Well, I think my fifteen minutes of fame have come and gone...at least for now. Just to give you a brief update, I have had the craziest two weeks of my life! Following in the wake of the "mayor controversy", I was contacted by fifteen radio stations from across the country, three major TV shows (The Tonight Show w/Jay Leno, the NBC Weekend Today Show, MTV Canada) every local television network, twelve newspapers from all over the U.S. and three on-line blog sites. One of the last interviews I did was for the Beijing Youth Daily, one of the top newspapers in China! We were mentioned in Jay Leno's monologue and we were one of the top searches of the week on Google, prompting them to do a cool feature story on us. (see previous blog to view video) In fact, if you were to Google "Thong Girl" before all of this happened you'd get mostly porn sites. Now, you'll get at least seven solid pages of my superhero and her mayoral antics.
Our website took so many hits, almost a million and-a-half in just three days, my web host guy had to expand our bandwidth four times! Two weeks ago I didn't even know what a bandwidth was! And the website was down half of the time so there's no telling how many hits we actually got. All because of a crimefighting superhero in a red thong bikini.
Now, I know that there are a lot more important things going on in the world than us filming a scene in a local mayor's office, but apparently people just need a little diversion from time to time; and far be it for me to deny anyone a little silliness on occasion. Glad I could help.
What this has done is bring a whole lot of attention to a project that has been my main focus for the past five years. It's a really good feeling to walk down the street and have people say, "hey, you're that Thong Girl guy". One of the coolest things was a guy named Mark who lives in Gallatin, where all of this took place, asked me if he could have a few Thong Girl tee shirts. It seems the town of Gallatin is having their OctoberFest this weekend and Mark and a few of his friends want to parade around the Gallatin Town Square in TG tee shirts! Now, that's loyalty. I don't want there to be any bad feelings about this in Gallatin and I sincerely hope they'll reconsider and let us show "Thong Girl 3: Revenge Of The Dark Widow" at the Palace Theater when it premieres. I think we could have a really good turn-out. I'd think that people would want to see it just to see what all the fuss was about and let them make their own judgements. There have been a lot of independent horror films done in and around Gallatin that make TG3 look like a Disney movie and no one said a peep about those, so, c'mon folks, cut us some slack.
Speaking of premieres, I've set a tentative date for the first showings of TG3 for Feb. 10th at Watkins College Of Art. They are located at the former Fountain Square Theater location and they have a really nice little venue there. I am an alumnus of Watkins Film School and they have always been receptive to new and different ideas and they've been very encouraging in my efforts to premiere a film that has taken on a life of its own. If there is still a buzz going on at the time of the showing we might possibly add a few more showings.
All is quiet at the moment and the phones have stopped ringing and the emails have slowed, but that's a good thing. I mean, the attention was awesome and I can't say that I minded being in the limelight for awhile, but the reality is, if I don't have a film to show this was all for nothing.
That said, we're shooting the last two or three scenes in the next two weeks and then I'm going to lock myself in the house and begin post production. That will entail capturing all the footage we've shot over the last six months in the computer and editing it together to make a cohesive film. I met with a film scorer the other day, a guy that I've had in mind for the past year, and we seem to be on the same page as to what direction we'd like to see this movie take. The music is SO important and it can make or break a film, so I'll be spending equal time editing and working with Mark on the music.
I hope when February comes around people will still remember something about this crazy scandal and be curious enough to come out and see for themselves what all the fuss was (or wasn't) about.
Thanks for continuing to support local film and television and don't forget to come out to the Nashville Comic Book Convention at the State Fairgrounds Oct. 21st & 22nd. (comiccitytn.com) We'll be selling all kinds of TG merchandise and showing the new TG3 trailer. We're also doing a comic book signing at Mega Used Books & Discs at 1016 8th Ave. South in Nashville on Nov. 4th. We're also one of the featured films from Tennessee at the Southern Appalachian Film Festival in Johnson City at the end of the month (www.soapiff.com).
Hope to see you soon, Glen
