Two years ago, on the week of Halloween, I had a screening of OCHO: Arachnid From Hell at the Malco theater.  This was mostly for the cast as they really wanted to see their movie in a 'real' theater.
It cost a lot of money, and we charged like $3 admission because I'm far too altruistic for my own good and am always trying to give people value for their money in a world where everything is a ripoff.
I wasn't sure if we'd break even to pay for the fee to screen in the theater, and I figured even if we came out ahead, I'd just donate the money to a good cause (being St. Jude in that case).

We had somewhere between 100 and 120 people come, and we ended up losing close to 40 dollars.  I had gone in fully prepared to just lose the entire fee.  We eventually sent a check to St. Jude for like 50 bucks even though we didn't actually make any money.  Altruistic.

Everybody in the Q&A asked when the sequel would be.  I had really wanted it to be the following year, but life gets in the way and I couldn't complete the sequel till this year.

Glenn was interested in doing some similar screening at Malco and I can't remember whose idea it was, but the idea happened do one of his movies with It Came From Beyond Beyond as a double-feature and thus split the overhead of theater rental in half.  And hopefully increase the amount of interest by combining the respective followings of two people.

It worked.  In the two days before the event, it seemed like the whole of Facebook was plugging the shit out of it.  I couldn't help but wonder where all these people were when we were trying to promote Tupelo Underground.  Don't get me wrong, a lot of people pushed it hard, but a lot more people pushed this thing harder.  But then maybe that's cause we picked up a lot more steam and made believers out of people with TU.  It seems only logical a snowball effect would occur.

Me and Glenn went to Malco a week ago to test screen our dvds.  Glenn was concerned about whether his dvd would play correctly.  I had every confidence in my $25 Apex dvd player. It eats anything you can throw at it.  Even if you burn movies onto CDs in an obscure malaysian CDV format, it plays em.  Besides, I just knew it would play. Sometimes I just know these things.

The projectionist at the Malco was this gentleman who normally works the Oxford theater and knew everything there was to know about film projection.  It was obvious he was an authentic master of his craft, and any time you ever get to work with a master of their craft, it is ALWAYS a pleasure.
I had been in a projection room before, but Glenn hadn't.  He was like a kid in a candy store, all excited to learn how it all works.  The projectionist was explaining how the new Dolby 3D works and why it's better than the polarized RealD systems.  To my amazement, Dolby3D is actually just the same analglyphic technology.  The red and blue glasses.  It's just a more advanced version of it.  The lenses on THESE particular glasses however are handcrafted by German engineers and cost $35 a pop.  Ouch.

I dont believe any of the same people work at the theater that were there when I screened OCHO.  But these guys were way better.  They let us adjust the projection system and sound to whatever we wanted.  I had no such option with OCHO. They just screened it as set which resulted in a stretched, incorrect aspect ratio, and had a slight bit of the outside frame not fitting onto the screen.  It didn't really matter anyways as it's not like anybody was watching OCHO to admire the beautiful cinematography or anything. 

The beautiful thing about comedies is that the only thing that matters is whether or not they are funny.  As long as they make you laugh, the cinematography and editing can be shit. The acting can be terrible. The sound can be crappy.  Don't believe me?  How many editions of Clerks have they put out now?  And that's still my favorite Kevin Smith movie.

We were set to open a 150 seater and the morning of the event, I woke up knowing it would be a sellout. Just like I knew WoSR's first show would be a homerun.  Somehow, I just know these things.

So we discussed with the theater what the options were with having a second screening.  We could do a second screening after the first.... or possibly just open another screen.  As there was an extra DVD player already at the theater, and me and Glenn had both brought backup copies of our flicks, we were able to open a second screen and accomodate the overflow.

I manned the booth (and watched the money) during A Zombie Movie.  The result being that I got to see very very little of it with the audience.  I did hear some of the laughs during the hilarious ending and Calrton's "What the FUCK?!" line got a big pop.  When the movie ended and people were coming out, they kept smiling at me as they walked by and saying things like "Ya'll did a great job!" "That was wonderful!" and the like.
A couple people kinda wandered out in the middle and complained of the handheld camera work making them motion sick, however.  I believe perhaps this condition should be named "The Cloverfield Effect".

I got to watch pretty much 65% of my movie with the crowd.  You know, when I burned it onto dvd, I watched some key scenes and effects shots and areas where i was concerned about the sound mix (not that I woulda had time to fix anything anyways) and fast forwarded through the rest.  So I've never actually watched the whole movie all the way through yet.  But upon seeing what I saw on my tv, and what I saw in the theater, it seems to flow fairly well and doesn't get too slow in any parts.  The only spots where it slows down a little don't last long.  The whole thing, credits and all is only like 57 minutes or so. 

I was surprised what got big laughs and what didn't.  And when The Gospel According To Professor Lang came up, it got not just a laugh, but to my surprise, a very healthy amount of applause and cheering.  Clearly there is an anti-christian backlash in this bible belt town.  And for the record - despite what I wrote in the movie, I do believe in a higher power.

