Today I did the whole Cinequest thing and skipped out on work. It was... DAY OF THE WRITER! (cue drums) Yeah I know, no one cares, but hey it was a good time. First we got two lectures about screenwriting from two San Jose State film professors. It was real interesting stuff and Albert (one of my old students) seemed like he learned a lot. The biggest thing I took away was some stuff that was said in the second lecture about hanging the story on the spine. Cool stuff if you are a writer, but if you are not you probably left my blog already.

Anyways, the big event of the day was to award Michael Arndt (Screenwriter, Little Miss Sunshine) with Cinequest's highest award, the Maverick Spirit award. Michael was interviewed by Richard Walter, the famous film prof from UCLA. Overall it was a real good time with Michael sharing his experience and his views on screenwriting and Richard sidebusting jokes about everything. Richard had a good one about how Africa needed more screenwriters. I know the punchline sounds a bit harsh, but Michael set him up perfectly and Richard just had to say it.

The rest of the day I chilled with N8past and Yasmine at the fest. The big movie we got to check out was the world premiere for Glory Boy Days! This was an impressive debut film from local San Jose filmmaker Paul Encinas. If you didn't get to watch it, don't worry, there's more screenings, I'm sure of it!