Chris Rid­dle — actor, film­maker, video­g­ra­pher, and stage direc­tor — is one of my old­est friends. We’ve worked on many projects together in the past. Every year he puts together a team for the 48 Hour Film Fes­ti­val here in Asheville. If you’ve never worked on a 48 Hour film, it’s a blast with the right peo­ple. High stress, high cre­ativ­ity, solv­ing com­plex prob­lems on the fly, and after two days of that you have a fim. It’s really fun. Chris and his wife Sam put together a great team last year — Direc­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy was Mike Belleme, who’s an awe­some skate­boarder and gasp­ingly good pho­tog­ra­pher, (and also in my blogroll). They tapped me for an act­ing role — though I had no prior screen cred­its. Now, I think act­ing is really fun, and I’ve done it con­fi­dently — on stage. On film I was totally uncom­fort­able with myself. We pulled the Romance genre (which is a tough one) so nobody was really thrilled with the story, and my lines made me feel like I had mar­bles in my mouth. I hate myself on screen. I hope I don’t really sound and look like that. Enjoy.

I thought of this because I saw Mr. Rid­dle. I kid­napped him and brought him to Asheville to see the Fire­cracker Jazz Band play at the Rocket Club, and he asked me to be an extra in his next project which is film­ing tomor­row. He’s film­ing it at the cofee­house in Tryon, where we met. The first friends I ever made out­side of church or work was at that cof­fee­house, and it always feels good to come back there — espe­cially to work with Chris, who was the first guy to ever talk to me there. I was just weird guy in the cor­ner that nobody knew, and when Chris said “The time has come,” I fin­ished it with “the wal­rus said,” and I often think of that pre­cise moment, when the out­side world first rec­og­nized me.

Thanks, Chris.