Failure to Perform #1

Since the premise of this blog is my attempts to meet James Franco, that the blog exists at all is an adumbration of the fact that it never happened. While I'm seriously unhappy about the turn of events, I can also see the extreme humor in this, and I'd like to share it with the world.

I purchased the Lonestar Badge for the Austin Film Festival at a price of $115.00. I purchased this specifically with the knowledge that it would allow me to get better seats at the films. Of course the only film I truly HAD to see was Sal.. but to me it was worth it. I may never get another chance!

It took me two days to find a friend that I could browbeat into attending with me to take the pictures... but.. I finally convinced my friend David. We rented a hotel room, and planned what other films to see, and where to eat and so forth.

I was so excited I could barely sleep on Friday night, knowing that tomorrow morning I would at least be in the same general vicinity of the man who holds a key to one of the items on my bucket list.

We got up Saturday morning, I got dressed and we headed out for the 2.5 hour drive to Austin's Driskill Hotel, everything was going great! We arrived, got our packets, put on our badges and headed out to scope out the lay of the land and see our first film. "Small and Creepy" had some really good shorts, I particularly loved "Sebastian's Voodoo".

We had dinner at III Forks Restaurant, which is delicious, and then saw our second film "High Road". The premise was great, there were some kinks that needed to be worked out with that, but the premise was great. Prior to that another short called "Ronnie's Donuts" played, which was really good. What a wonderful day. At some point I checked in on twitter, and saw a photo of James and the "Red Bull" girls... so I was jealous... but it was okay... I knew he was at least in town!

Went back to the hotel to rest.

Got up the next morning, and was on a natural high. Showered, got dressed, had some breakfast and headed out for the serious stuff.

We arrived at the Paramount about 2 hours before the film's start. I was probably the 150th person in the badge line. We were broke up because the door to the Intercontinental Hotel couldn't  be blocked, and I was right there at the velvet ropes with my copy of Palo Alto in my hand when none other than James Franco himself walked out of the hotel, directly towards me. I said out loud to my friend David... "hey David, there he is".

Silently smiled while my internal theme music played as James Franco walked towards me with a small smile on his face...We never spoke, but our eyes met and I just knew he was smiling at me and me alone...

Then he walked across the street to the Driskill Bar and Grill while I mentally beat myself senseless for not having the intelligence to casually walk next to him and say "Mr. Franco, I don't want to cause a scene for you or anything, but could you possibly take a moment to sign my copy of Palo Alto Stories? I really loved it."

And that my friends, was failure to perform numero uno.