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.

Catchin' Up part 1: ECU and Day One of the Carolina Trip

The first of the "neglected coverage" screenings was the October 20 screening at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC.

This is the farthest to the Northeast I'd be traveling on the tour (as well as my first overnight trip), and it was a pretty ferocious (if not ultimately boring) drive.  Aside from a little bit of a snag while on the road (story later), it was mostly just 10 to 11 hours of radio dramas, sports radio, phone calls and rock'n'roll.  My route-- East through Georgia, then North through Tennessee, South Carolina and then into North Carolina-- mostly kept me off the interstate for a nice, personal highway drive (like I was in Two-Lane Blacktop) through five different states.

Long Highway Road Trips = Existential Art Films starring James Taylor 

Frankly, Greenville was a nice college town, but the town in itself doesn't necessarily stick out in my memory-- in fact, the campus of the school reminded me of a bigger version of the University of West Alabama, and the town  alone kind of made me think of a younger Johnson City,TN.

Originally "Martinsborough" in the 18th century, Greenville has been Greenville since 1786 (an ice-cursed place, it was named such to deter settlers from venturing to its greener brother to the south "Iceville"), and is located on the South bank of the Tar River.

For most of its early history, Greenville was only modestly known in the region, for its tobacco crop, and as the location of East Carolina Teacher's College, which didn't become East Carolina University until the 1960's.

Another note-- since Greenville is right near the East Coast, it's no surprise it's been rocked by hurricanes every now and then.  Hurricane Floyd, back in 1999, was the worst it has seen in recorded history.

I'm not sure if it was just the fact that homecoming was the upcoming weekend or not, but, while I was there, I must admit that the student body at ECU (and surrounding Greenville community and businesses), percentage wise, MUST BE the most school spirited collective consciousness I've ever seen.  On the campus, which was modest but handsome, about every other student, it seemed, wore or carried some sort of school themed tee shirt, ball cap, back pack, laniard, etc.  It was everywhere.  It felt like I was at Medfield College on the set of Son of Flubber or something.  Very impressed by the consistent commitment to school pride from the entire campus.  Maybe if us back home were so consistent, Bama wouldn't have two losses.  Even at the local Wal-Mart, there was a gigantic, center store display with HDTVs streaming ECU Buc highlights that'd put the displays at Skyland Drive to shame.

Tommy Kirk supports Dem Bucs!

Anyway, the one complaint I did have about the campus was the parking was pretty limited-- even by university standards.  I initially had to park about three or four buildings down (I did show up an hour or so early) before moving it closer to time after the 5pm rush died down (and even then I was still a good two blocks down).

The film was being hosted by ECU's Anthropology dept, and we got a nice, scientifically minded, turnout.  It was a unique screening venue-- we screened in a genuine archaeology lab, with blocky lab desks and swivel chairs instead of the usual auditorium set up.  As an added bonus, the archaeology club provided some drinks and iced cream.

Like I said, the audience was very scientifically minded, but over all the film seemed to be received quite well.  I suppose the film is pretty disciplined with the liberties it took with the "true science" in the film (and most of those liberties are presented as potential non-truths anyway), and the audience seemed to appreciate the fact.

My contact at the school, an archaeology professor who was also a UA alum, had great things to say, promised to pass word at a regional archaeology conference he was attending the next week, and turned out to be a friend of most of the archaeologists based in Tuscaloosa who helped us as advisors on the film-- a trait he shared with most of the Anthropology staff at ECU.  I must say, getting introduced to the collective regional archaeological culture has been a nice byproduct from this tour, if it produces nothing else.

I even had a pretty long conversation with one ECU student-- though it, pretty quickly, turned into talk just about comic books.  A long talk.  But I was content to talk, to kill time-- because, later that night, I was finally about to earn that "grassroots" banner I'd been flying the length of the tour.

Around 10 or so, local time, I took to the road.  I didn't have to be in Columbia, SC until like 5pm the next day, but I decided to go ahead and drive as long as I could before stopping, and, about 2:30 or so, about 45 mintues from Columbia, I found a truck stop that looked as good as any, and stopped to bed down for the night.  I pulled around to the truckers parking area in the back, and like a Graham Parson's song, found a corner spot to spend the night.

Out with the Truckers, the Kickers, the Cowboy Angels

I was in my parent's van, a '98 Dodge Caravan, with the rear two rows of seats removed, where I set up the air mattress, covered the windows with some trashbags, cranked the heat for a good 20 minutes (sorry environment), watched some cartoons, and hit the hay.

Will I wake up dead tomorrow???  I maybe just towed??? Or boxed in by an 18 wheeler???

CONTINUED....

Catchin' Up: Prologue

Got a lot of catchin' up to do, as usual.

Since my last post, I've been to four schools-- East Carolina University on October 20; the University of South Carolina on October 21; Murray State University on October 27; and, after another by week, the University of Alabama-Huntsville on November 11.

Since I've shirked my duties of town histories and venue recaps, I'll probably spread these posts out over several, to keep things clean.

