I find myself in a slightly more challenging point in my life. By that, I don’t mean that the last several years of my life weren’t full of resistance and strain, indeed they were. To add, it’s why I can only count on one hand how many times I’ve done anything for recreation or fun in the last year and a half: Two. That’s it.
Yes, I’m kind of a introvert, and I’m pretty busy with family matters and work, although that’s not really the point. As a journalist with my own independent platform covering genre film, I also find myself forgetting things. Some of this is due to overload. Other times its due to trauma, like that one time six years ago when I got a horrifying email that became the start of one of the longest and most gut-wrenchingly teachable moments ever etched into my brain. Some of you know the one.
It’s also why my short term memory is glitching a bit more these days and I could only remember two screening events I’d been to in the last several years, upon mingling with stragglers among the crowd that attended last Wednesday’s 7:00pm screening of Mike Cheslik’s new movie, Hundreds Of Beavers, which is currently making its way around North America in select cities with the cast and crew. I was excited to be there, and even more elated when a man (I knew it was a man, but more on that later) approached me in a beaver costume. He was there to work the crowd being ushered in for the screening, and before I knew it, he approached me, and we ended up taking a few photos.
I went in, got my digital ticket scanned, got my popcorn and seltzer water, and sat in the back row among the red seats against the projector booth where maybe six or seven other people were seated. I had an empty seat on both sides of me, so I had some pretty cool arm space and didn’t really need to worry about my heavy wool jacket being too infringing on anyone. I sat, waited, ate, watched as people in beaver costumes humored the audience, and by start time, Mike was introduced to the stage.
He was full of energy and enthusiasm, and clearly ready to put on an amazing show for everyone. By this point, I had already screened the movie for virtual Fantastic Fest coverage back in 2022 (not last year as my short term memory recalled in convos later). It was a very different type of film, and fun. I said as much, and more, in my review that summer, and looking back on that review now, I write this article with that familiar sense of fullness that I feel whenever I get to go to these events.
That feeling took a while though, as the same sort of usual melancholy I feel whenever I go to the movies by myself began to surface. I promoted the screening on the site and even told some friends directly, including director Cinder Chou who landed on my radar with her own debut recently, Artist Unknown, starring actress and local New York DJ, Kerry Lacy.
I didn’t see Cinder, so I kind of just sat and did my best to enjoy the evening while checking on my folks and other notifications I’d been receiving. The screening also included the occasional impromptu appearance by cast members in at least three segments before the credits rolled, and Mike, and lead actor Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who plays a 19th century applejack salesman named Jean Kayak in the film, took the stage alongside other cast and crew for questions. Hilariously, one guy asked “Why?!” to which Mike replied something to the affect of “Next question!”. He only allowed several audience members to ask a question, and I was second to last. To iterate, a woman a few rows in front of me thought he was gesturing her before he loudly pointed to me, because of how loud I was laughing. The room laughed, I laughed, I asked him how much of the film was shot on location and indoors, and he stated that even the green-screen sequences were filmed outside, in the cold.
As part of the act, Mike also spoke to another crew member while actress Olivia Graves, who plays “The Furrier” and our hero’s love interest in the movie, put on a performance with a few other co-stars, including Luis Rico who plays “The Indian Fur Trapper,” and another actor who dressed up as the Indian’s horse. Of course, before the night was over, Ryland and Luis ended up battling two wily Beavers on the loose in the aisles of the the theater, taking the epic scrimmage on stage where Ryland tussled one of them, slamming him to the floor and blowing the crowd away. Fret not though. They’d been doing this for a while, and Ryland and the Beaver in question, Jon Truei, who also worked on the film as fight choreographer, had been training in MMA for some time now, as I’d been told in the minutes after everyone began leaving the theater and making room for the 9:45 screening afterward.
I stuck around to mingle, making sure to both pay my dues and shake some hands if I could. Lo and behold, out comes Cinder Freaking Chou with a friend just as I was standing in the lobby with Jon. Cinder and I spoke, told her how sad I was when I messaged her and didn’t hear back and thought she couldn’t make it. She brought a friend named Jessie (I think?), and bumped into another friend of hers named Raven and all four of us hit it off. He was great, very sociable. Cinder was just plain lovely and endearing, and I needed a photo with her. Badly. So, in came fellow crowdgoer Tobias who kindly obliged.
There was an afterparty to be held some place two blocks up, but I couldn’t go and Cinder and Jessie had to leave. We hugged, and mined another hopeful prospective crossing of paths somewhere down the line, and parted ways. I kept replaying the moment in my head in hopes that I made her laugh, which I definitely did. That’s usually my goal when I go out to these social gatherings. Sometimes I’m great. Sometimes I laugh so hard I fall on the floor at other jokes just living in the present and the joy of it all (I did that once, at a birthday party in Brooklyn, but, that’s another story).
