Burden of Dreams

When even the Icelandic yellow press reports on who Gerry is talking to in a club in Hollywood, I know that he has finally made it big. The afternoon paper DV said that Gerard Butler, who played King Leonidas after he played Beowulf, had been seen in intense conversation with Miranda Kerr, Orlando Bloom’s girlfriend, and clearly trying to chat her up. Butler of course clarified that they were just talking business. I find this quite interesting because for the longest time the Icelandic media didn’t make the connection. Guess they all watched Wrath of Gods when it was broadcast on Icelandic State TV and finally realized who he was. The article is here.

The screening at the Stony Brook festival was great. Almost one thousand people in the house. It was great to show the film to this many people.

I finally received my DVD this week, and believe me, I pre-ordered. I have no idea why it took so long to get from Canada to Iceland, but I know that Icelandic Customs held it for a few days. They wanted me to
pay a percentage of the purchase price. I had to convince them that I didn’t have to pay for this DVD. Finally I just told them to open the package to see my name on it: “a film by Jon Gustafsson”. They finally gave in and stopped claiming that I had bought this one on eBay.

This week I got a message from a woman in the UK who ordered a long time ago and hadn’t received her copy yet. After some research we found out that there had been some labor action within Royal Mail, and as a result they are seriously backlogged. Since I hadn’t yet opened my copy, I decided to mail it to this woman in the UK, hoping that it would get to her sooner. So now I don’t have a copy for myself, but that’s ok… I’ve seen it a couple of times already.

We seem to be having a big problem with mail going to Australia, and we are very sorry for those who still haven’t received their copies. Brazil also seems to take a long time but the Philippines seem to be catching up. Today we also found out that Royal Mail in the UK is staging another strike next week, so this will affect some deliveries for sure. It’s frustrating, but we don’t have any control over the mail services in all these different countries. Yesterday WRATH played at the Perth Revelation International Film Festival in Australia. This morning I got a message from a supporter who was at the screening. She wrote: “As we went to collect our tickets the guy at the counter said that of all the Revelation Film Festival movies he had seen this was by far the best, as you can imagine that put a huge smile on my face.” Little comments like this one mean as much to me as winning an award, so thanks.

Next week I’m heading to the Stony Brook Film Festival on Long Island. If any of you are in the area I would love to see you at the screening. It’s on July 25th at 7pm. After that I am heading to California to attend a screening at the WineCountry Film Festival in Sonoma (don’t have the screening date confirmed yet). I’m also looking forward to getting to spend a couple of days with friends in LA.

By the way, did you all see this clip about Gerry’s new film, directed by Guy Ritchie (Madonna’s husband). Here is the link: http://www.worstpreviews.com/trailer.php?id=972&item=0

I can’t help it. I don’t want to sleep when the night sky is like this. I took these pictures around 3am close to my house. See here on Flickr.

A friend just sent me a link to this music video that I did back in 2000. Somebody has posted it on YouTube. This brings back a lot of memories.

A trailer for a low budget movie that I made in 2000.

I arrived in Michigan on Thursday evening. Had a great screening in the Saugatuck High School on Friday. It’s Saturday now and I think I already have alcohol poisoning. This is the first festival that I have been to that has a help-yourself 24 hour bar next door to my room, and a Sea-Doo tied up to the dock right in front of my room at my disposal. The best say to wake up after a Friday night of partying in Saugatuck is to go Sea-Doo-ing as fast as you can across the lake and back (a few times), so I did. Forgot to put on sun-screen. I’ll survive. Just had the second Waterfront screening and once again the audience response was great. Tomorrow I’m going sailing with a friend of mine, Mark, and his wife Mary, on their 35ft sailboat. The people here are great. The whole festival is run by volunteers, but they are doing an incredibly professional job of it. Waterfront has to be one of the most fun film festivals I have ever been to.

WorldFest in Huston, Texas, received 4.500 entries this year. They just announced that they have given Wrath Of Gods a Bronze Remi Award. Thank you WorldFest! They have apparently given awards to Spielberg, Lucas, David Lynch, Ang Lee, Ridley Scott, The Coen Brothers, Brian De Palma and many more.

I was in Toronto today and I went to Duplium to pick up the DVDs, but they were not quite ready to be shipped. The disks themselves are ready (see attached photo), and the silk printing on them looks beautiful - but the cover for the plastic case around it is not. One of my co-producers insisted that we put the laurels for the Audience Award at the Oxford International Film Festival on the cover. Being the co-operative guy that I am I agreed. That meant that the designer had to re-do the design and we lost our place in the printing queue. This will add a couple of days to the printing process. I tested the disk tough and everything works as it should.

This evening we had the second screening of WRATH at the RiverRun International Film Festival. This was the first festival to show both WRATH and B&G, so Sturla was there and after seeing him struggle on screen for 70 minutes the audience greeted him vey warmly (to say the least) when I called him up on stage. The Q&A went on for almost an hour. One of Gerry’s fans, Brenda, was there, so of course we had to have our picture taken after the film.