Well holy shit…

First off, thanks again SO much to all of you who came out Saturday night for Sick Girl! It was a tad of a risky experiment to screen a movie very few have heard of, but I felt Sick Girl warranted the big screen, midnight audience treatment. It seemed to me the audience agreed - you all just about went through the roof during the climactic…err…strap-on scene…

Unbeknownst to most of you is the mini-crisis that occurred before the screening, a testament to the DIY nature of these screenings (particularly when screening on digital), and to the punk rock spirit of the Mondo Celluloid audience. As fantastic as the Vista Theater is, and as much work went into recent renovations which resulted in a great sound system and L.A.’s finest movie theater leg room, alas the theater still doesn’t have capacity for digital projection. Moreover, when using a portable projector (as I did with Sick Girl and May’s Black Devil Doll clips), the house speakers are not compatible - you have to bring and use your own speakers.

I rounded up the same A/V team that helped out in May - my friend Martin on projector and laptop DVD player (that was his cat Traffic that took over the screen at one point), and Los Angeles punkabilly band Jaime Sol Black & The Dirty Suits on PA system & speakers. Faithful as always, they were all at the theater at 11pm, hanging out next door at Cafe at the Vista and ready to go as soon as the 9:40pm Tropic Thunder screening let out.

So the movie lets out at around 11:30, and we head in to start setting up as the ushers clean up. I’m in the ticket booth selling tickets, Martin’s in there taping shit up and setting up his shit and whatnot, Jaime’s setting up his projector, Sick Girl director Eben McGarr’s being interviewed by a horror website, actress Leslie Andrews is out front charming her growing legion of fans - all seemed to be going smashingly!

Then my sister Giselle comes up to me and says, “Hey, the band’s looking for you!” Okay, methinks - I’ll keep an eye out for them. Then lead singer Jaime comes up to me with a look in his eyes that spells disaster, guilt, concern, frustration - just a whole wad of things that don’t look promising 10 minutes before show time. Oh oh…

Seems the band had misplaced the power cable to the PA system. And look - these things happen. Did I blow up at you, Jaime? No, I didn’t - I shit my pants a little, sure, but I kept it in man, because I’m a consummate professional dammit. Sick Girl producer James Keitel even commented on how composed I was considering this news, and coming from a producer that meant a friggin’ lot. As Declan MacManus said, accidents will happen. And as at ease as I was with this universal truth, this didn’t change the fact that I still didn’t have a sound system. Shit. Shit.

I only had about a minute to process this - a blessed short amount of time, where one is still processing the bad news that’s been delivered, before all the possible implications hit and the urine starts to betray the jeans - when the heroes started stepping up to the rescue. First was Cafe at the Vista owner Shelli, just about the coolest lass in Los Angeles, who had somehow heard the news and offered to let us go up to her office and rummage through her power cables. Charging into the theater to check out the PA system, she was certain she might have the right cable and high-tailed it back to her coffee house to check. Jaime offered to go back to the studio to see if he could find the cable there, but with people coming out left and right to check out the PA system and offer suggestions, I knew a drive downtown and back wouldn’t be necessary - I was starting to breathe easy, a solution was right around the corner.

Then, reliable and friendly as always, Vista theater manager Victor comes down with a big smile and proclaims, “My Mac cord will fit this!” He hands me his Mac cord, and with Jaime outside drawing hope from a cigarette, it’s up to me to plug it in and nervously throw the switch on the PA system. I squeeze the cord into the outlet - it fits!! Victor watches all of this with a look on his face like Patricia Arquette’s in Pulp Fiction when Vincent’s about to plunge the syringe into Mia - the whole thing is actually quite hilariously theatrical. Finally I throw the switch, and the little fan on the side starts to hum and spin. We have power. There will be blood.

I go outside, find Jaime, and tell him the good news. He throws a hug on me as if I were a doctor who just told him his wife made it through the operation. Shelli comes running up and I tell her we’re cool, she cheers as I thank her for being so friggin’ stellar. The audience is invited to enter. I do my little preshow (congrats to the raffle winners!), we all sing Happy Birthday to Sick Girl Leslie (which seems to have become a tradition - at last month’s Blue Velvet screening we all sang Happy Birthday to Eric, himself a very sick girl…), and after a very brief technical glitch (at which point, again, the audience was introduced to Martin’s cat Traffic!), we were all treated to the bloody opus that is Sick Girl.

Seriously, thanks again to all of you who made it. Thanks again to Geekscape for interviewing Leslie and I and helping spread the word. Thanks Eben for sharing your vision and for being an awesome partner throughout the last month - we put on a hell of a fucking show! Thanks Shelli for continuing to offer the Mondo Celluloid audience free coffee! Thanks Martin for being Selwyn the Conquistador! Thanks Giselle for jumping in and taking over as I frantically scurried about to get this thing together!

Thanks Leslie for pissing on nuns!