I was surprised Sheriff Marbutt's racist rants got no laugh at all.  Maybe even with a bi-racial president who identifies as african-american, we're still not far enough past the seperate-but-equal era to have a good laugh at how stupid it all was yet.  But to me, the term "race-mixers" is so completely archaic that just upon hearing it, I always laugh.
And also for the record, I have been subjected to quite a bit of racism over the years and took a lot of shit about being the product of an interracial marriage.  Mostly in high school because I lived in an extremely rural, extremely isolated town in alabama that was 99% white.  The only minorities in the school were myself, my brother, Brian "Chico" Riley and his brother, and Andrea Hogan.  And every damn one of us were half-caucasian!  So I've seen both sides of the racism issue.

I'm surprised that even though we invited him, THE Johnny McPhail (as I always refer to him) came to the movies.  I'm more surprised at how awesome he seemed to think Beyond Beyond was.  And even more surprised that he went out of his way to email me, again expressing how good he thought it was and in particular talking about how awesome he thought Sabrina was.  I didn't even know he had my email address.
Johnny said he thought the performances in my movie were probably in part due to my direction.  But I can't take any credit.  When it comes to actors, I'm very passive and generally feel it's my job to get out of their way and let them do their thing.  I'll only nudge them in this or that direction if I feel they're getting too far away from what a scene or shot is about - or if they ask for direction.
In fact, I think I need some improvement in that department.  While I don't really think they NEED much direction, I do need to get better at letting the actors know they're doing things right and making them feel comfortable with their own performances.
But then that's the thing about any craft.  The more you do it, the more you learn.
For instance I learned that $3 was too little to charge as it made it harder to break even on.  This time we had lower overhead, higher turnout and higher ticket price.  So we actually made money, but gave you TWO movies for less than the price of one.  So we were able to still give the people a great value, which I'm very proud of (altruistic).  It was a win-win.

The most exciting thing for me about the screening was THE RETURN OF EMERGO!!!!  I combined the Emergo gimmick from Castle's House on Haunted Hill with the gimmick from his The Tingler wherein Vincent Price breaks the fourth wall and directly addresses the audience informing them to scream to save their own lives, lest the Tingler kills them.  I've always loved William Castle and have always been a sucker for a gimmick.  Emergo was a hit with the audience. 
There really is a lot of Ed Wood, Castle, Roger Corman and Russ Meyer in Beyond Beyond.  I guess if Tarantino makes his movies by ripping-off (homaging) 70s exploitation (and sometimes Hong Kong) movies - then I guess Im the Tarantino of 50s and 60s b-movies.

EVERYBODY wanted to know when the 3rd installment of my Guntown movies would come out.  I did actually plan on making a 3rd one when I made the first one, but in the interim, I changed my mind.  It just becomes more and more difficult to make these damn things.  And the 2nd movie had so much more craziness and stuff going on than the 1st one that there's no way the 3rd one could up the ante enough to not be a disapointment.  Besides, part three of every franchise sucks.  Superman III sucked.  Spider-Man 3 was terrible.  Batman Forever really blew.  Return of the Jedi is the worst one of the OT.  Search for Spock was a letdown.
And as the old saying goes, it's better to leave them wanting more.
And I just got frustrated and tired while making Beyond Beyond.  My heart wasn't in it.  I really just phoned this one in because I was already looking ahead to the projects stewing in my mind that i'm more excited about working on.
To be honest, the only reason I completed Beyond Beyond was for you the people.  Everybody was always asking about it and excited about it and looking forward to it.  I owed the fans for being so loyal and supportive.

And supportive you were.  Fuck making money, the love we got was the REAL return on investment.

People just constantly say things to me like "When are you going to Hollywood?" and "You're going to make it big!" or "Why are you not in Hollywood yet?"  and "You're on your way up."
I hate California.  And as the wise THE Johnny McPhail told me, "All the actresses I know that moved to LA just ended up marrying a cameraman."
So why should I move to Hollywood where I won't be able to even afford my rent and will have to swim in a sea of people who all are TRYING to be actors and TRYING to be filmmakers?
When I can stay here where I already AM an actor and filmmaker. 
Hollywood puts out garbage.  Here in mississippi, I am surrounded on all sides by a strong support system and community, a sea of talent, and people just literally throwing resources at me for free.  What idiot would leave THAT?!  You can make movies anywhere.  I chose to make them here.

I could live anywhere. I choose to live in Mississippi.

Thank you to April Perea who is really the Superman (AND the Lois Lane) to my bumbling Clark Kent.
Thank you to my cast for your generous contributions of time and talent! I get all this credit but it's you who actually run the ship.  I am just the navigator.  YOU made the movie.

 Thank you to my co-stars in A Zombie Movie.  It was my pleasure to be a humble supporting character to such funny scene-stealers.
I am happy we all got to share this experience together and that I had the opportunity of my part in helping make it happen.
And obviously but not least, thanks to my cohort in cinematic mischief, Glenn Payne.  One of the most wonderful human beings I know.