I went to the Angelika

I went to the Angelika Round Table last night. I was nervous about going. I made up excuses in my head like “Oh I have more important things to do” or “I bet it will be goth, trendy, indie snobs that are there because it’s the fashion not their passion” or “I don’t want to go through the awkwardness of trying to figure out which group of people in the cafe is there for the roundtable.” These are the same excuses I always struggle with and typically succumb to. I decided to go. Well, get in my car and drive that direction is probably closer to the truth because I knew I could always bail out. The closer I got the more I got the rush, the tighter my chest felt, the more my face flushed.

I was pleasantly surprised by the makeup of the 15 or so people that showed up. It wasn’t packed with goth, indie snobs (do they even exist?). A few people appeared to be pretty hard-core movie geeks like me. At one point we were asked to list a favorite movie. This isn’t something I typically track so I threw out the first things that came to mind (purging Citizen Kane because, well, that’s just redundant, reptitious and saying the same thing more than once). I think I kept it down to three. I was surprised (pleasantly?) when my mention of Man Bites Dog elicited a joking “You’re one sick puppy.” There it was. Someone else had seen it! Someone else was like me.

If you want to write screenplays this looks like a good group to get involved with. While most of the discussion was about watching movies, I get the impression future roundtables will feature more things about making movies. In fact, I believe next tuesday’s meeting @7:30pm will have some discussion about screenwriting.