And the Award Goes To…

Back in March, I had one of my proudest moments as a dad.  On a stage in a 75-year-old theater in California, my teenage daughter accepted the award for Best Drama in the Filmmakers of Tomorrow competition at the 2017 San Luis Obispo Film Festival.  I couldn’t have been more thrilled for her!

Flashback to December, just before winter break. My daughter had an idea for a short film based on the word sonder, which refers to the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own. (Haven’t heard of the word sonder? That’s because this guy made it up. But it’s definitely a word that should exist.) My daughter planned her film, recruited friends to act, filmed in multiple locations over several days, and edited the film to a concise 1 minute 24 seconds, complete with graphics and music. She learned that the San Luis Obispo Film Festival has a young filmmakers competition, so she entered her film the first week of January.

I can’t stress enough how much this film was her doing. All I did was drive her to a couple of shooting locations, encourage her when one of the shootings fell through, and sign off on the film festival application. She did everything else. Everything. She wanted to make a film and submit it to a film festival, and that’s exactly what she did.

I’ve got more to say about the film festival experience, but let me share her film right here:

Amazing, huh?

I don’t think either of us really expected her film to be screened at the festival. The festival took submissions from all over the country, and this was my daughter’s first film. But a few weeks after submission, she got a call from one of the festival’s board members and found out that Sonder would be screened Sunday afternoon at the festival! There were a lot of exclamation points in the text messages she sent me after she found out.

As excited as we were, I wasn’t sure I could swing a trip to California to see her film on the big screen. But after a couple of weeks of planning and some financial help from her grandmother, I worked it out. I bought two plane tickets, reserved hotel rooms and a rental car, and took the 13-year-old shopping for her red carpet outfit. (Thanks, Emily, for your help with that!) And, yes, there would be a red carpet!

The Friday we traveled to California ended up quite the unusual day. I started the day in Colorado, where I had been on a ski trip all week. (Remind me to blog one day about learning to ski. That was an adventure.) At 5:30am, I caught a three-hour shuttle ride to the Denver airport, then flew to Nashville, where I met the 13-year-old at the airport. Her mom went into labor that morning, and she had to choose between the film festival and being on hand for the birth of her baby brother. She chose the film festival, arguing that the baby would be there when she got back, but screening one’s first film was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I couldn’t fault her logic.

So the two of us flew from Nashville to San Francisco, then drove our rental car down the coast to Santa Cruz, listening to the Hamilton soundtrack as we navigated the curving Central Coast highways well after sunset. We checked into our affordable and surprisingly charming hotel around 11pm. It was a long day, and one that involved three time zones for me, but we were super excited to have made it to California.

The next morning we took a little time to enjoy breakfast on the charming Santa Cruz boardwalk, and I recorded a birthday message for my sweetheart—sorry for missing your birthday, Em! Then we started our three-hour drive to San Luis Obispo. The drive through the green hills and agricultural valleys of California was beautiful, and by the end of the drive I was a brand new Hamilton fan. (Into the Woods was fun, too.)  The 13-year-old had brought her camera, naturally, and she took some fun time lapse videos of the drive into SLO, which ended with some amazing views of the hills surrounding the city.

We arrived just in time to find some parking, get in a minor fender bender (no lasting consequences, other than giving the 13-year-old a precedent she’ll likely call upon when she starts driving),  pick up the festival passes our friendly festival board member had left for us, and catch the noon showing of Equal Means Equal, a documentary about the discrimination and violence that women face in the United States, at the stunning Fremont Theater. Not a lighthearted way to start our festival experience, but it was a film my feminist daughter very much wanted to see.

We grabbed some lunch (at Mr. Pickles Sandwich Shop, because how can you not check out a place called Mr. Pickles Sandwich Shop), found a candy store stocking candy from around the world (that we vowed to return to), then made it to the Palm Theater (SLO has half a dozen movie theaters) in time to get the very last two seats for a screening of Heaven’s Floor, a film starring Clea DuVall based on the true story of a photographer who visited the Canadian Arctic and ended up adopting an orphaned Inuit girl. The film was solid, and the 13-year-old enjoyed the Q&A with the film’s writer-director.

In the late afternoon, we strolled around downtown San Luis Obispo. Between the restaurants and the shopping, I’m pretty sure the 13-year-old could have spent a week there. We returned to the candy store, one of several places where I bragged on my daughter for having a film screened at the festival. And we did a little souvenir shopping at the visitor’s center before wandering by the SLO mission, which was beautiful in the afternoon light. As we walked, the 13-year-old kept saying, “I can’t believe we flew across the country!” I smiled every time, and was thankful that I could give her this experience.

