On the Road with the Dead Gentlemen

GenCon Indy 2006 Photo Gallery

I was hoping to write this earlier on in the week, but my brain couldn’t bleed out anything that remotely formed words. Now that I’ve spent most of my weekend comatose, I’m rested and ready to reflect on a seriously mind-blowing experience at Gen Con Indy 2006.

There is something quite unique about our little film company, Dead Gentlemen Productions. It honestly defies logic in some cases. Okay, I get that our movie The Gamers hit a funny nerve with a lot of people over the past four or five years, and the survival of our company is absolutely owed to that. We’ve been able to pay for an office space, and go to conventions, and help fund a much higher budgeted Gamers movie off the rampant sales of this little movie, but after five years, I’d expect that to die down. I’m totally wrong.

Our fans, though disappointed that The Gamers: Dorkness Rising isn’t out to buy yet, still decided to support us at the booth. We were swamped nearly the entire con. I think I counted two lulls that lasted a total of a half an hour. Truly spectacular, and much appreciated.

Okay, enough of the old news. We were scheduled to screen Dorkness Rising only twice the entire convention. The demand to see the film was so huge that GenCon scheduled three more screening events, thereby also upgrading the other movies that were screening at Gen Con as well to the bigger room. Hey, no sense in giving us favoritism. I’m all for fair play. Seriously, big kudos to Derek Guder and his ever-ready team for fielding the madness that is our fandom, and HUGE thanks to you crazy fans out there and your enthusiasm to see the new movie. Even with exploding pools and waterfalls over escalators that interrupt our midnight showing of the film. Yeah, go Google that experience on people’s blogs. That’s a funny story.

Each screening was packed, and we got an unheard of 5 standing ovations for a movie!!! Seriously unexpected and appreciated. You want to know something else that was unexpected, airport security. Yeah, here’s another chip in the “I just lost a few years off my life due to stress” block. Our movie literally popped out of the machine onto a DVD at 5:30am Los Angeles time. We had a little pocket premiere, invite only, hush hush for all the industry people and close friends (that’s right, I’ll get to you people in a minute). The screening was at 8pm at the United Artists Theatre in downtown Indianapolis. One of our stars, Carol Roscoe, was going to be late. I knew that ahead of time. Well, after she got through the security line at SeaTac airport, which started at that time in the parking garage, she got on the plane and actually arrived at the theatre 15 minutes before the movie did. Dan Capuzzi, our editor and keeper of the sacred DVD, was at the LA airport from 6:30am until they finally let him on the plane that afternoon.

All stress aside, the movie played and the wait was over. Everyone had a hard time hearing everything in the movie because they were all laughing so hard. Also, the film was in the 98% done phase. There were some minor audio glitches and a couple of special effects that needed to be polished up. Everyone was very forgiving of those, and yeah, just incredible responses.

Tracy Hickman of Dragonlance fame already called the film “A Critical Hit”. I don’t know if I’m allowed to quote him on that, but I’m gonna.

We met/re-met a lot of people this year. What I liked was that people we’ve met before, have really become friends at this point. It’s nice to go to conventions and be able to look forward to seeing your friends, who happen to be Margaret Weis Productions, Monte & Sue Cook, Matt Forbeck, Ryan Miller, just about anyone at Wizards of the Coast, Tracy Hickman, Aaron Williams, and pretty much anyone who ended up at our Thursday night screening.

I think a lot of us hung out with Jamie and Renae Chambers, et al over at Sovereign Press/Margaret Weis Productions. Crazy times with them Serenity/Dragonlance people. You should keep watch for future collaborations between the Dead Gentlemen and Sovereign Press. That’s right, collaborations.

Well, there’s so much to try and capture, or forget, from Gen Con. I should also mention those crazy guys who did Dork of the Rings. They clearly had a lot of fun making their film. I haven’t had time to sit down and watch it, but I saw their booth and talked with the filmmakers, and they’re cool folks. Whether their movie is good or not, which so far it looks really cool, quirky, and very fun, you should buy it anyway, because I said so. That Jack Peterson is one helluva guy! I had a lot of fun talking with them folks.

Things I regret at Gen Con:

• Being too hungover and sleep deprived to hit Tracy & Laura Hickman’s Killer Breakfast. I really enjoy those and I’m bummed I didn’t get a chance to go see it.
• That everyone didn’t get a chance to see the movie. I suppose I can’t be too bummed though, it wasn’t 100% finished anyway, and it will be out soon enough.
• That Matt Vancil couldn’t make it to any of the screenings. There will be others.
• Not gaming! Of course, with everything we were doing, not much time to game.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 at 1:47 pm and is filed under GenCon Indy 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.