Last night


SWMBO and I went to see a film at the local restored theatre that is our city's repertory theatre. The film was

Happy To Be here.

It was quite interesting, really. A comedy-drama situation about a young man with a passive-aggressive anger problem who is dealing with certain situations in his life and family. While the film held a few good laughs and interesting work, what appealed to us tremendously was the filmmaker's marketing and promotion work. He's doing a lot of promotion on the web, obviously, as an inexpensive tool to promote it. The other thing is that he's taking it on a personal tour of Canada (by personal I mean he's physically taking it from city to city). He introduced the film in person, and also showed a short film by a local filmmaker (whose main character is the daughter of a friend of mine. How coincidental is that?). Then he held a Q&A after the film. It was a personal, almost 'living room intimate' way to do it, and he's a very personable young man. He said that he was turned down by the various festivals and so decided on this way to show his film to audiences. SWMBO had heard him on CBC just the other morning. We love the energy and enthusiasm he's showing, and his faith in himself and his work. What a tough job to do! We decided we had to go see the film, and we weren't disappointed.

He's obviously worked hard, done the film on even more of a shoestring than most indie films, but has both a great love of his characters in this film and of film in general. It was really worthwhile to go see it. We even bought a couple of DVDs of it after, and contributed to his gas fund to get to the next city.

I've seen a lot of worse films by big directors. This one was fun to watch, and I wish Sean MacPherson a lot of luck in his film future!

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