That Saturday evening, thanks to those festival passes the festival board member gave us, we got in a red carpet event. We weren’t allowed on the red carpet, however, just the famous people. I was pretty excited to see film critic Leonard Maltin in person on the red carpet, but the highlight of my celebrity spotting came later, when actor Josh Brolin, recipient of the film festival’s King Vidor Award for Excellence in Filmmaking, was introduced by none other than Jeff Bridges. Jeff Bridges! He’s just as cool in person as he is on screen. And you should have seen how excited the 13-year-old was to be a red carpet event in the stylish Fremont Theater. Oh, there were so many selfies.

After a very full day, we finally checked into our hotel and got a good night’s sleep. The next morning, we put on our red carpet outfits and drove back downtown. We had breakfast at a little café with garden seating and excellent hot chocolate and waffles. Then we made our way to a fascinating filmmakers panel, featuring half a dozen independent filmmakers showing films at the festival. They talked about their creative processes, but also all the others things they have to do to get films made. My budding filmmaker paid lots of attention! One of the filmmakers mentioned paying the bills by editing other people’s films and TV shows, while she worked on her own projects on the side. That resonated with my daughter, who really likes the film editing process.

We had time for a quick lunch and a half a game of chess (at a vegan restaurant, which wasn’t as terrible as I had feared), then made our way to the Mission Theater (that’s theater #3, if you’re counting) for the Filmmakers of Tomorrow showcase. The theater was full of young filmmakers, their friends and families, and assorted festival goers.  The 13-year-old was bouncing up and down in her seat with excitement at the chance to see her short film on the big screen. (Again, many selfies.) Her film looked so good on the big screen, and she was thrilled to have it screened alongside so many great films, including some really fantastic ones by high school students.

After the showcase, she got a fun trophy, and we took lots of pictures, both in front of the SLO Film Festival sign (no red carpet this time, sadly) and the charming streets of SLO. In fact, she carried the trophy around the rest of the afternoon, as we played tourist around downtown. She could have dropped it off at the car, but she wanted to hold it. And we had fun exploring SLO. We hit the candy store (again), a sock store, a different candy store, CVS to get a bottle opener so we could enjoy the root beer we got at the second candy story, and saw Bubblegum Alley, which is probably the grossest tourist spot I’ve ever visited.  Short alley, both walls covered by used chewing gum. Gross, but the 13-year-old filmed it anyway, because she filmed everything on our trip.

We headed back to the Fremont for the closing ceremonies.  I made sure to get another photo of the two of us in front of the SLO Film Festival sign (still no red carpet!), which was easy since we were surrounded by people who knew how to work a camera. The closing ceremonies started with a lot of thank yous and the audience choice awards, which were extra fun because some of the filmmakers we had met on the panel that morning won awards.

Then they announced the awards for the Filmmakers of Tomorrow competition. There were six awards—Best Film by an Individual, Best Film by a Group, Best Film by an SLO Filmmaker, Best Drama, Best Comedy, Best Animated Film.  Here’s what went on in my head when they got to the Best Drama award:

Announcer: “And the award for Best Drama goes to Sonder…”

Me: “Hey, that’s my daughter’s film!”

Announcer: “…a film by [daughter’s name].”

Me: “Hey, that’s my daughter!”

By the time I realized what had happened, my daughter was halfway down the aisle to accept her award. I started cheering wildly, then quickly got my camera ready to capture her on stage. She didn’t need the thank-you speech she had prepared, but she accepted the award with grace and a giant smile. She was thrilled, and I couldn’t have been more proud of her!

That night, as we enjoyed dinner out and walked around SLO a bit more, she kept saying to me, “Dad, I beat high schoolers!” She did, and that was no easy feat. There were some incredible films in the showcase from high schoolers. Her film, however, had such a clear focus, and such a positive message. I think that’s why she won. Thanks to the SLO Film Festival for selecting her film, for encouraging us to come to the festival, and for such great hospitality while we were there. And after we left! We had snagged a film festival  poster, but left it in our hotel room when we checked out the next day. Our friend on the film festival board arranged to have another poster mailed to us.

The 13-year-old also kept thanking me for taking her across the country to the film festival. I was so glad I had, not only because it meant she got the thrill of accepting her Best Drama award in person, but also because the two of us had a wonderful weekend together. As she gets older, she gets busier with school and friends and hobbies, and she has less time in her life for me. That’s how it’s supposed to be, I know, but it’s hard on a dad. I’m so thankful we had a long weekend in California together, exploring and sharing and celebrating.

And she already has ideas for her next film. I can’t wait to see it.

Oh, and we finally managed to get a red carpet photo. There was a wrap party late in the evening, after the awards show, where a 20-foot strip of red carpet was set up for photos!