Getting 'Separation Anxiety' in Alexandria

Cole Simon (Director) and myself.

This weekend, I'm in Alexandria, Virginia for the Alexandria Film Festival to see a screening of my film "Separation Anxiety." In case you didn't know, I wrote the screenplay for the film based on my own play of the same title. In attendance this weekend: my girlfriend Laila, and my friend and Director of "Sep," Mr. Cole Simon. I'll keep this quick, but let me touch on the highlights.

• Old town Alexandria and King Street = awesomesauce. First, there's a trolley. This street is lined with shops, eateries, and according to Cole's Siri, about 14 pubs within a mile of the screening.
  
• Bilbo Baggin's pub... seriously. On the pricey side (but what isn't in this town?), but still a great time. And our server was a Notre Dame grad from my year. Small world!
• Don't forget the George Washington Masonic Memorial, which has excellent views of the city and the inside is phenomenal.
• Cancerpants -- this documentary was a powerful, gut-wrenching, beautiful, at times funny year in the life of a woman fighting breast cancer and how it hit her and the community around her.
  

The best part (aside from seeing people watch and react to the movie) was that me and Laila got to spend some time with Cole. We meet a lot of artists as we work in theater (and now film) and we're not all living in the same town. So it's festivals like these (and their stage play counterparts) that are amazing opportunities to reunite and further those friendships that we've forged along the way. Kudos to the film fest folks for being amazingly hospitable and taking care of their filmmakers like rock stars. Wish I could've been here for more of the festival and seen more films. But with school still in session, this trip is all too brief and OU awaits on Monday.  As does Georgetown Cupcake tomorrow.... but I won't bore you with that.

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