For “small town gay bar” they introduced Kevin Smith to introduce Malcolm Ingram. Kevin’s introduction was pretty funny. He said that Malcolm called him up one day and asked Kevin if he wanted to help him out with his gay movie. Kevin said “Fuck yeah!” expecting that there’d be a lot of cocks and cum shots and that sort of thing so he was a little disappointed that it ended up being this nice little documentary with heart. He also said he was impressed because Malcolm’s first two movies sucked but this one looked like a real professional made it.

The movie itself was pretty good. You could tell that the gay bars in these small towns in the south really mean a lot to the people who go to them and the people in the movie were all pretty cool. One of the best things about Sundance though is the Q&A’s after the movie where you get to hear some of the stories about it being made and that sort of thing. They had a couple there that reopened one of the bars during the course of the movie. When Malcolm started making the movie he had no idea that the bar would be reopened by the time he was done, he was just shooting it for historical purposes. They also talked about how they had interviewed some people at a regular bar down the street from one of the gay bars but they didn’t tell the people what it was they were shooting for, and about every third or fourth question they would slip in something about the gay bar. Eventually one of the guys asked them why they kept asking about the gay bar and went and got his shotgun out of the car and fired a warning shot over their heads. They weren’t able to get that on film so that’s something I probably would have never heard otherwise.

After the Q&A was done I got up to leave and Kevin happened to be sitting a few rows behind me so I stopped and talked to him for a couple minutes. The first thing I asked him was if the Silent Bob coat was warm (since he was wearing it). He told me that it’s the only coat he owns. I also told him that I thought it was pretty cool that he came to introduce the movie and he said he wanted to because he was really proud of it (I also thought it was cool that he didn’t go up for the Q&A so that Malcolm could talk about his movie instead of there being a bunch of Kevin Smith questions). I asked if he’d had a chance to see any other movies while he was there and he said that he hadn’t because he’d been too busy with press and that sort of thing for “small town gay bar”. I asked if he was going to try and see “Come Early Morning” and he said he’d like to see it but probably wouldn’t be able to until he gets back to L.A. One thing I forgot to ask him about was this movie called “Raspberry Reich” that I saw at Sundance a couple years ago. It definitely had a lot of cocks and cum shots and that sort of thing (in fact, I walked out of it feeling like I just saw a gay porn, because it was that graphic) and they thanked the director of that movie at the end of “small town gay bar”. I meant to tell Kevin he should probably watch “Raspberry Reich” then if he hadn’t already.

I thought “Come Early Morning” was good as well. You see a lot of “woman trying to find her way” sort of movies at Sundance and this was definitely one of those but I liked it because it wasn’t like Hollywood movies where everything gets nicely wrapped up in the end and everyone lives happily ever after (I always really liked that “Chasing Amy” wasn’t wrapped up that way too). Instead, it’s much more like real life where the experience teaches the character something and she grows but definitely doesn’t have all of life figured out. Joey Lauren Adams was also really cool in the Q&A. She has a really neat sort of infectious enthusiasm that would be really hard not to like and it was interesting hearing the story about how the movie came to be made.

She said that she thought that after “Chasing Amy” that roles would really start to open up for her but all she ever got was offers for roles like “the girlfriend” or “the friend” and eventually those offers even started to dry up. Then she met a couple guys in a bar in L.A. one night and they were talking and they asked what happened to her and she really didn’t know and then she asked them if they wanted to go to her house for an after-party after the movie was over and they asked her what the special occasion was for staying up so late. She realized that there wasn’t really an occasion she just didn’t have anything to do the next day. That kinda bugged her so she started writing the script. Five years later she was finally able to get it made (which seems like a standard time for a lot of the movies at Sundance). She said it was a very personal story. I didn’t ask but the movie is about a girl who has a bunch of one-night stands and then bails on the guys in the morning because she isn’t comfortable with relationships so part of me was wondering if that was the sort of past that bugged Kevin into writing Chasing Amy. I really have no idea though.