Last week via email I contacted Bryan Wendorf, CUFF Big Cheese, to see if I couldn't get some review copies of the movies playing at this year's Underground Film Festival. I provided some links to both published clippings and blog stuff because although Bryan is very familiar with my, um, "acting" abilities (as "Rock" in "Fucked in the Face" and as "The Sex Slave" in "The Last Fuck," both directed with sadistic glee by the indomitable Shawn Durr. Alas, they're not porn.) I was pretty sure he didn't know I was a writer. After all, the last piece I'd gotten published was in 1997.

Bryan replied a few days later that, sure, I could go pick up tapes at the Lake Street Screening Room in downtown Chicago. I actually ran into him as I was going out the gate of my apartment building and he confirmed that it was no big deal and also told me that yes, Larry Cohen would be attending the Festival but no, It's Alive, Cohen's early 70s schlock film about a killer mutant baby, would not be showing. Never mind I'd already written an article specifically about It's Alive and God Told Me To with the theme of Fear of Reproduction, or something.

When I got to the Screening Room, no one was around at first, and I began pawing through the piles of VHS tapes. Cool! I can just walk out of here potentially with a movie that could change my life! Eventually an older dude came in and indicated with his body language that he really didn't appreciate a sweaty, bald, bike-messenger-type with a big-ass backpack getting in his professional, shirt-tucked-in way. I picked up my little pile of 3 tapes (didn't want to be too greedy) and got out of there.

I chose Esther Bell's exist because I'd met Esther a couple CUFFs ago, had a nice conversation with her in Wicker Park's Earwax about her film Godass, which, along with Jem Cohen's amazing Benjamin Smoke, was a breath of fresh air in a fest filled with callow attempts by juvenile filmmakers to compete for who's the most "underground." Godass had characters and ideas instead of ciphers and poses. She talked about what it was like to direct Fred Schneider of the B-52s and the reaction of gay folks to her movie (I'm pretty sure she's straight.) So after that good experience — one of the great reasons to go to CUFF is to talk, and I mean really talk, to the filmmakers; everyone is really accessible— I was anxious to see what she'd done next.