeles (West Side Pavillion)
Nov 3 - Huntington, Long Island (Cinema Arts Center)
Nov 3 - Highland Park, Chicago (Rennaisance)
Nov 3 - San Francisco (Opera Plaza)
Nov 3 - Minneapolis (Lagoon)
Nov 24 - Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)

After Spout’s preview screening of 51 Birch Street, we called up director Doug Block for a Q&A. (It’s about fifteen minutes long–grab a snack, sit back, and pretend like you were there with us.)

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Kristin and Dave run into some young film professors and their companions on the sidewalk after Spout’s 51 Birch Street event. They have a conversation examining the ins and outs of crafting such a personal film. (The conversation could have gone on all night, if it wasn’t so blasted cold!)

Listen in…

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