Tonight’s installment of the Midwest Independent Film Festival sees the Landmark Century Centre Cinema frustratingly full. Chicago-based writer and director Rusty Gorman is on site for the showing of his action-packed thriller “Home of the Giants.”
Tonight’s atypical audience presents festival organizers with a challenge, however. An evening that usually attracts peeps from the biz, tonight’s crowd consists of an unusually high number of high-schoolers.
While many of the adolescent audience members want to be respectful, such a desire, at times, falls painstakingly short. MC and festival founder Mike McNamara confronts the crowd on several occasions.
“The shushing is louder than the talking folks, the shushing is louder than the talking,” he tells them. Later, while he welcomes the Walter Reed High Schoolers to the showing, McNamara scolds, “No need to shout-out to your boys in New York City, they can’t hear you from here.”
And even later: “We don’t need the derelicts in the back to start singing DMX and ruin the whole evening.” All culturally sensitive jaws drop.
Luckily, whenever McNamara fumbles, Gorman is there to recover the ball. Patiently and purposefully answering questions from all audience members and gracefully ignoring molehill hiccups in his film’s debut evening, Gorman’s game-time groove is not at all affected. Surely McNamara will be back to error-free MC-ing in no time. (Meaghan Strickland)
Film 50 2022: SELECTORS—Programmers & Festival Producers Behind the scenes of what constitutes "film"—industry and community, in Chicago and the Midwest—is circle upon circle, an ecstasy of Venn diagrams…programmers shaping history by presenting vital work.
