It was all very surreal, as I was excited to see the film, but still overwhelmed by the size of the city.
We arrived to the film about an hour before the scheduled showtime. I wasn’t scheduled to check-in until 6:30, so we waited around a while. I met a bunch of people while we waited, including Barbara Vancheri: the Arts & Entertainment Writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She was easy to talk to, and not at all like most of the critics that I had met previous to this.
After a short while, we were able to check-in, and were given our passes. Up a couple of escalators, we found our way into a huge screening room. There had to be nearly 1000 seats in that auditorium. The entire middle section of the screening was taped off for us to sit, and I found a spot toward the center of a row at eye level.
It was there that I met Fantasia-kitty from NarniaWeb, sitting one row in front of me. We started talking, which was cool, because my friends went up to sit with the crowd from TRL. She was really nice, and easy to talk to. She pulled out a notepad, but never wrote a thing. A little while later, someone asked if I’d be willing to move up, as they needed the row that I was sitting in for something. I moved up, and a little while later, something incredible happened.
In walked Peter Dinklage. Trumpkin, himself! But that’s not all. Many more members of the cast started to file into the row behind. Ben Barnes, Georgie Henley, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell… it seemed to never end.
Looking to the left, there was Mark Johnson: the producer.
A few minutes later, director Andrew Adamson walked to the front with Mark Johnson to introduce the film. I had expected, perhaps, a video introduction, but the man himself was standing before us. And he announced that he only finished the film two days before, and it would be the first time that the cast has seen it. He said that they were pretty apprehensive about it, as this was the first real test of the film in its’ final form.
He sat down and the lights went out and the film began. Two and a half hours later, the lights came up and I sat there, trying to figure out what I had just seen. I knew that I loved it, but that’s all that I knew.
I took a stroll down to introduce myself to the director. I don’t know it if I was starstruck or what, but after I introduced myself to him, he asked me what I thought and I could say nothing. I was so impressed with what he had created that I could barely figure out the vocabulary to express my thoughts.
He was clearly delighted. You’ll have to read my full review on Friday.
Talking to him for a while, he was a very genuine man, and very kind. I also met Mark Johnson and by then I was finally starting to figure out my thoughts. Next, we made our way out of the auditorium, where we met none other than writer Christopher Markus. A true gentleman and a very hilarious man, he quipped: “You’re not supposed to know who I am!”
We talked a bit about the film and then Andrew walked over and said that a shot was missing from one of the reels, and it was the only reel that was missing that single shot. When I asked what that shot had, we joked about how Andrew was trying to be a bit more edgy as a director, and it really was a good thing the shot was missing. It involved a waterfall and the cast, and that’s all that I’ll say here. Needless to say, the shot turned out to actually be an establishing shot or some such. Not nearly as exciting as our own imaginations.
After this, it was back to the hotel to get some sleep before press interviews would start at around 9am.