Rat Rod Rockers! Seattle Premiere & DVD Release Party

So yesterday we get up relatively early to the sight of gray clouds and rain rain rain. This is not good for a Cruise-In, which is how we were planning on kicking off the Rat Rod Rockers! Seattle Premiere. We load up the van and head down to the theater. Several of the Rat Bastards and some Die-Hard Hot Rodders are already there parking their cars. It takes balls to drive an open wheeled, no windshield car in a Northwest rainfest. We set up cars from the movie on the front walk area by the box office and on the front side of the building. My wife, who has become expert at laying out our vendor tables, gets busy setting up our merchandise. We are ready to sell when the theater opens the lounge at 2 PM. Because of the cold rain, the Cruise-In was a bust. Maybe twenty cars total. We had rented the parking lot for the day and night, so at least we all had free parking. Angie & The Car Wrecks and The Hard Money Saints loaded in at 5 PM for sound check. At that time handfuls of people were coming and going, buying drinks in the lounge and asking when the movie started. Steve Puvogel (who plays Officer Dumdown in Rat Rod Rockers!) was busy doing a photo shoot in the parking lot of actress/model Becky Lee. It's for an article I am writing for a national car magazine. Becky also plays Veronika Lakester in Rat Rod Rockers! Several other photographers were snapping pics for other magazines including my buddy Dan Brouillard. The bands started playing at 7:30 PM and the people started crowding the lounge area and theater. Both bands are exceptional and I was glad we landed them for the show. In the lounge we had a big double sized table set-up for the actors to sign posters and DVDs. By 8 PM they were armed with glitter pens and ready to sign! This was the largest gathering of Rat Rod Rockers! cast members we have ever had for any event. Becky Lee flew up from Arizona, Teri Aslett flew up from California and Charles Kittay drove up from Portland, Oregon. It looked awesome seeing them all crowded by friends and fans at the table. After the bands finished, I jumped up on stage for a few minutes to announce the film. I asked the audience if they had any questions about Rat Rod Rockers! and they said they just wanted us to "run the film." So we obliged. The turnout was lighter than the four hundred plus patrons at the Historic Everett Theater, Just over a three hundred people came out to the King Cat Theater. Still it was an exuberant bunch laughing and cheering through much of the film. I love to watch the audience react to my films.

After the  Rat Rod Rockers! credits rolled, Kitty Baby of The Pin-Up Angels and the Emerald Dollies took the stage for the Pin-Up Showcase. Several Burlesque numbers and then a Pin-Up contest with some thirteen contestants. I only got to see part of the show, because I was working the merchandise tables, but some of the gals were total knockouts!

The whole night felt really good. Friends and cool peeps having a good time at a great venue. We may schedule another screening at the King Cat in the near future. The only downer was my Meat Wagon II model car got banged up in transport. I planned on putting it on the merch table to show what new film projects I was working on. The suspension got ripped apart and the leg cutter blade broke in half. Fixable.

This upcoming weekend (April 2nd & 3rd) we will be doing several free showings of Rat Rod Rockers! at the Mild To Wild Car Show in Puyallup, Washington. This is a very big show with all kinds of cars and people.