#59: THE TRIUMPH OF LOS FRIKIS

The #MiamiFilm Festival may be over - for now - but nothing was so exciting as the resounding success of the premiere of Los Frikis - an indie film about punk rock rebels during Cuba's darkly euphemistic 'special period.' The film garnered not only a "Marimbas" award but also standing o's, hollers, whistles, laughs, gasps... Really, anything that one as a writer/director/producer could ever want, and, knowing some of the people who put it together, it's equally a thrill for me to watch a film be released and received with such energy.

Beyond that, I had an amazing time! Hanging out with the wonderful producer of Los Frikis Rebecca Karch Tomlinson hot off that raucous reception to her film and attending the delightful after party organized by the unstoppable Alexis Garcia . I even got to tell Chris Miller, who had just flown in with Phil Lord from London, how much I loved the comedy in their films because during the 15 years I lived abroad, watching them made me feel less lonely (which elicited an "Aww!" from Chris, but, as an afterthought, makes me sound really lonely, but then again, when PG Wodehouse is your favorite author, it's like speaking a forgotten tongue in a forbidding world, largely made up of the Wodehouse-bereft.)

If you think I'm talking over you, you should have seen the ever-gracious, effortlessly elegant (in brown?) and exceedingly tall (for Miami!) Tom Hiddleston interviewing himself, because, after all, who knows his story better? At the end of the day, the man went to school, as his insufferable schoolmates, of which I know five too many, like to call it, and it shows. Getting an education in the snootiest and most callous environments where you're meant to excel at rhetoric - while their peers in America are answering "Bruh!" to every question - not only prepares you for the rabid beasts in the House of Commons but ultimately makes taking the stage for a Variety award a snooze.

But the fun didn't end there. I got to see the opening night film "Thelma" with the inimitable producer and friend Jason Dubin, got to meet Tommaso Santambrogio finally, see his gorgeous opus "Oceans are the Real Continents" on the big screen and hang out and meet so many people I heard of or meant to meet, or had met and re-met, including but not limited to Jayme Kaye Gershen Debbie Gold Diliana Alexander Pedro Menocal Members of the South Beach Shark Club and so many others I can't name here.

Perhaps the most exciting moment was being onstage at the beautiful, blond wood paneled Knight concert hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County with my producer Mark Pulaski and, receiving the award on behalf of the director, my DP, Juan Camilo Barriga !!! It was an eerily wonderful moment to be up there together, albeit as jury members and vicarious laureate, but it smelled like the future, and I loved it.

Oh, and the thrill of talking up the indefatigable James Woolley wanting to build a better festival, with a bigger market, the desire to go at it like a pitbull (dale!) with the lobby of the tax credit, all that is exciting, I admit, but nothing so thrilling as to tell you that finally, I'm going to finish my first feature #SUCCESSENTULIFE as I hoped.

More on that soon.

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