The Festival

The craziness that is the Tribeca Film Festival ended today. For the past eleven days this place was my new home:
But now it's all over, and it's that insane mix of happiness and sadness. You work with these people--fellow PBLs, projectionists, Theater Managers, volunteers, Chris and Sara--for eleven days straight, spending gross amounts of time with them in small projection booths, that you become a sort of extended family. It's like the last day of camp.

This year was different than last year. Not better or worse, just different. For many reasons. I was the only returning PBL from my venue. Although I missed some of the people from last year, the peeps I worked with this year were just as awesome (Raul, Theresa, Mike, Katie and Sean--you guys rock!). Most of the projectionists were all the same, and it was nice to see them and have them remember me. They are all cool guys, if a little crazy (in a good way) from being in a projection booth for far too long.

I still didn't really get to see any movies, (there were a few I tried watching from the window in the booth, but it's not really the best way) which is where Sundance gets a huge leg up. But my work with Tribeca is very different from Sundance. Here my work is behind the scenes; I don't deal with the public, filmmakers, publicists or anyone besides the projectionists and other PBLs. And when I did have to deal with someone from the public or a filmmaker, it was always over the walkie as a relay person. It's very nice to be working Back of House as opposed to Front of House.

The drawback, though, is that you don't get to see any of the famous people out stumping for their films. I'm always up in the booth and hardly ever out on the floor with the theater, and when I need to get to another theater I usually take the back stairs to avoid the crowds of people. But I was the PBL for Rudo y Cursi, a film that also showed at Sundance, starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. As soon as the Q&A was over and my work was done, I headed down to the theater so I could catch them leaving. They walked out and all sorts of people were taking pictures of them on their phones and recording their every moment. I felt a little sad for them. Not too sad, though, because they both looked a little...not all there.


So now I'm done. And once again unemployed, er, in between jobs.