True False 2015

Sal and I survived another True False film fest. This year was the biggest bust, but still incredible fun.

Since we're going to Germany, we went with the cheapest pass rather than the next tier up this year. We only booked 7 films before they sold out. And of the 7, only 3 ended up being good. Usually we can queue for other films and get in last minute, but it seems like the festival has become too popular. When we queued an hour before the film, we were still 160 people away from getting in the doors.

It seemed to be a sentiment shared across the festival. We kept hearing murmurs of people saying they were unable to get into films. It's sort of a bummer, but something I've expected for years.

You hear about how nice Sundance once was this small festival in the mountains. Now once a year, thousands of the Hollywood elite attack the peaceful mountain town to pretend that they are being "Indie." We've been going to True False for 7 years, and each year it seemed a little larger. People started coming from further away.

This year, there was easily over 50,000 people in Columbia. And not only were there that many people, but there were definitely more people talking with their nose up in the air.

Among the things we overheard was, "I bought the most expensive ($800 a piece) pass because I like to support the arts." Every time this lady said, "I" she extended it out and turned it into "IIIIIII" with plenty of emphasis on it.

We also heard a developer's genius idea for a business he was starting. "You see, it's guitar lessons with an instructor. You do it over the internet. That way, if you have a webcam, you can hook up with an instructor 24 hours a day. And the best part is, there's no overhead, so I can expand nation-wide immediately." While his friends clapped at this genius idea, I couldn't help but think two things.

1. Not only is this not a novel idea, but the website that I get my guitar music from already offers this service.

2. There's plenty of overhead. Servers, bandwidth, a website, marketing... yeah, this stuff doesn't just blow up.

The time change made things particularly fun. We had a late movie Saturday night and didn't get to bed until 1 am. We needed to wake up by 7:45 am in order to pack our things and make it to our first film.

Our phones updated their time overnight.

I get a panicked wake up from Sal saying it was 8:15. We jump out of bed, throw everything we can into our backpacks, skip showering and head for the car.

As I grab my phone, I notice it says it's 9:22 am, meaning there's no way we make this film. Sal's phone now says 8:22 am. We assume since my phone is an hour later, it updated and Sal's did not. So at this point, we're trying to think of where we want to get breakfast since we missed the film.

Jump into our car, and that clock says 7:24 am. So now we have no idea what time it is. We also can't remember if our car is some sort of smart car that can set it's own time. So at this point, I start driving toward the venue while Sal Google's "What time is it in Columbia MO?"

Turns out, we were only running 20 minutes behind and we made the film.

The feel of the festival is changing. I think that would be overlooked if we had more films. Which next year, we will probably just buy the next tier pass again since we basically ended up spending the money we saved entertaining ourselves with food and drinks.