.

after spending the entire first day watching films, we needed a bit of a break. so on saturday (june 19), we did some other things. first, we participated in the festival "car rally," which was basically a guided tour through the town of temecula (and surrounding area)...in old "classic" cars! the filmmakers each picked a car, then got into them and the people who owned the cars drove us around. it was pretty fun driving around in the 1948 chevy delivery van we rode in. unfortunately, it didn't have air conditioning, and it was REALLY hot that day...

after the car rally, we decided to go back to some of the wine vineyards we passed in the rally but did not go in. so melany and i went to the callaway winery and did some wine tasting. we even got free wine glasses!! we also visited the hart winery, taking home another free wine glass each.

melany takes a break from all the wine tasting

that night, my good friend eric elliott, who lives in LA, came down to visit and hang out. he stayed over until the next day and we had a good time hanging out.

of course, the next day, sunday june 20 was the day of Just Outside the Door's 2nd screening. i had some other visitors for that, as well. in addition to eric, my aunt, my uncle, and my cousin (lenora, michael, and david crane, respectively), who live in nearby laguna niguel, calif., were also on hand to see the film. they arrived in mid-afternoon, after melany, eric and i attended one of the festival workshops, "shooting the subtext: the director as visual author." that was given by jack perez, who is a relatively young filmmaker (he looked to be early 30s or younger) who had 2 feature films in the festival, La Cucaracha and The Big Empty. unfortunately, we didn't get time to see either of those films, but the seminar was interesting and entertaining.

then it was about 5pm, the scheduled screening time for Just Outside the Door. again, the festival was running late, and the screening was actually delayed by about 40 minutes or so. unfortunately, there wasn't that big of a turnout in the audience. including the 4 guests that i had, the audience consisted of about 10-15 people. it got a positive feedback, though, which was nice. apparently, the group of 3 people who sat a couple of rows ahead of us and did not seem to be affiliated with the festival at all (i.e., not filmmakers or with other filmmakers) liked the film. one of them smiled at me as they left the theater, and my friend eric said he overheard them saying how much they liked it outside the theater. so that was nice.

the next day, monday june 21, melany and i spent the day traveling home. we drove back the 2 hours or so from temecula to LA, then caught our flight back to austin, texas. of course, we lost 2 hours due to time zone switching, and then had to drive back to dallas. since by then it was evening rush hour in austin, it took us significantly longer to get home than it did to get there... we finally arrived home in dallas at 9pm (after leaving the motel 6 we stayed at in temecula at 8am)...

(i should point out, though, that my first ever experience as a filmmaker at a film festival, was in july 1997, when the short film i worked on at NYU, called Form Space & Murder, screened at the Long Island Film Festival...)

.

one of the more impressive cars in the car rally

.

.

.