Catchin' Up part 2: USC, Columbia, Locked Doors and Loud Windows

Having never slept at a truck stop before, (and hosting some irrationally childish fears about truckers thanks to Spielberg's Duel), I'm frankly a little surprised I slept as well as I did.  I suppose part of it was just the exhaustion of the solo trip, but I think, too, 200 or so idling motors create a surprising symphony, a soothing, resonating murmur, like mechanical rain.  Plus, I'd planned well enough in advance to pack extra sleeping bags and sheets, and thus had decked out my air mattress with so much excess padding that I had no issues bedding down on a plastic, underachieving excuse for a personal flotation device.

My Parking Lot Buddy

I initially woke up not long after dawn (6 or so local time) and, having forgot my glasses back home, waddled half-blind to the convenient store to use the restroom-- only to, after realizing how many hours it was til the 8pm screening, bed back down for another four hours or so.

Around 9:30 or 10 local time, I woke up for good, got back my eye sight, grabbed yet another bologna sandwich and some Pop-Tart's from the cooler (another component of the "grassroots" claim I was finally earning-- I couldn't afford to buy many meals on the road, so it was cold cuts and canned food all the way), and took off.

Being now so close to Columbia, it took me a little under an hour to get into town.  Since I had so much time to, essentially, waste, I opted not to buy a shower at the truck stop but, instead, just hunt out a state park/campsite when I got in town.  I found exactly what I was looking for at Sesquicentennial State Park, and, for two bucks, got a hot shower, a nature hike, and a scenic, for-once-non-parking-lot setting for cold Beefaroni and a bologna sandwich lunch.  I ate peacefully til I was flanked, on opposing sides of the picnic area, by school kids on a field trip and hungry ducks who weren't content with the bread chunks I gave them.  Leaving Scrooge, Donald and the nephews to torture the school children for scraps instead, I took off to check out Columbia.

You said it, Scroogey

Now, the history lesson.  Columbia is the capital of South Carolina and the largest city in the state, not to mention one of the oldest cities in the South, and one that wears its history on its sleeve.  Founded in 1786, USC was founded in the city in 1801 (then called South Carolina College) because of the city's strategic setting between the northern and southern parts of the state.

Similar to Atlanta and other prominent Southern cities, much of pre-Civil War Columbia was destroyed by fires started by the lunatic Sherman.  The burning of Columbia, though not depicted in Gone with the Wind, does have its own mythologies, anecdotes and claims to fame-- including a tale of Union soldiers, determined to burn down the church where the South Carolina Secession Convention was held, approached, torches blaring, the First Baptist Church downtown.  Asking a local groundskeeper if this was the church where the convention took place (it was), the groundskeeper lied to them, and said: "No, you want the Methodist church down the street."  Thus, the historic First Baptist Church was saved, and many a Churchless-Methodist joke was born.  I wonder if the inevitable feud between these two churches, started by this grounds-keeper's cleverness, is still the subject of Softball contests today?

Bring it ya wannabe Catholics!

Anyway, the Columbia Fires were a somewhat special case, due to the city's significance at the start of the war.  Sherman denied calling for the town to be burnt to the ground, though just about everyone else who was there spoke to the contrary, North or South.  Most of the Union soldiers admitted they wanted revenge on the city that sparked the Civil War (SC secession was the first state to do so, FYI).

Regardless, Reconstruction followed, and though it was as painful and disruptive and corrupt and anti-progressive as it was for most every other Southern city, a building boom for Columbia was an unexpected by-product, which continued thriving leading into the 20th century.

In recent history, Columbia has been known for two things: integrating faster than most other Southern cities, and in turn experiencing, on average, less of a volatile counter-reaction; and being the host site for the falling of the once-mighty #1-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide in the best game the USC football program will ever play in its existence.

Bad Moon on the Rise

I expected Columbia to be pretty urban-- and it was (not Hip-hop urban-- urban urban).  It isn't as big as Atlanta, but certainly the biggest town I'd been to on the tour to this point.  It reminded me, a bit, of Charleston in the Eastern part of the state, except less Palmettos and no coastline.

After scoping out downtown, and trying, to no avail, to find the building on campus where the screening was being held (little did I know that most of the campus wasn't accessible from the road--more on that later), I took to the 'burbs to find a Library with wi-fi.

After finding one, and setting up my wife's hand-me-down, beat up, rigged, gimmicky laptop, the much tortured ac adapter (which was essential since the laptop no longer had a working battery) finally gave it up, and all that work I hoped to get done in prepping for the UAH screening that was, still at that time, the following week (I ultimately had to move it because of poor planning on my part), didn't get to happen.

Instead, I killed time.  Saw some sites (free ones, of course), searched through VHS tapes at thrift stores, and, eventually, made my way back to campus, parked a half a mile a way, and took to the sidewalks for a closer investigation on where the heck Sloan College was.

USC is a neat campus.  It has a C.S. Lewis Reading Room on site, so it should be no surprise that, fittingly enough, the entire campus has this weird, Narnia-esque, "Southern Backwoods Hidden World" kinda feel-- the quad felt like a winding, Gothic forest nestled in the middle of Downtown.

