Stro

[Drunk Monk]

The Marina Del Rey Film Festival Awards Show.

All the people who wanted to participate in the MDR FF Awards shows were given a link to a giant Zoom call. Then through computer wizardry it was broadcast out to Facebook live.

Like all Zoom calls, they get exponentially worse with the more people that participate. Throughout the show people would pop in with live mics and take over the show until they were shouted down in the comments section. On the Zoom call, we had comments going the entire time so people could congratulate the winners or to tell people to mute their fucking microphones. Basically a nightmare. But it would be over quickly, right? How many awards could they give out? I was thinking maybe ten. We'd been done in fifteen minutes and I would have the rest of the evening.

How can I be wrong this often. There were dozens of awards. There were categories and sub-categories. They had the comedic short award and then they had costumes and directing and cinematography in a comedic short awards. There were the LGBTQ+ awards. There were the dramatic short awards. Oddly, there was a documentary sports award that we didn't win.

There was a reason to the madness. Not every filmmaker is going to win Best Feature or Best Short. Filmmakers cover their bets by entering multiple different categories so they can have award winning with their laurels. Film Festival Producers like it because for every category there is an entry fee. The filmmaker can generate more fees. Everybody wins. Except for one little thing.

Goddammit that was a long and interminable show. Could they just get to the part where they don't announce my name and give the award to someone else?

And through it all sailed Alex Hwang. From the start, I was guessing Alex had stumbled onto the Zoom link or maybe he didn't know he was on a Zoom link. It was crazy. His mic was open all the time. And his camera on his phone only caught him on the periphery. It started with just cigarette smoke billowing across the nighttime sky with Los Angeles in the background. He stood for minutes on what could have been a Griffith Park overlook smoking. Everyone on the chat kept asking him to mute his mic. Nope. Not Alex. 

Eventually he got in his car and drove away. The iPhone was in a dashboard holder, still on. You could see Alex on the side of the frame driving occasionally bathed in red light from the stop lights. It was like he was making his own movie. Very noir. He climbed up the stairwell to his apartment. Then he was in his apartment.  I lost him for a little bit because I was only seeing a portion of all the people on the call. But he would saying something loud and he would come back to the top of the feed.

The worse part was when he went to the toilet and sat down. I swear that happened. All the time the phone was go time. Somebody just needs to isolate his footage and make a short film called while I did while I waited for them to announce the award. I think he did win something.

The biggest name drop of the night was the cinematography award. He couldn't be part of the Zoom call because he was in England working on Jurassic Park.

I popped out once to go to the bathroom myself, neglecting to bring the camera with me. I mentioned to tQ it was the worst Zoom call ever. She was on her way to bed.

I went back to the tedium. Until it wasn't. Until I heard John say the name Stro had won. Then it was the best award show every. I had a problem getting my microphone on. HK got on first and gave his thanks. I was under the impression no one could see me. My good friend Alex made some noise so he appeared. I basically babbled under the pressure.

But it was good. And Stro won an award. It took me forever to get to sleep.

 
Best story so far on this thread. It only took 75 pages to get here.

And your right. A noir short of this Alex dude would be hysterical.