« Hollywood Black Film Festival | Home | Blasian ahead »

New York, New York

The screening in Brooklyn was off the chain! I left for New York on Saturday morning and arrived in the afternoon via a comfortable, pimp ass Virgin Airlines flight (where I took in Hilary’s concession speech via their Red in-flight TV system). The City was hot and humid as I made my way to Chinatown to meet one of my best buds Jon, who also happens to be the Webmaster of this site. Jon and I worked in the Dotcom biz during the late 90’s/New Millennium heyday. After some Boba tea at an internet cafe, we had dinner and hopped a cab to Brooklyn. Roy Ayers’ “We Live in Brooklyn Baby!” kept running through my head.

I was sweating from the humidity as well as nerves. I met up with some of James’ friends, the gorgeous and talented Alice and her sister and friend. Then another familiar face shouted my name and it was filmmaker Jason Fisher, who’s dope Conversations for a Dollar is one of the funniest, most thought provoking shorts I’ve ever seen. Jason rolled through with his girl and both were wearing yellow wristbands that identified them for the waiting list. That’s right, waiting list! Apparantly there were way more than 500 people were angling for the 450 seats in the air conditioned auditorium! It’s not the first time we’ve packed a theater, but to have all those on hand for the first NYC screening was a thrill. Just in case Jay and his girl didn’t get in, I gave him a DVD to watch.

Webmaster Jon, me and Jason Fisher. Photo courtesy of A. An.

I have to admit I thought the crowd would mostly be Chinese people for the feature following AKIRA (Singapore Dreaming) but there were actually a lot of people there just for us. Singapore Dreaming was a funny film about a family struggling in the housing projects of Singapore. Check it out if it plays near you. Following the films there was a brief Q&A with me and the other directors where we got some interesting questions from the audience. Then it was into the night to celebrate in Queens. Thanks to Richel Cuyler at the Brooklyn Museum for inviting me out.

The line to get into the theater. Photo by A. An.

The next day I got to sleep late for first time in weeks! It’s been non-stop with both my teaching and editing gigs. I woke up, had breakfast with Jon then headed into money makin’ Manhattan for the day. It was hard to believe it’d been almost 7 years since I’d last been to The City after living there for parts of ‘99 and all of 2000. Jon and I went to the Mocca Art Festival and browsed and chatted with a bunch of great indie comic creators. Afterwards we went shopping, had another great meal in Chinatown (joined by my old roomie Brent Rollins from Ego Trip) then it was time to creep Uptown to take in the Finals game two with some more friends/ex-coworkers.

It was great seeing some of the cats from Psylum, the old start-up I used to work for. We drank and reflected on what everyone from the old days was doing. Most still work in new media and our former 20something whiz kid CEOs Rob and Steve are doing well. Hopefully I can connect with them next time I’m there. I asked about the drum kit in their living room and it turned out to be the controller for the game “Rock Band.” They fired it up and we proceeded to rock out. It’s a cool game and I suck at drums and guitar but held my own on vocals.

Back in Queens I packed my bags and called a cab while Jon crashed for work. I left JFK at 7:15 and it was back to the LA hustle. I’ve been taking meetings about the feature and hope springs eternal that we’ll be ready to shoot this fall. Thanks for reading.