Archive for the ‘How I Did It’ Category

MAR
24
2012

It's hard to talk about what happened on February 5, 2012. The day feels like a confusing dream, the kind you wake from in happiness and then sadly realize never occurred. The only difference is that it did.

I'm writing this nearly two months later—the first break I've gotten from the crush of work and responsibility that awaited me when I returned from Indianapolis. I didn't have time to adjust after that staggering week, or to savor its taste. Sometimes I doubt it happened. I've had lots of happiness in my life, but it's mostly been the flavor of calm satisfaction. Loss, failure, and grief are the only feelings I've had before with much actual intensity, and so the feelings of Superbowl night, and the recollections of it, take on a strange tinge of sadness, as one might wince when flexing a healthy joint that you remember once injuring as a child.

"It is in our idleness…in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top." —Virginia Woolf

I'll try to walk you through the day…

Click to read the rest of this entry »

FEB
14
2012

Sorry about the delay, but when I got home I had two major work deadlines I was running late for plus twenty plays to read. It's been over a week and I haven't unpacked from the trip yet.

Superbowl Morning

Now, the part you've been waiting for…

Click to read the rest of this entry »

FEB
6
2012

Saturday night before the Superbowl we were treated to a swank dinner where we met several more Doritos marketing and advertising bigwigs. It was in part to honor us, and in part to honor the team that put together the marketing strategy and the Crash event. Everybody was distributed into five large tables, each marked for one of the commercial finalists.

Check this spread out…

Click to read the rest of this entry »

FEB
4
2012

So last night Jonathan and I went to see Chronicle. The next morning the other guys showed up and I figured I'd hear about all the madness we missed out on. They said they spent the whole night looking for a place to eat because everything was overflowing, and wished they'd gone to the movie. When Frito-Lay isn't giving us something to do we have no idea what to do with ourselves.

Downtown Indy has been transformed into Superbowl Village. There's an NFL Experience expo, concerts, an astroturf field down an entire street, giant decals over everything, skyways connecting all the major buildings, and a zipline where people have been waiting for hours to swoosh down over the heads of thousands of crammed drunks and families. From our hotel we can not only see the stadium, but the highways where cars inch hopelessly slowly into downtown. The average wait for a taxi was an hour.

The city at night…

Click to read the rest of this entry »

FEB
3
2012

During yesterday's TV interviews, one of the TV stations asked two of the finalists (who shall remain nameless) what their favorite Lonely Island song was. The first guy said "Iran From You"—and the second guy nonchalantly said "Jizz in My Pants." Everyone in the green room suddenly started chattering, "Did he just say Jizz in My Pants on live TV?" I bolted into the control room and found out (surely to the great relief of the entire Frito-Lay organization) it was being taped for later editing.

Satellite Control Room

After the exhausting Media Day, where each finalist did somewhere around 15 satellite interviews with stations around the country, we went to a swank bistro for lunch and had the world's best sliders followed by heaping plates of chicken, short rib, and dessert platters. I met some of the representatives from Goodby & Silverstein, the giant ad agency that does Frito-Lay's advertising and helps run this contest, and they seemed just as excited about the contest as everyone else, though they're more laid-back and cool like LA movie producers. Then back to the hotel for naptime.

Then on to…

Click to read the rest of this entry »

FEB
2
2012

We were on the way to the airport and a semi truck crashed in front of us, about a football field's length from the exit to the airport. We almost missed Crash the Superbowl because of a crash. Fortunately, nobody was injured (I checked) and in spite of blocking all the travel lanes with his sideways trailer, the driver kindly left a shoulder open for us to squeeze by.

We got to Indy and found that everything everywhere is branded Superbowl XLVI. It's on the floors, the walls, in every airport store, plastered 80 feet high on gigantic hotel decals. Even the pilot was talking about it. He apparently didn't know anything about sports, though; on the way in he came over the PA and welcomed everyone to Indy, "especially all you basketball fans."

And then…

Click to read the rest of this entry »

FEB
1
2012

Somebody asked me whether I'd be chronicling my experiences heading to the Superbowl, and the answer is: poorly. I haven't been keeping up with my FilmTraveler blog because I have a backlog of entries about Charles Darwin that I felt honor-bound to post before switching to anything frivolous. It's no wonder honor is so rare; it's bloody inconvenient.

So I'll be resurrecting it a teeny bit in order to post some updates whenever Facebook status updates prove too restrictive. The trouble with Facebook is that it's given a lot of talented people the illusion that by posting an occasional thought they're fulfilling their gifts as writers. Can you imagine if Christopher Nolan had written a status update instead of Inception?

Why I'm Going to the Superbowl

I'm going to assume anyone reading this already knows my brother and I made a Doritos Crash the Superbowl commercial and it got picked as a finalist. So I'll skip to the details. I'm on my way to Indianapolis in three hours to jump on the Superbowl hype-train, and we'll be spending the game in the Frito-Lay skybox with the other finalists, corporate and creative bigwigs, and best of all, Andy Samberg and The Lonely Island (the creators of the famous Saturday Night Live digital shorts). There are several official events and social events planned, and other than an itinerary I don't know what's going to happen or how.

So, now…

Click to read the rest of this entry »

OCT
26
2007

How I Met Dave Matthews

by Traveling Matt

The Dave Matthews Band played the welcome picnic during my orientation week at the University of Virginia. They were beginning to attract attention for their regular Tuesday night gigs at Trax, which by my third year there was a statewide phenomenon. But at the time, they still played picnics and fraternity parties. I thought they were neat, but didn't stay long since I had yet to develop the ability to interact with strangers my own age. What I remember about that day was the crazy guy in the straw hat playing violin.

Three years later, I was pitching him my music video ideas.

Click to read the rest of this entry »

SEP
19
2007

How I Met John Mayer

by Traveling Matt

"Glen Phillips is playing the NorVa," said my friend The Finn.

"That's the guy from Toad the Wet Sprocket," replied Traveling Matt.

"Duh. Let's go."

"Don't know if I can afford it."

"I'm bringing two women."

"Pick me up at seven."

Click to read the rest of this entry »

AUG
23
2007

How I Got into Sundance

by Traveling Matt

Sundance BadgeIn 2003, I was selected for the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab. The Sundance Institute does not just put on a massive film festival every year; they have fabulous all-expenses-paid artistic development programs in film, poetry, theater, and more, and provide a kind of fertile creative soil which I never knew existed and might not have believed had I not been lucky enough (and believe me, it's more luck than talent) to get planted in it. You're housed for a week in the Sundance Village in Utah, surrounded by woodfire cabins, forested mountains, and Academy Award-winning screenwriters. The airfare is paid, the expenses are paid, and there are three grade-double-A buffet meals a day plus social events and–if you stick around a few days beyond the Lab–some free Film Festival tie-ins. There is no industry talk except around informal dinner tables, no producers, no worries, no focus on anything except the art and craft of screenwriting. Plus there's a THX theater where you get to watch prior films by your fellow participants, and get sneak-preview 35mm screenings of films that are about to premiere at Sundance. It was among the very best and happiest weeks of my life.

How did it happen?

Click to read the rest of this entry »

FilmTraveler is powered by WordPress
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).