At first, one notices the changes that are withdrawals. Planet Ant's film festival offers a backyard beer garden. At least that hasn't changed. The backyard beer garden is a constitutive feature. A Port-A-John wasn't planted in the alley. The tented area didn't feature catina lights, a name for Christmas lights in summertime, when it is hot.
Then one notices additions. This year, the festival offered complimentary beer. Literally, one could walk off the street and sit on a lawn chair and fill an acrylic cup up and drain it, again and again. One new friend, an actor now turned 40 years of age, declined to go into Planet Ant's black box for screenings. He drank from his bottle of wine, pouring into his own glass of course, his bottle the size between table size and jug size, and enjoyed conversation with the actors and directors and critics who came and went. I enjoyed one glass of complimentary beer, and then I drank from his bottle of non-varietal white. I'm hoping some beer distributor donated kegs so the festival wasn't paying for all that free beer. When the kegs ran out, the staff drove over to a party store and bought a few cases of Miller longnecks. I have no idea how Planet Ant makes money on this festival, but the formula must be working since the festival has marked its fifth anniversary; Planet Ant is marking its tenth anniversary, opening as a theatre in 1996. I'm not sure when Planet Ant opened as a coffee house previous to the first stage show.
It's the same cast-off metal desk that is posted at the northwestern corner of the three story tenement. It's about six inches too short for a normal office desk. It must be taken in year to year because it hasn't rusted. A Planet Ant alumni managed the desk, guarding the cash box and the ballot box for the Audience Choice awards. I didn't remember her name, but it's hard to forget the eyes of Inga R. Wilson, once featured on the cover of the Purple Rose Theatre's season brochure. It is legend that actors in the conservatory program at Purple Rose Theatre are also given the opportunity to clean the theatre after performances, an opportunity none of the conservatory actors pass up. Later than evening, when the cash box was in safe hands and the ballots for Audience Choice Award had been counted and the award delivered, Inga circulated among the empty tables, collecting empty beer cans, drained beer glasses and papers, tidying up for the next day's screenings.
It was a good night for meeting people breaking into the industry the hard way, filming short films and then submitting them through Without a Box. I sat with Edge, the film director and impressario who started Thought Collide Productions and now leads the newest film festival in the city, one that bridges Detroit and Windsor. I also had a chance to meet two of the festival's directors, Sharyn from Brooklyn who was screening "Collison" and Mark Thimijan from Nebraska who was screening "The Girl Who Could Run 600 Miles Per Hour".
Don't Be Scared of Nebraska
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