This is Part 4 of a series. You can find the other parts at Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Day Four: Friday September 14, 2001
Bright and early, we piled back into the car for the next leg of our journey. We had a sort of deadline in that Northwestern’s orientation was to begin at 6:00 that evening. I was calculating that the drive from Toronto to Chicago would be about 8 hours, so we would be there in plenty of time.
As we headed toward the border, traffic was getting heavy, and the radio was reporting delays ahead. I remembered the advice I had been given the night before, and we got off the highway and started heading north. It only took about a half hour to get to the border crossing that had been suggested. We passed a few signs and a couple of cute gift shops that confirmed we were on a native Canadian reservation. As we approached the border crossing, we were suddenly in a long line of cars. Even worse, what had not been told to us was that this border crossing required a ferry, which only ran once per hour. So we sat waiting for almost a full hour for the ferry to arrive, then it took another half hour to load the cars aboard, a 15-minute ride across the river, and then some additional time to unload. We had lost significant time. Continue reading
This past Sunday morning, was the memorial service for Marty Zeidman at the Landmark Sunshine Theater in Manhattan. For those of you who didn’t know Marty, he was a very well-liked and respected film distribution guy, who is commonly credited as having helped to bring independent films more into the mainstream.
Like many of you, I have mixed feelings about Kickstarter campaigns that are helping to finance micro-budgeted films. On the one hand, it’s great that so many projects are finding the necessary financing through this simple, but apparently effective mechanism. On the other hand, I am inundated with requests to donate by the many people I have encountered in my years in the business. I simply cannot afford to donate to every film that comes along, and I don’t want to have to spend the time evaluating the projects, or the emotional stress of choosing among friends.
