Friday, August 29th I woke up with a headache…..and then when I checked the weather for the day, I also developed a stomach ache. For years now I had always envisioned screening Spielberg’s classic alien abduction/ufo Watergate film Close Encounters of the Third Kind on top of Scenic Mountain in Big Spring. After a summer that wasn’t consumed in racing drag boats (due to some family health issues we backed off of flying pieces of fiberglass across the water with giant chevy motors in the backs of them)…I realized now was the time for me to organize the event….and August 29th was the only day possible for me to screen the film. It was also a day that www.weather.com told me there was a 60% chance for rain. In west Texas however, flash floods happen generally when there is a 20% chance about half the time….but of course the other half…..it does flood down in Texas.

So I went on with my day, planning to screen the movie regardless of what the experts at the weather channel had predicted for the day of the screening. Why fret…it’s just a MOVIE screening? Fitzco Sound in Midland was bringing the sound system and the incredible inflatable screen at 6pm that evening. If I cancelled it before they even came over with the equipment, it would cost me nothing and I could reschedule. If they came over and I never unloaded the truck, we would have to pay a fuel surcharge and we could again reschedule. If I we went ahead and got it all set up and got 5 minutes into the movie and it started raining cats and dogs…..no refund…..we lose all our gracious sponsors money…….and that would be that. So in a way we were going to have to gamble on mother nature…and we did, all day long. I couldn’t stop checking the radar all morning long, looking for this rain that was coming, hoping and praying that 60% would drop to 5%. After lunch my cohorts and I had decided we would just go about the afternoons preparations with the assumption the show would go on.

Around 2 or 3 that afternoon we were waiting around for the guy from Light Tower Rentals to meet us so we could pick up the freaking awesome totally and completely silent extremely powerful generator (if you ever screen anything somewhere and you need a generator I strongly recommend you pick one of these Whisperer machines, no one had any idea a giant diesel generator was just a few feet behind the screen) when the weather began to roll in; and it was dark, and angry, and it wanted to ruin our day. Funny that day people all over the great metropolis of Big Spring had heavy rain and flooding, standing up on top of the mountain, I saw all this going on around me, and I wasn’t getting wet at all. The weather was all going to the northwest, and the further it went that way the darker and more menacing it appeared. But it was all moving AWAY and getting uglier….AWAY from Scenic Mountain…..AWAY from where we were going to present the first outdoor screening of CE3K (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) in the Spring City. People were texting and calling all that afternoon wanting to know if we had cancelled the show, and everytime I responded the same, “ as far as I know the show is still on”. Still obsessing with radar, calling my poor wife from the mountain every 15 minutes and begging her to look at it on the computer and tell me something positive, I was rubbing the dice trying to decide whether to roll or walk away from the table. 6 o’clock rolled around and Milt from Fitzco (affectionately called Uncle Miltie until on his arrival we came to the conclusion he looked nothing like Milton Berle) arrived in the van with our screen and sound. We kind of paced around, looked at the radar on his IPHONE (pretty sure I called the wife again for a radar checkup, I think at that point she was denying me any information the radar nazi) finally I glanced up at Milt and he didn’t seem too worried about it, so we went to the tables and started setting everything up…the point of no return.

Meanwhile Josh, my technical director/graphic design guru extraordinaire had his own problems. He had put together (well actually Dusty, Josh, and I over several evenings) a short piece to play before the film that presented all of our sponsors names, The Big Spring Film Society plastered everywhere, and a picture of the mothership from Close Encounters hovering over Scenic Mountain. We picked up 2 more sponsors on Friday morning so we had to add the text into the piece, which required more RENDER time which can last for several hours. The render was lasting longer than expected, around 7 he showed up with no piece, it was still rendering in his parent’s house in the neighborhood right below the mountain. It was down to 49 minutes when he had left to come help us with sound and setting the projector (the sony HD projector of Dusty, without him there could be no HD projection). People had already begun arriving hours earlier, at this point we had a pretty good size crowd. It was getting close to showtime, and Josh flew down the mountain to pick up our credit sequence that was hopefully rendered and ready to rock and roll. The playground area on top of Scenic Mountain had begun to fill up, people were setting up their chairs, eating popcorn they had brought from home, and funny, none of them seemed to be the slightest bit worried about the weather. We had the John Williams classic Close Encounters score blaring on the sound system, creeping suspenseful music that seemed to play in tune with the weather to the south of us, we could see it dumping rain on the fields in the distance. Finally Josh came roaring up the hill carrying with him the pre-show trailer…and from there we began our march towards beginning the event.

The pre-show trailer (which you can see posted below) came on, everyone giggled at the shot of Scenic Mountain with the mothership hovering above it, and we then went directly to the directors cut of CE3K. As soon as we got about 2 minutes into the film, I began to feel something wet dropping from somewhere…and yes low and behold we had just started and there was wet stuff lightly falling onto our equipment. So we reached for a light tarp and began to cover our players, and attempted to cover the projector without screwing up the show. Had to have some kind of screw-up, we moved one of the controls and boom we jumped to another scene. Now at home when the wife accidentally hits a button and you have to rewind back its no big deal, when you have about 100 people watching your tv, the pressure is slightly heavier. Josh grabbed the control and was frantically trying to back up, and of course it wasn’t cooperating, I gave a run at it and couldn’t get it either…..but then low and behold we brought a menu up and got back to where we were. I think that lasted a whole thirty seconds, but to us it was the longest 30 seconds of our lives. Of course not 10 minutes after that, the sprinkles went away and everyone was kicked back enjoying this classic film from the most beautiful spot in Big Spring (I’m sure many will argue that, but right now I have a love affair going with Scenic Mountain).

About an hour into the film to the east of us we were treated to a huge lightning show, which fit quite well with the film. Of course my favorite scene in the film is the end with the mothership, and man, I have to tell you, up there on top of that mountain, on that huge inflatable screen, it was breathtaking. We got to the end of the film……the audience applauded at the end, and then we began to start the process of wrapping everything up so hopefully after a long day of stress, nerves, and gambling on mother nature, there could be an adult beverage at the end of the tunnel. With much help from Kent, Dusty, Riley, Josh, and whoever else we had everything tore down and loaded up in about an hour. We all shook hands and slapped each other on the back, gave Uncle Miltie a t-shirt, and headed down the mountain for something of a celebration. Not 5 seconds after I pulled out of the state park, here came the floods…..and I smiled. The weather gave us a 4 hour window to pull this thing off, and we did. It was a great feeling of satisfaction. When we first started throwing around the idea of doing an outdoor screening on top of Scenic Mountain I wasn’t sure we could pull it off. The fact that we did and the fact that PEOPLE WERE INTERESTED gave me a huge boost of encouragement towards putting together a film society in Big Spring. More screenings are in the works as well as some meetings to turn the BSFS into an actual organization. The possibilities are endless…….