A Special HBO Screening
In advance of our HBO premiere on Fathers Day (June 19), HBO is hosting a NYC invitation-only screening of The Kids Grow Up for bloggers and press, complete with wine reception and Dad 2.0 panel, on Tuesday, June 14, starting at 6pm. The panel features Roland Warren, President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, and acclaimed parent bloggers Doug French (Laid Off Dad) and Catherine Conners (Her Bad Mother). It will expand on the changing notions of fatherhood explored in the film, and explain more about the exciting Dad 2.0 movement.
If you and a guest are interested in attending, send us an email and we’ll follow up with an official invite and details: info (at) thekidsgrowup (dot) com. If you’re interested in writing about The Kids Grow Up and can’t make the screening, email us and HBO will get a dvd screener to you a week or two before the broadcast.
For those who don’t get HBO, the dvd, with 45-minutes of great bonus material, will be available from New Video starting July 19. You can pre-order it now.
So Much Catch-Up
It’s all gone by in a blur…
Screenings galore from Honolulu to Helsinki.
Doing dozens of interviews.
Unexpectedly coming aboard a new doc as Executive Producer.
It wins the Best Director prize for U.S. documentaries at Sundance.
Continued praise for The Kids makes my hat size swell.
It’s enough to make a boy feel, well… resurrected!
Opening Day
Holy crap, the day of our theatrical premiere is here at last! I did a tech check at the Angelika this morning and came away happy with the projection, especially given that they’re not used to digital projection. The manager couldn’t have been nicer – treated me to a double cappucino and moved the blow-up of our humongous Sunday NY Times article outside right next to the box office window.
It’s not like I’m hardened to all this, but we have a group of eager young people in our office here, and they’re super excited about the upcoming weekend. And everyone’s thrilled with the incredible coverage and many great reviews we’ve gotten. A. O. Scott in the New York Times calls The Kids “remarkable” and gives it a Critics’ Pick, as does New York Magazine. Eric Hynes in the Village Voice calls it “nakedly personal” and “profoundly universal,” and Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com says it’s a “powerful, wrenching movie” (not to worry, he also called it “funny” and “irresistible”).
Countdown to Launch
In advance of our premiere at the Angelika Film Center this Friday, two great articles on The Kids in the papers today. The New York Times piece goes more in depth (and gives the film some serious real estate), The New York Daily News opts mainly for a director interview.
More press coverage coming in the days ahead, as well: The Village Voice, Wall Street Journal and indieWIRE, among others.
Thanks and kudos to our extraordinary publicist, Susan Norget, who’s believed in the film from the moment she saw it at our first industry screening last fall. Our entire print ad budget will pay for exactly two postage-stamp sized ads in the Times. And journalists, face it, generally aren’t interested in any film that isn’t celebrity driven, much less a personal documentary. So you can see what kind of job she’s done.
And now it all comes down to getting butts in the seats at the Angelika this coming weekend. If you’re in the NYC area, hope one of them will be yours.
Starting Tomorrow, Call Me Mister Modern Media Man
When you have a movie opening soon in theaters that’s essentially a documentary about your daughter (ok, it’s a lot more, but still) and you have little money to market it, you better get pretty damned creative with your marketing. And you better get your sorry ass in gear and start blogging, too.
That’s why I’ll be in Atlanta for the next 3 days at a noteworthy event called the Modern Media Man Summit. Saturday morning I’ll be speaking on a panel called “Over-Sharing: When it comes to your family, how much is too much?” It’s meant for bloggers but could there possibly be a more apropos topic for someone who makes personal docs about his family (not to mention, his teenage daughter!)?
If nothing else, the Summit should bring up lots of food for thought. How are men experiencing fatherhood these days? How are they writing about it? Will the “daddy blogger” movement ever grow to anywhere near the level of “mommy bloggers“? Where oh where is the male Dooce?
I’m bringing along my adorable new notebook laptop, will take it all in like a sponge and hopefully be a bloggin’ and twitterin’ fool. So check back often, I’ll be updating my posts throughout the event.
World Premiere of THE KIDS…
THE KIDS GROW UP will have its’ world premiere next month at IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), the largest and most prestigious of all documentary festivals. It’s playing in the Reflecting Images: Masters section, along with new or recent docs by, well, there’s no other term, masters such as D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus, Frederick Wiseman, Michael Moore, Joe Berlinger, Susan Froemke, Julien Temple and Michael Winterbottom. So it’s quite an honor and my hat size has swelled accordingly.
