NIGHT OF THE BEST
Published in Screen Magazine, December 2012
Accessing the Underground Chicago starts with a door off the street that opens into a small, nondescript fluorescent room. It could easily be the lobby of a building full of dentists.
Inside, an imposing but polite gentleman and a fashionable lady stand before a concrete and steel stairway that looks like it leads to the boiler room.
She checks a list to figure out who’s good to go and he marks a narrow black “X” on the hands of those who make it. Then she points to the stairs and says walk down to the next flight and keep going. When you reach the bottom, you’ll be in the club.
That’s where the 2012 Best of the Midwest Independent Film Awards are happening.
It gets darker all the way down. There’s a coat check next to a white photo backdrop across from the final door, the one that leads into the club. Beyond it, silhouettes mingle over a streamlined mahagony vibe.
It is crowded. Sold out. An annual event where people come to see and be seen while celebrating the best films of the year. They are actors and directors. Producers and writers. Editors, assistants and aficianados. They are from big cities and small towns across the Midwest.
Also, they are drinking lots of vodka.
Mostly, it’s Grey Goose. The distiller’s logo appears underneath a list of cocktails specifically mixed for the occasion at every bar. There’s L’Orange, La Pois and Cherry Fizz. Fancy drinks in stemmed glasses that are impossible to hold without spilling.
But none of the guests seem to be worried about spilling. Most of them got here by dealing with spills in one way or another. Some by accident, some on purpose. Some combined with thrills and chills.
They have come to appreciate the make believe excitement of cinema by working through the unexpected drama of production, where overlooked permits, overcast skies and overrun budgets happen with regularity. They are well acquainted with the stress of shit gone wrong, the art of deliberately constructing shit gone wrong and, most importantly, the process of cleaning the shit up either way. They won’t make any messes tonight.
They also tend to be an extremely resourceful bunch.
Take, for example, the producer from a Chicago sound studio who conned the way for a handful of associates to enjoy the show even though they were not on the list.
“I know how to get into a fuckin… Anything,” she says.
“My friends, editors from a place I don’t know if I should name, they wanted to get in real bad but it was sold out. So I go, you know,” she says, holding up her wrist to display the black “X” that anyone who wants to enter must have, “this is what we got going on on our hands.”
“What would you do in that situation?”
She nods toward District 1 Headquarters of the Chicago Fire Department, just across the street.
“You would go to the firehouse,” she says. “Ask for a Sharpie.” She smiles. “The one guy said, ‘I think I’ve got one upstairs.’ So he ran upstairs,” she continues. “Came back down with it. So it’s alright,” she concludes. “My friends got in. They needed to be in here.”
Her enthusiasm for taking risks is an art form practiced at one time or another by most every person in the room.
“You know how I got my Lollapalooza gig?” a director asks. “I brought my Porta-Brace camera bag with me one day down to Grant Park and I walked to what looked like some sort of production trailer facility and I just started throwin’ out my lines: I’m a film student, anybody need help, I can intern, I’ll work for free.”
The story lets out a wiff of sterotypical stick-to-it-ness that make it seem hard to believe. That’s possibly why it failed. “I got kicked out by a security guard,” he says.
But on the way out, another security guard asked him, “You’re just gonna’ take no for an answer?” It wasn’t so much a question as a challenge, and the future director accepted.
“That one security guard made me go back,” he explains. “Now, six years later, I’ve had a consistent job with Lollapalooza.”
This ethic of impromptu problem-solving reaches the uppermost levels of the organization. Mike McNamara is Co-Founder and Director of programming for the Midwest Independent Film Festival. He brings the community together for a night of film viewing and networking on the on the first Tuesday of every month at the Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema in Lakeview.
He is also a professional actor and he appears to know every person in the joint. He cannot take two steps without being glad-handed, schmoozed or well-wished from all sides. As host of the festivities, he fills the room with so much enthusiasm that assistants have to walk around holding up signs that say, “Quiet Please.”
Yet it goes off without a hitch. The previews play. The winners smile. And the speakers platform, which upon closer inspection is a piece of plywood rigged over a corner booth near the dance floor, sets a perfect stage for the Best of the Midwest Independent Film Awards.