My night was coming to a close and so I made it a goal to try and meet the director and star who were out on the sidewalk as well, talking to fans and selling merch. I met Mike first, and he was an honor to share a few words with him while he chatted with another fan who is also a filmmaker. I told Mike who I was, and he complimented the review I wrote back in 2022 (I mistakenly said I wrote it last year, re: my glitching short term memory). I waited a short while until he was finished talking to folks before I asked if we could share a photo together, and before he left, Mike kindly obliged. I also went to the merch table and bought myself a movie pin, before briefly chatting with Ryland who was outside, braving the cold in his signature crowdpleasing midriff-showing muscle shirt and shorts and Raccoon hat, and Ryland also allowed us to share a photo moment together.
I want more of this. I can’t stress enough how important nights like these are for me. I live for these events in the course of my progression, that is, as an indie journo who is still sort of trying to find his way in the field without selling his soul to the bevies of glib calling themselves artists to stroke their egos, and massage their indignance whenever their work is critiqued negatively. I see peers excelling in areas as burgeoning producers – people who came into my circles as podcasters and who are now taking on roles even bigger than mere writers and media platform hosts. Even our own Christina Ortega has a foot in the door with a project by a director we’ve covered, and not to mention contributing writer Joe Hallett has been in the game longer than I’ve been @FCSyndicate. And it makes me proud and evermore hopeful that I’ll get to truly share the experience of being a part of projects like this. Genuinely. I was part of something like this, but…the fallout I endured was the result of a bad contract I signed, and the ill intentions of a director I thought was a friend. Lesson learned. And it’s my hope someday to make it up to myself with something even better.
Stimulating the arousal I felt during my ride on the E-train to the IFC Center on Wednesday night were a few spur-of-the-moment interactions. I met a Christian Orthodox woman who I joked with about the succession of stops listed atop the train walls as she was making her way into Manhattan on her first day having arrived from Edmonton. I also gave $5 to a shirtless subway dancer. He thanked me and gave me a fistbump. On the way home after the screening, I gave some money to a subway musician at the West 4th St. platform, and blew her a kiss. She blew one back. The E-train came, and I got on.
I reflect on this as I do, realizing the pattern in which I end up also reflecting on my life, growing up in this city, born and raised, dealing with everything that I dealt with, and still deal with, and measuring those with the moments and privileges that have made things just a little more easier. That especially includes the last eleven years I’ve been writing, with Jon being the first person I met after my first year, and having been a fan of his collaborative indie action work for years beforehand.
It was Jon who invited me to a New Years’ Eve party in December of 2013. It was Jon I hung out with to see The Raid 2 in March of 2014. I saw Jon again when I met Joey Ansah, and Gaku Space, and Akira Koieyama, and we and a few other mutuals hung out later that evening as Joey was promoting Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist at the time. I saw Jon again upon meeting up with friends attending the Urban Action Showcase in the following few years. I saw Jon again at a screening of Joey Min’s feature debut, Yes, Auntie!, at the Museum of the Moving Image in 2019. It was Jon who alerted me that he wanted to meet Bao Tran after only just finding out about my attendance at the Q&A The Paper Tigers screenings in New York City in May of 2021 (and I still feel terrible about that). It was Jon who invited me to the set of The 44th Chamber Of Shaolin that summer wherein I got to meet Willie “Bam” Johnson and hang with Joey again, and it was Jon who invited me to come to the Angelika Film Center to see his rollicking action comedy short, The 44th Chamber Of Shaolin the following year. We also linked up the following August to hang out with film duo Maria Tran and Takashi Hara. It was Jon who first told me all about Hundreds Of Beavers before I screened it for Fantastic Fest in 2022. It was Jon who invited me to the film’s screening this week. It was also Jon who paid for my ticket, because I didn’t have an accessible credit card to make an immediate purchase.
On stage before the movie began, Mike asked the audience how many of us were there because Jon invited us. I recall maybe a little more than half the room had hands raised, to which Mike joked “Yeah, Jon’s a good kind of problem to have.”
I can’t argue with that.
I love you, Jon. You’re a big part of what I do, and why I do it, and an even bigger part of why we love it. Thank you for bringing me out, and I hope you enjoy the present I brought you in kind. Until we meet again…
A special, and emphatic thank you to Mike and Jon for contributing to this article, and to my work and enjoyment in more ways than several. Also, New York-based photographer Amir Hamja took my photo with Jon in the aforementioned Beaver costume that night. If I ever manage to track it down and reach out to Amir for permission to use it and he says so, I’ll happily update this article.
Lead photo by @OnlyNiceThings who I only found out the morning after was at the same screening I was at. I have to network better than this.