the honeymoon is over

so my nihilistic perspective on weddings, marriage & femme fatales hit a couple of sore spots in the last few days. it still hurts when i press them.

it all started with the awards night for the punk monk 48HR film project "hybristo honeymoon" i literally broke my back on & ended with the dissolution/disillusion of the marriage of two of my best friends after almost two decades together.

in the beginning of the end some punk monks rocked up to the awards screening at the paddington RSL on friday night with great anticipation having been advised that we'd been nominated for at least one award but not aware which category/ies. there was much nervous anticipation in the air which we quickly tempered with red wine en masse [as you/we do] & witty banter about farm machinery in the hopes of a nomination in the category "best use of a prop". we had a bunch of inappropriate suggestions for additions...

with a couple of nominations in categories [best music, best sound] we walked away with two awards in the end [best sound & most lame director = most extraordinary team]. huge congratulations to our small hardworking cast/crew on set [ky, mischa, felix, michael, andrew, davey & my much luscious muse cat] for the incredible effort, energy and shared vision, raen & kate behind the scenes & to dermot, michael, felix & mischa for sticking it out to the end in post production mode.

mike's super sound design got us over the line & mithra with the lurkers enigmatic banjo sounds fueled from my deliverance dueling banjo obsession/original story inspiration combined with dan's [from meatpig] captivating accordion got us a large percentage of the way there.

it was quite satisfying to feel partially responsible for the honorable minister's [virgina judge] lipsticked nose throughout the night after i went in for the stage pash following obligatory congratulatory handshake. KINO regular, aidan corrigan's crowd pleasing mockumentary "living with EES" won best film. big electrifying clap for his team.

we were a little disappointed with the structure of the awards & felt sorry that some of the other films apart from ours which displayed excellence in particular fields didn't even make the finalist nominations. it does demonstrate that there is no accounting for taste & film festival competition judging is an entirely subjective & political process. our film was always going to be borderline risqué, so we were ecstatic to get the recognition we did in a fairly conservative forum.

apparently "we're all winners", so now it's time for us to harvest the film & send it out to see if anyone else responds positively to our wicked weekend jaunt in the woods. with 50% of marriages ending in divorce, honeymooners often don't last forever. we just managed to dispense with ours a little quicker than most. now we need to see if we can prop it up posthumously long after the wedding cake has been happily consumed. if we can manage a seventeen year long festival life perhaps that's a significant #lovePASS not #FAIL after all.

[photos by punk monk dave cheng]