Providence, The Short, and The Biltmore Hotel

                     The hotel where we stayed in Providence was the inspiration for The Shining. 

 I didn't see any twins at the end of the hall or have any telepathic communications but I did pick up a little of the writer's block; we went there to see (for the first time for me) our short movie on a big screen. I say "we" and "our" not to sound like a royal (ass pain) but because the group included me, the director, the producers and sound guy. I arrived first and had a walk around the town. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, I just wanted to pound the pavement: city, street, walk, go. Three times I started heading one way, took ten steps and turned around and went in the opposite direction. If anyone had watched me from an aerial view, I probably looked like Ms. Pacman. It's weird being in a city, a place not far from where you were born, doing something you've never done before, and not have a simultaneous brain freeze and flood. In no particular order I thought about: JFK Jr, my birth, financial ruin, my grandparents, the mafia, New Orleans, my old boyfriend's chipped tooth, my children, war veterans, falling into a canal and what I'm doing with my life. You know, the usual. I wonder if this is what happens to most people when they visit a foreign city: a little internal exploration. You don't know where you are, so go inside your head where at least it's familiar. I saw buildings and even took photos of a few of the beautiful streets and landmarks but I wasn't really seeing anything so much as I was breathing it. I was in the past, present and future all at once.

When we got to the screening at 9 pm the following night there was already a full house of cheering people in the theater. As soon as they opened the doors to the auditorium though, the place emptied out and the 20 or so of us loitering in the hallway walked in. The place was not a screening room, it was a theater; it had columns, gargoyles, painting on the ceiling and velvet seats. I felt excited and hopeful and ashamed and scared all at the same time. Our short was last, which wouldn't have been so bad except that the ones preceding it were bleak and relentless, still beautiful and complicated but Jesus, you wanted to kill yourself or take a rape shower. Some guy in the audience had his head back snoring with his mouth open.

God bless him and every other man of his ilk that has ever walked the face of the earth.

Though it was beautiful, amazing and thrilling, I can't really give a critique, or even an explanation, of the movie itself. I can only give you a view of myself watching it, which is pretty much the same way a person who catches a glimpse of herself naked in front of a mirror reacts: "Good Lord! Ugh. Oh Well. Hmm. It's..not so bad. Could be worse". I don't know if this will happen every time from this day forward, but I suspect it will. After it was over, we all walked to the town square and for a while discussed the pluses and minuses of getting something to eat vs. going back to our rooms with the ghosts and the shining. The ghosts and the shining won. As usual.