The premiere completely rocked, but what many don't know is that it almost didn't happen. Last night I set the letterboxing to render out and it seemed to work nicely until I started dumping it back to the camera and it started glitching on me a little past the halfway point. This has never happened on my one good firewire drive, so I figured it probably could use a defrag. I'd say that the drive was probably a solid 80% fragmented, so it took over 2 hours to defrag. Then I went to start up full letterboxed film and the preview files that took all night and most of the morning to render were gone. At this point we were only 4 hours before run time. I had a full on freakout over it (I have to buy a new mouse today). Now, the other tape of the film was the work print that we finished last month to get into art-o-matic, and since then we've added effects, music and even a few new shots, so I really didn't want to have to show the old one that we had already shown to people. So in order to make it to the premiere on time, I only had one chance to successfully dump something to tape. I was able to get an un-letterboxed version on tape successfully and we got there about 15 minutes before we were supposed to start. It was a full house and then some. People were sitting on the floor and standing in the back. People who got there just a little late couldn't even get in because it was so packed. We got up and did a little intro with Britannia the Cheerleader, Karen holding up a press kit, Elizabeth holding up her lunchbox and me explaining the lack of letterboxing. Anne and I didn't even get seats. We stood in the back near the keg. It really went over well. People were laughing pretty hard throughout, in all the right places and in some surprising places. Many of the cast brought their parents, and all the parents loved it. The whole thing was just so exhilarating. Afterwards we did a short Q&A, schoozed with the fans and had a last couple of drinks at Capitol Lounge where we could laugh at all the real hill rats. It was an incredible experience. We were beyond capacity and Art-o-Matic was buzzing about it all night. Karen Zamperini needs a shoutout for getting there early and setting up as well as buying the keg (which surprisingly got completely kicked in a very short period of time). We were supposed to get there early, too, but getting the film done wound up coming completely down to the wire. Thanks to everyone who came, and those who weren't able to make it will have more opportunities soon which will be posted here and on the film site.