Cinequest in pictures...

So Cinequest has come and gone. We had a ton of fun and met a lot of great people. "Billy Was a Deaf Kid" got a lot of great reviews and some not-so-great ones. There were honestly some people who said Billy changed their lives. Even I'll admit that the more times I watch it the more and more I get out of it...and the more I understand things about my own life.

After Cinequest I thought back to when we first screened Billy to test audiences and the mixed reviews we got. What's interesting is some of the people who have hated it, hated it because of how some of the characters acted...and that's interesting because we based a lot of the conversation and characters off of these people who hate it. It's funny that when people see themselves from a 3rd person perspective they don't even realize that they're looking at themselves. They think they're watching someone who is oppressive, mean, and has no likable quality to them....when really they are seeing certain aspects of their real life and they won't accept that, either consciously or subconsciously. It just goes to show that people aren't aware of who they really are. People look at movies like "the Bourne Identity" and think "I'm a lot like Jason Bourne" or they think they're Leo Decaprio in "Titanic" or Keira Nightly in "Pride and Prejudice." When really we're not these always-perfect, never-a-dull-moment, get-along-great, happily-ever-after people...in fact, we're all less than perfect and that is what keeps us human. How many of us snap, for no reason, snap at the people we care about most? Are the majority of our arguments based on things worth arguing about? Or are they usually based on superficial things that if you stopped for a second and breathed in you'd wonder why you started arguing in the first place? I'm willing to bet it's almost always the latter.

There's quote at the end of the flick that I think sums up peoples reaction better than it sums up the movie:

"I used to have a girlfriend that thought I was the funniest man alive.
Whenever I went out with her and thought I was being romantic and
dashing, she simply used to roar with laughter - at everything I said and did.

This taught me a very basic, necessary lesson: that we really aren't
ourselves, and the impression we make on people is often the direct
opposite of the one we intended."

John Cassavetes


So there you go.

Burke.

Here are some of my fave pics we took during the festival: