Film Festival (Make-up 2)

Well, it’s that time of year again. Time for the Out-OK International Gay Film Festival. For the last few years UCO’s student gay organization, GATE (Gay Alliance for Tolerance and Equality), has helped organize the event in Oklahoma City. This year it seems we had some trouble. Everyone knew when it was and what to expect, it just seems that everybody was sort of busy except for Dr. Macey who ceaselessly has time to help. Which, I know he doesn’t, he’s the chair of the English department, he just knows what’s important and what actually makes a difference and he makes the time for it. I wish more of our members had made an effort this semester to be there. I make no excuses for myself either; I wish I could have made myself more available for the event. I helped out and I did so in a way that did matter, but I was hoping to be completely involved. Next year the entire event might not even be in Oklahoma City if we can’t organize it successfully and within two years the current director will stop having the film festival all together. I’m hoping by that time to be able to take over the event with the help of key members of GATE and actually run it as an annual event either sponsored individually or through the help of GATE as a student organization. Even if this is the last film festival we see in Oklahoma City at least it was a memorable one for me. I had the opportunity to chauffer around two VIPs from a movie we showed, “Holding Trevor.” The director Rosser Goodman and a co-star of the move Eli Kranski, both were wonderful people that actually opened my eyes with the stories on how they got where they were in the world. Both had very similar stories of being at college studying what they wanted to do, but then a point they put everything to the side and said to themselves, “If I want to really do this I need to move to LA and pursue it now.” It sounds crazy and half-backed to me, but it makes a lot of sense. In acting or directing you have to start somewhere and part of that somewhere is where the movies are being made. You just have to get to the point where you realize if I really, REALLY want to do this as a career; I need to make the big decision NOW to make that dream a reality. It reminds me of a quote from T. E. Lawrence, “All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.” I never really understood how true that was until I listened about how both packed their bags, sold nearly all of their possessions, and took a stab at living their dreams in LA. But it still sounds crazy to me just to drop everything like that and move. I don’t even feel independent and until I feel like I have some fiscal structure I’m afraid to even consider moving to an area where there’s no net to catch me if I fall. I will do it though, I think in two years once I have had the chance to save and line up where I want to go to do my master’s I’m going to pursue it and see if I can make my dreams a reality too…