Small Thrills

As my regular blog readers will know, I've had my fair share of celebrity encounters during the film festival in the fall.  My brushes with fame have been told and retold a number of times.  At the children and youth film festival that occurs in the spring, there are considerably fewer opportunities for thrilling encounters.  Except this year.  Well, let's call them small thrills.

There was a very specific demographic of the volunteers who even knew who the Polkaroo was.  Most of the older folks had no idea, other than the fact that he was on a TVO program.  But even I was kind of surprised how many times I had to explain who he was.  I thought for sure their children or grandchildren watched "Polka Dot Door".  I was even more surprised of how I felt when I saw him.  I was a kid again.  It was nice that the children were excited to see him too.

The new youth film festival that was spun off from the children's festival started this year and, in my opinion, was not quite as popular.  To say that the audience traffic was slow is somewhat of an overstatement.  It was almost non-existent.  Unfortunately, that makes the hours seem a lot longer.  But on the other hand, that may have been the reason why I noticed Matthew Lillard when he entered the building.  He was with another guy and the two of them took a look around and went into the gift shop and browsed for a bit.  He was wearing a baseball hat and glasses and looked very much like any other person.  He had directed "Fat Kid Rules the World", which was the closing night film for the festival, and which had won the audience award at SXSW this year.  My guess was that he was scoping out the place and killing time before the screening later in the evening, where he was scheduled to do the Q&A.  My other guess was that the guy he was with was probably the star of the film, not because of his size (okay...maybe because of his size) but also because I knew the star was supposed to be at the screening as well.  He walked right past me on his way out but didn't look at me.  I have to say, he looks a lot thinner than he did in "The Descendants".

"All the, small things, true care, truth brings"