2022, The Year When a Theater Wouldn’t Let Me In To See My Own Film.
“Show Us Your Papers!” They Ordered in Classic Film Villain Style.
Early this year, My short film “Courier 2” was selected by the Hoosier Film Festival, held every year in Bloomington, Indiana. I was honored to be selected. My wife Roberta and I made reservations to stay at a hotel. As I made other arrangements for our visit, I discovered I would not be permitted to see my film in the theater or to participate in workshops for filmmakers unless I could prove my vaccination status or that I was virus-free with a negative test. I was shocked because, at that time, most public venues in Indianapolis had dropped those restrictions including movie theaters.
On principle, I have a strong aversion to requirement to “showing papers”, especially having to divulge personal medical information. So I wrote the following email to Jonah Crismore, the director of the Buskirk-Chumley Theater:
Jonah Crismore,
It was a great honor to have my short film “Courier 2” selected for the Hoosier Film Festival. I was astonished to learn that I will be required to divulge my personal medical information to enter the theater, something I refuse to do on principle. Ironically, my film has a “show me your papers” scene. In my film and nearly every film including the classic “Casablanca”, it’s the bad guys who demand to see papers.
Recently, actor Alec Baldwin was at the Boulder Film Festival. Does it make sense to you that a man who shot and killed someone should be able to attend a film festival and not me?
I am able to see a film here in Indianapolis without any health restrictions. Restrictions are being lifted everywhere. Please remove your restrictions so I can attend the screening of my film.
Avidor
The email and a follow-up phone didn’t help. We cancelled our hotel reservation. We never took the trip to Bloomington. It would have been nice to see my film on a big screen and listen to the audience reaction. I would have liked to have met other Hoosier filmmakers attending the workshops, but it didn’t happen. It was a big disappointment, but not the worst thing that happened because of authoritarian Covidian rules - I didn’t lose my livelihood as so many had because of jab mandates and I didn’t lose my health or my life because I was coerced into taking the jab. That’s not to say that something very serious happened, not just to me, but to all of us.
Something very important in American culture, particularly films was lost in the last three years - the anti-hero. In countless books and films, the lowest, self-loathing, cynical bums who travelled the “character arc” earning their hero status the hard way; Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca”, Harrison Ford in Star Wars or Mel Gibson in the “Road Warrior”. I can’t think of a single movie in which “showing papers” is presented as a good thing. It’s always the bad guys who ask for papers at checkpoints. Not anymore. All you need to do to be a hero these days in Hollywood is comply and compel others to comply with the latest authoritarian edict from the WEF, the WHO, or the CDC.
Well, I don’t care, I won’t comply and neither will the anti-heroes in my stories. Speaking of films, I am putting all six episodes “UNJABBED” together into one film with improved sound and some new stuff. I have also begun work on “Courier 3”.
Maybe the Buskirk-Chumley Theater will screen “Courier 3”. I read somewhere that they no longer demand to inspect the papers of their patrons.
I already know it. It’s called “Operation We Are F*cked”. But if you still want to send it, send it to Ken dot Avidor at gmail dot com. I assume everything everything I post on the Internet can be read by anyone, so if it’s something you want only me to hear, you will have to write it on a note and leave the note in a hollow tree in a city park in Indianapolis.
Ken, hi! ken, is there a site / protocol chain where we can send you a message via email? I wanna send you info about the major crux of the current "OPERATION", but it's too much to send to you via comments section. Let me know. Thanks!