Closing Night Ceremony ends with an evening of Dinner followed by the Awards Ceremony. Finally they announce the Best Screenplay award, but they pronounce it “Salu-teh”. Naturally we all clap to whoever won the prize but 30 sec. go by and no one goes up for it. Finally I’m thinking this person probably went to the bathroom, when all of a sudden from 200 feet away I see the programmer Steve signal to me. I turned around because I thought they finally found the guy but Steve is signaling for someone to come up from my direction. I turn around but no one is there, finally I turn to Steve and point to myself, he nods yes. I turn back around but no one is there and turn back to Steve again, ME? Yes he says, at that point I start to take a couple of steps and Steve signals me in. Ahhhh, what a relief I said to myself, “HOW FUCKING EXCITING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I then ran to the podium because I didn’t want to waste any more of there time and tried to make it a quick speech and go. I thanked the festival, Nino Simone, the staff, my cast & crew and the photographer (a lady) who I never mentioned for calling me and my cast member Rene, “Nobody’s” on Opening Night at the Red Carpet. Well guess what? I said, today I’m “Somebody”, and it’s because of people like her that fuel me to continue achieving success in my industry. The rest was just a quick thank you and off to get interviewed by some media for the winning. The after party was interesting, as I was sipping on my screwdriver, a car whizzes by and a lady jumps out at high speed right in front of us. Later on I would have my friend Rene drive me home because I was a bit tipsy. Low and behold we get pulled over by the L.A. cops for making an illegal left turn. The Officer asks us to park the car to the side and turn it off. We listen and he approaches the car, “License and Registration? Do you know you just made an illegal left turn right?” Rene apologizes because he didn’t see the sign. “Where are you guys coming from”? asks the Officer. Rene tells him, “We just came from an Award Ceremony”. As Rene is saying that, I lean my hands slowly to the backseat and pull the trophy closer to me. At the same time I start to pray that the Officer doesn’t mistake it for a gun. I kept saying, please just don’t shoot me on my last day here in L.A., and bong, he sees the trophy. “This is the trophy we won this evening” I tell him, the Officer smiles and asks, “You mean like from an indie film festival”? I nod yes and he lets us off by just saying to be careful with the signs next time. As the officer gets back in the car and we pull away, Rene and I started hysterically giggling non-stop like two 8 yr. old boys!! Lol!!