As I mentioned earlier, the bulk of the campus isn't very accessible via car-- even by most university standards.  And there are trees everywhere.  As I told my wife over the phone, the whole place felt like someone took Bama's campus, stopped making exterior renovations in the 1930's, and crammed it all into a 6 or 8 block stretch of downtown Birmingham that was still a forest.  Definitely gave the sprawling campus, especially the central grassy stretch that shared ancient brick walkways and dense foliage, a small town college/secluded community kind of feel.  It felt like it should have been in Oxford of Savannah.

Anyhow, I eventually found Sloan College (one of the last buildings I checked and, ironically, a block away from where I initially had parked-- though I had spent more than an hour roaming the campus).  By this time it was only an hour or so til the screening, so I unpacked, set up, then, as per routine, took to roam the campus until a half hour or so before.

I had an added personal bonus this screening-- my cousin Bailey, who is a USC alum and still lives in Columbia, got to come out to see the film.  Lamentably, us Alabama Fanning's have never been that close with the South Carolina branch since my uncle moved up there (it's a pretty big drive), and it's only gotten worse now that we're all older and both my grandparent's have passed.  So, obviously, it was nice to see her and catch up.  I did, though, have the embarrassment of mixing up the sex of her brother's child, when I asked about him.  Told you, we don't stay in touch.

We got rolling about 8:10.  Frankly, it was kind of a below-average turn out.  I knew we were asking for trouble with the 8pm start time (on a weekday near mid-terms), but sometimes with these things you're at the mercy of the host, whose at the mercy of the venue.  Still, it was a handful of folks who had never seen the film, and it seemed to screen pretty well-- at least the first half hour or so, when I stuck around.

Typically, as I've mentioned in previous posts, I stick around to watch the first act, see how engaged the audience is, see how they react to certain moments, and then bail until the very end.  Obviously I've seen it a few times.  So, as per my custom, about 8:40 or so, I took off to wander campus, listen to the radio, make phone calls, and twiddle my thumbs.

Taking Care of Business - Mobile Office Style

So, after the routine (and listening to the Giants take ANOTHER game from Philadelphia), I waddled back over to the venue.  I tugged on the door.  It didn't budge.

So it was after 9:30, and I didn't have an ACT card to get past the 9:00pm security lock (which I wish I'd known about earlier).  To make matters worse, my cousin had already left, and I didn't have my contact's cell phone number.

After roaming the building and checking every door I could find numerous times; considering climbing a tree to a slightly crack third floor window; and knocking continually for several minutes, I realized that the only folks still on the ENTIRE freaking campus were the handful in my screening, and the only way I could get them to open the door would be to make a rucus on the screening room windows (and thus distract audiences from my own film).  Leaning close to the closed, blacked out windows, I discovered I could hear a slight "mumble" from the film's soundtrack.  Luckily, I knew the film so well it was all I needed to keep tabs on where it was and how long it had left.

Now here's the predicament.  As a culture, we're conditioned to, as soon as that "Directed by" title card pops up, get up, chunk our popcorn and smuggled in coke's, and get out of dodge-- no applause, no hesitation.  Lamentably, I had learned throughout my career at film festivals, special screenings, and this tour itself that this doesn't just go for films seen at movie theaters, exhibited by faceless projectionists--this goes for every film experience, no matter how exotic the venue, no matter if the filmmaker is sitting behind you, no matter if a Q&A follows.  If I wasn't out of my seat and in front of the screen by the "Produced by" credit, my audience was gone.

I had no real desire to travel all the way to South Carolina simply to show the film to a handful of students and have them ditch before I even get to speak (that's the only reason I came with the film, after all), especially since it was mostly due to my own laziness to avoid sitting through the film one more time.

So, my plan was simple.  As soon as I heard the trash can lid slam shut at film's end, I'd bang on the window and start yelling.  Well, not that refined of a plan; but it seemed to at least be more plausible than climbing three stories and committing a breaking-and-entering felony.

Holy Ease of Vertical Escalation, Batman! 

So, as soon as the film ended, banging and shouting was exactly what I did.  Then I waited.  Then I banged again.  Then I waited again.

Then I looked at the building's front door (probably twenty-five feet to the left) as my handful of audience members exited the building.  Thinking they saw me (or at least heard my banging and therefore, seeing me, would realize I was the culprit and was trying to get back in) I didn't ask them to hold the door for me.  My mistake.

They left, not even noticing me, and just before I could grab it, the door shut back again.

You know where this is headed

Luckily this didn't continue like a Screwball comedy, and I eventually got back in and got to thank my contact for hosting the screening.  Though I didn't get to do a Q&A, there were enough people there (and enough local online enthusiasm in the week prior) to make the screening worthwhile.  We even got some great local press-- the previous Friday, I got interviewed on local radio (story coming), and we got a little bit of press in USC's student paper.

Anyhow, after that, I packed up, threw in the Empire Strikes Back radio drama, and was home by 3.  It's still a sissy, domestic, non-committing, part-time tour-- but the first major hurdle, now past, was, kind of surprisingly, a memorable success.