P.U.M.P. PHILM FEST 11-10-04
So my manager booked me to make an appearance at the opening of the first annual P.U.M.P Festival, and to do a banner for the event.
I knocked out a banner using a bunch of art from various projects I've done in the past few years and e-mailed it to my homie Bugaloo down in Miami where he printed it up for me 50x 100 inches wide and fed-exed it up to my mannager in Philly.
Ran-D and I shot out to Philly Wednesday morning for the press launch of the festival. We showed up just after Kevon, who had the rolled up artwork under his arm.
The "philm" portion of the festival took place at "The Legendary Blue Horizon" which is a boxing venue where the training scenes in the Rocky Movies were filmed.
They had a cheesy version of the P.U.M.P. logo painted on canvas which they quickly yanked off the stage and put my banner up.
We sat down and I noticed an obese Bejamin Franklin was sitting there about five seats away from me. I got a photo with him, cause, that's fucken hallarious.
A whole bunch of opening speakers kicked off the festival including six time emmy winner David Langston Smyrl of Cosby show and Sesame St. fame, as well as Cheri and Prate Bailey, a bunch of directors and musicians: Veronika Michels, Monica McIntyre, Bugsy and Snake, Bianca M. White, Supastar, James Claiborn, and a majority of the group Bohemian Fifth. Camera crews from the local news teams covered the event and quickly split after the main speakers hit the road.
I was introduced and got a great round of applause.
After the inital press kickoff we hit the complementary press buffet where somoene gave us our VIP lamanats. I posed for about a million pictures with all the people involved with the event and a bunch of the directors and film makers. Had some great conversations and filled my stomach.
The first of the short film presentations wasn't to kick off till that night so Ran-D and I shot down to old city and had some cajun food (burbon chicken) in a mall food court, swong by Respect Management's office and I had coffee and a meeting with Kevon squaring away the Rolling Stone contracts.
After that we swong by Sugar Moms for a drink, picked up a cab and shot back up to the film fest.
Now, I'm not going to sugar coat this, and I'm sure that when Sundance was in it's infancy, it wasn't "all that" either. The presentation of the films sucked ass. The films might have been really cool, I don't have any idea if they were. The chairs were stiff back metal fold outs, the one movie screen was rear projection and small, and the sound system was horrible, the acoustics in the room were worse. The sound is what fucked it up for me. You couldn't understand any of the dialogue.
After the first section of films finished, we stuck around for a seminar by Drucee McDaniel, about directors dealing with actors and vise versa, which was actually really good. That was interesting, interactive, and fun.
Tracy showed up in the middle of the seiminar. When it ended we dropped Ran-D off at his car and went food shopping. I finally got a Philly cheese steak. We had some pumpkin pie and crashed out.
I stayed at Tracy's house working on some projects for the next few days. I never made it back for any of the other five days of the festival. I really wanted to go to one of the big parties the festival was having on Saturday featuring Schooly D, but Saturday was the day I was heading home.
Ran-D picked me up Saturday morning. I kissed Tracy goodbye. Ran-D and I had Chinese food on U Penn's campus before we drove over to the Philadelphia Airport to pick up my brother Brett who was flying back from his home in Cali to visit my parents for the holidays.
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo