My Fox Searchlight

Sunday night was the DGA (Director’s Guild) screening of Juno. Craig Gillespie, the director of Lars and the Real Girl and tons of bad-ass commercials, gave me the honor of moderating. He showed up James-Lipton-style with index cards and everything. It’s always fun to play the DGA and be amongst the brethren, but Craig made it all the more special.

Next day, I flew out to Seattle for a screening and press. When we got to the theater, Diablo, producer Dan, and I found out we had about forty-five minutes to kill, so we hit the stand-up video games. Diablo and I are about an even match on Tekken. Dan is unbeatable on the 18-Wheeler game.

The Q&A was, HANDS DOWN, our best of all-time. Warren Ethridge, who I’ve known since the short films days, moderated. He’s always fun and trying to get a rise out of me. The whole thing started with a mini-concert from Kimya Dawson who lives up in Olympia and brought her guitar to the screening. She did a couple songs (one from her kid’s album and one from the movie), which the audience loved.

Then, Diablo and I just kicked into gear. We were in rare form. She and I are basically a comedy routine at this point. We don’t even need a moderator. You just throw us out there and we go. We did our impersonation of Italian photographers on the red carpet… one of our faves.

The following day, we did press and flew home. But not before a quick trip to the Gibson showroom. That place is increidble... Just racks and racks of guitars inside soundproof rooms. Even tried this new thing called the "robot guitar" that tunes itself at the touch of a button.

Now, I’m enjoying Thanksgiving with the fam. Today, I’m driving up to my folk’s house so they can do a screening for their friends in the neighborhood. You have no idea how weird it is to make a feature film that will be released worldwide and yet when I show up at my dad’s house, I might as well still be doing a play in the basement with my friends. Oh look, Jason made a film.