Also, had a lot of press recently (which I'll also retroactively share here), and some nice developments with some of our tie-ins-- including a nice meet and greet with actor and artist Kevin Maggard-- who stars in "The Nocturnal Third" and who's illustrating the "Southern Truths featuring John Patton Jr." comic strip.

Johnson City Recap and Prepping for the Carolinas

Been a few days, I 'pologize.

Well let's get started where we left off.  Went out to Johnson City last week, to East Tennessee State University, and had a blast.  The usual modest size crowd showed, but as a plus, seemed to get a few more folks from the community than usual.  What was most rewarding was the enthusiasm from the audience and from the hosts.  I definitely got a genuinely enthused vibe from the crowd, and was glad to be a part of it.  Thanks guys.  Even got to talk in detail about some of the media tie-ins to the film, and some of the more peripheral elements of the film's/continuity's story, which was a nice treat.

Johnson City was a surprisingly big town, and to avoid the usual Eastern Time Zone trap I get myself into, I wound up being extremely early, and went for a drive around downtown.  The downtown area reminded me of Birmingham, or maybe Nashville's downtown over near Vandy.

On the way home (only about a four hour drive, five taking into account the time change), stopped in Knoxville for some Jimmy Johns, had a few exchanges with the UT crowd down on the strip, and was reminded why I'm glad I'm no longer in college.

This week I've been enjoying a "bye", gearing up for our first big, overnight trip-- two days and some change up in the Carolinas, at East Carolina University and the University of South Carolina, the second big SEC school of the tour.  Be looking for some "previews" of the two towns I'm visiting up there, Greenville, NC and Columbia, SC, early next week.

To the Mavericks

Just some food for thought for all you Mavericks out there.  I'll see y'all out in Johnson City tomorrow.

"A Genesis Found" now on Video on Demand!

Little aside from the tour travels-- just got word from Amazon that A Genesis Found is now available through their Video on Demand service!  The film is available for rental, for streaming, or for download to own (with varying portable device/TV formats available).  If you're looking to see the flick, can't make a screening, and refuse to pay for the two-disc DVD (though I worked so hard on it, sniff, sniff...), this is the best way to see it.  Plus, it's the cheapest.  7-day rentals are $2.99, while you can download it and own it forever for $3.99.  Big price difference there Amazon.

I haven't downloaded a copy yet myself, so I can't vouch for the quality, but I can vouch for the flick-- this is the "Final Director's Cut" that's on the DVD release, so you're getting the premiere version of the film.  So now there's no excuse not to see it-- HOP TO IT!

Buy/Rent the Film on Video on Demand

Patton and Dr. Jones can't believe they're on VOD

Opelika Orange

Back from Auburn and gotta say, I was quite impressed with the campus and the environment down there.  I'd never really been to that part of the state-- and I suppose if the tour amounts to nothing else, at least I'm gonna get to visit a lot of the South I've never had a chance to visit.  As I told my wife Peyton (the costume designer for A Genesis Found and The Nocturnal Third, who as an added bonus got to come along with me last night)-- I get to pretend I'm a four or five star athletic recruit, visiting all these colleges-- except nobody really gives a damn I'm on campus, and I don't have the hair.

Regardless, Auburn ain't a bad drive, and Peyt and I both dug campus.  We got there via back roads, so it's kinda like driving to Tuscaloosa through Cottondale-- there isn't a sign of civilization until about two minutes from campus.  So just when I thought all those Auburn jokes about pastures and mules were true... boom, there's the Plains.

The school's Anthropology club sponsored the screening (that's something a lot of these screenings have in common) and we had about the current tour standard number of students/ community folks show up for the screening.  Regardless, it screened well, and I got to wander around a nice campus for an hour or so with my wife (during the cave scenes that just don't age well the more you see them).  Plus, the Padres lost, so now the Braves, who've been trying their best to give their playoff spot away despite it being Bobby's last year, are now a win or so away from the NL Wild Card.  And Auburn has a Jimmy Johns, which is always a treat.  All and all a good trip.  No worries, though, Tuscaloosa, we still got 'em beat.

Just ol' Luke sportin' them locks of Opelika Orange

Not much great insight here.  I did have a nice talk with my contact Arianne, a anthropology professor, originally from urban Massachusetts (where my step-brother-in-law currently calls home), and an alum of the University of Southern California (where she worked some with their now nonexistent ethnographic film program).  She mentioned, with future screenings, I might want to try and get Student Associations involved, like the viewing societies who are ahead of getting those almost-out-on-DVD Hollywood flicks screening at the on campus theater for like a buck a ticket.  I initially started that route, when I first starting trying to organize the tour, but aside from one nice young man at Kentucky who politely sent me in another direction, I never heard back from a single one of them-- that's like one out of forty-six.  So, obviously, not a great place to start-- but, it might be a good group to get involved once the film is locked for a screening on campus-- I certainly need to get better at finding easier ways to get these screenings "buzzing" on campus, which, aside from Pearl River Community College (where my contact also worked in the PR dept), I haven't really been able to accomplish yet.

Here's hoping Johnson City is "hopin'" like Auburn-- we'll see you folks at East Tennessee State October 6!