The Austin Film Festival Pt. 5

At the height of the weekend festivities, I conjured
up a plan after hearing Lawrence Kasdan tell several
stories about his career. During which he mentioned
key associates and colleagues, a couple of whom I
already knew had working relationships with Universal.
Yet, the man had told me to my face that neither he
nor anyone he knew had worked with the office there
that issued me the invite. Curiouser and curiouser. I
figured: this is a big name guy, he doesn't know me
from Adam, he can't be sure my request is valid (even
if I WAS gutsy enough to claim it), so: time to drop
some names.

One weekend afternoon I passed Kasdan clustered in the
lobby while I was on some errand. The core cluster
eventually formed and made its way out of the hotel.
There were several entrances to the hotel lobby, so I
noted which way they were headed and figured I'd go
for the entrance where I could effectively cut them
off at the pass. But--for security reasons or because
it was the weekend--that door was locked! Which meant
I had to sprint...back through the lobby, out the only
open door, around the corner and down one city block
before catching up with them. Really, I had to catch
up with them: this was a core cluster of Friends and
Famous One, and this might be my only chance before
other, larger, more impenetrable clusters morphed at
his destination...if not for the entire rest of the
festival.

We all manage to cross the street together and I
couldn't believe the extemporaneous excuse I suddenly
came up with out of nowhere;

"Oh, hi.", I said, doing a double take. (Like I didn't
know he was there! pfft. I amaze even myself
sometimes.) "Remember me? I interrupted you before the
premiere with the Impossible Task given to me about my
script? And now I'm interrrupting again. Sorry. But
actually, I'm running kinda late for being on duty
right now down there [indicating the other
hotel-and-conference-rooms we were all heading to], so
I just wanted to give you an update. Your colleague?
[name omitted] He has a working relationship with
Universal; I checked with them a couple of weeks
before I left for here and they consider it still
standing. So the script's introduction went to him, at
the beginning of the week? His agent [name ommitted]
confirmed he'd sent it over to him when I called a
couple of days ago. Just so you know? Okay?"

In the din of road repairs, in the middle of crossing
the street, I'm walking backwards ahead of him, in a
hurry to get to my volunteer duties. He looked at me
very keenly and said, "Okay." Like: who is this
chick??

And maybe like: hey, I wonder if her story IS any
good?

I dashed off and calmed down. Found myself some
volunteer duty there at that hotel. And suddenly felt
like my work was done.

The weekend conferences were soon drawing to a close.
I had one other person I wanted to meet. I had also
talked with, and liked, a Fledgling Producer. I was
due to spend a couple of days in "industry meetings"
with a contact who'd been helping with the script's
introduction so far; she'd suddenly gotten invited to
Texas and told me "I want you to be available to get
picked up by the limo." The Fledgling Producer was
reading the script. And we three were all due to talk
together mid-week.

I volunteered to help clean up some of the rooms. I
wrote a nice letter to Kasdan, included the synopsis,
and left it at the front desk for him.

Then: the limo didn't show. I ended up driving for two
hours to an address that didn't exist. I started to
get mad.

Next up: what happens in those industry meetings AFTER
the festival leaves town.

cheers--Hilary