In which Phil makes his big-screen debut

Last night, Phil, Jamie and I sashayed into Studio on the Square (they didn't even take our tickets, there was so much schmoozing going on the for the film fest) and took our seats. I'd been told by a counter worker that the documentary was playing after the feature, which made no sense to me, but it turned out not to be the case. Daniel Lee, the guy who made the documentary, stood and said a few words about his work — basically that he was just there with a camera and the crazy zombies did all the work. He was very modest.

I was happy that the audience found all the right parts funny. I didn't get the feeling that anyone thought we were all too weird or lame or anything like that. Phil's interview snippets were all very well-spoken (even if a couple of things weren't exactly true: Sharon wasn't in the walk in San Francisco and it sure as hell wasn't a "spur-of-the-moment thing"; we'd been putting it together for months). I think he was embarrassed to see himself up there talking. But I figure he's got to get used to lots of people gawking at him if he's going to be a frigging rock star.

After the feature (which was at times quite funny and at other times quite frustratingly boring) concluded, we snuck out. Or tried to. I wasn't really in the mood for schmoozing, but Phil ran into someone he knows, and then we ran into Lee, who recognized Phil as the guy in the movie (I think). I don't suppose he had any idea who I was until I told him, and even then he was probably wondering why I was talking so much.

I spent some time explaining the process for putting the walk together (he was surprised to learn all the legal hoops we had to jump through with the city and the Beale Street people) and how we'd like to do it again, but not twice a year because then people get kind of burned out on the concept.

We introduced Jamie to him and told him he was the artist for all the flyers. Then he had his wife take a picture of all of us together.

It's interesting. I don't think when people think of a zombie walk, they imagine two relatively meek young women putting it together. We're not crazy, over-the-top performer types who want to ham it up for cameras (which is why neither of us are featured in the documentary). But I like surprising people with that knowledge.

Watching the documentary, I was again overwhelmed with pride — this is so corny — that Memphis turned out and made it so huge. I mean, there had to have been 300 people. The creativity people put into their costumes and their acting couldn't have been better. All we had to do was give all these people an excuse to get together and they took it from there. Seeing all that one screen was just the icing on the cake.