OCT
26
2007
How I Met Dave Matthews
by Traveling MattThe 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.
In 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.
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