Ross McElwee is the man!

I love me some Ross McElwee! Hell yeah. Thus, I'm pissed that I didn't get to see him receive a Career Achievement award at the Full Frame documentary film festival happening right here in good old Durham. Full Frame was celebrating its 10th anniversary. Wow. Ten years. What a trip.

I was working part time at The Carolina Theatre when the festival began its life as the Doubletake documentary film festival. I discovered McElwee's films while working at the dearly departed Carolina Theatre Video store. I fell in love with his personal narrative verite style the first time I saw 'Sherman's March'.

I've fantasized of making a documentary of my own all about how I love McElwee and about how our lives have intersected in small contingent ways. Such as: I was dating a woman who worked for the original iteration of Doubletake magazine at the time of the first Doubletake Documentary festival. Leading up to the first festival there was a fundraiser shindig of some sort at the NC Museum of Art. My girlfriend Rebecca asked if I might want to go. Remembering it now I'm not even sure if she was going to be there herself. Maybe I used her ticket or something. I don't remember her being there. Probably I've simply forgotten because I became so starstruck at being in the same physical space as Ross McElwee. So there I was, a part-time video store clerk and projectionist at the Carolina Theatre who lived with his Grandmom in Durham, all dolled up in my best bow tie and my deceased rich uncle's camel hair sweater, trying to look like I belonged amongst the glitterati and cognoscenti such as they were that night, but mainly trying to disappear as much as possible.

I was hugging a wall and clutching a drink and trying to be as unnoticeable as possible. (Trying to remember this all now I think that Ross was showing a piece of a work in progress and that was the reason I went in the first place. I think he showed some of the footage which would later become 'Bright Leaves'. At this point in the evening I had seen the sneak preview and was just hanging out for free drink & food and the chance to 'hang' with Ross for a while.) I didn't do a good enough job of keeping a low profile. All of a sudden a local TV news crew was in my face and I was giving an interview about what I thought of Doubletake and Ross. I couldn't believe they picked me. Just minutes before I had been watching them interview McElwee himself. On the news later that night I made the cut and contributed some banal soundbite to the story. I want to say that it might have even been edited so that I appeared immediately after Ross in the piece.

So, yeah, that happened. And I have that news broadcast on a VHS tape somewhere. I think I labeled the tape 'ME & MCELWEE'. Ever since then that has been my pet name for my fantasy documentary. Over the years I've added a handful of other little stories which would go into the documentary. Me and McElwee just seem to have some weird wavelength thing going on. Just tonight I was thinking about composing a blog post congratulating him on his well deserved award, when I stopped by my ex-girlfriend's excellent blog, 'My Little Radio Show', and lo and behold she had been blogging about McElwee. She is a big documentary fan and she had gotten to see him at the festival. Unfortunately she screwed up her ankle, tore a ligament and took some bone off with it, when she stumbled on some steps at the Theatre, but she did get to see Ross. Not only did she get to see him accept his award, but she caught him napping in the Marriot lobby. She wanted to get a picture of him asleep but she didn't because her phone photo function is still a mystery. That would have been hilarious if she had got that photo. That would have definitely gone in my documentary. But Charlotte already had secured a place in the documentary (even if it only ever gets made in my head) because she was responsible for me introducing myself to him one evening a couple of years back.
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He was in town to show 'Bright Leaves' at The Carolina (where else) and I dragged my friend Margaret out to the screening. We ran into Charlotte afterwards and the three of us walked over to dearly departed Jo & Joe's to have a beer. Fifteen minutes later, in walked McElwee with some folks from the Center For Documentary Studies. We three were sitting directly across from the bar and McElwee and company came to the bar to order drinks. It was basically us and them in the bar and Ross was standing directly behind me at this point. At Charlotte's urging (she had no doubt been listening to me gush about how I loved McElwee's films) I got up my gumption and turned around and tapped him on the shoulder and introduced myself and told him I was a big fan and I might have thanked him for coming down to Durham to screen Bright Leaves, for it was the first time I had had the pleasure of seeing his work on the big screen rather than the small. He was nothing but friendly and gracious. He thanked us for coming out to see the movie. I turned back to my beer thankful that Charlotte had been there to give me that little push when I needed it.

If I ever make that documentary all y'all are all invited to the premier. If there's any justice it will be at the Carolina...