Playing in Our Own Home Town!

MFAH crowd for Houston Premiere

Once upon a time, I wrote a blog.  This one, in fact.  As Robert Frost penned, "way leads on to way" and it has been a very long time since I have been back.

Well, I am back.

Those readers of the "once upon a time" blog may remember that a movie was filmed on our property.  You may also recall that it had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.  It went on to festivals in Mexico City, Stockholm, Leipzig, Geneva, Seville, Lisbon, London, Sydney, Toronto, Munich, Torino, Duluth, San Francisco, Little Rock, New York City and many more.  It has won numerous awards including the Golden Dove for Best International Documentary in Leipzig, Germany, and the David di Donatello, essentially the Italian Oscar for best Documentary.  The best part of all of this has been that members of the Carlson family were able to represent the film at several of these festivals--nine thus far in the past fifteen months.

And now...Houston.

"Stop The Pounding Heart" played to a sold-out theater at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.  It was nerve-wracking to play in our home town, before people who know us--or think that they know us.  Although the film was very positively received in Europe, in San Francisco we had some rather antagonistic responses and so this made me nervous.  The fact that we were also planning to attend with all twelve of our children was also a bit anxiety-provoking!

In the end, it went very well.  Sold out the first night, a very respectable showing the second night.  Question and Answer sessions went very well both nights, and it was all the more enjoyable when some of the questions came from those who already knew us but were learning a different side of us, such as the Associate Pastor of our church.  

Now the plan is to get this thing shown in Austin.  Maybe then we can rest and stop globetrotting.   It is so tiring...          yeah right.

Post screening Q&A with the director