Cinema Wasteland Spring 2008

Cody retrieves the recap of his time at the spring 2008 edition of the Cinema Wasteland convention from his archives.

It has faded into history and exists as nothing but a joke these days, but back in the mid-to-late '00s, I was a huge fan of MySpace. I kept my page looking good, with a great music playlist, and a personal blog that I updated on a weekly basis. I attended a few Cinema Wasteland shows while keeping that blog, and wrote an entry about my experience at the Spring 2008 show. So let's take a look back six years into the past:

April 11, 2008

Last weekend contained one of the things that are the highlights of each year for me - in this case, it was the spring edition of the Cinema Wasteland convention in Cleveland. I love going to these, I've been going to both the spring and October shows for a couple years now, starting in April 2006 when the presence of most of the Jason Voorhees performers drew me to it.

It's always a fun time, walking among hundreds of fellow horror fans, meeting filmmakers and actors, spending an inordinate amount of money on autographs, DVDs, comic books, T-shirts, etc. And, of course, in the back of my mind there's the dream of some day sitting on the other side of the guest table, being the director who's meeting fans and scribbling my name.

Speaking of directors, I can see why Rob Zombie has cast Sid Haig and Tom Towles in each movie he has made, because they're awesome guys.

Tom Towles is far from the big, scary, intense screen version of him from most of his movies. He was super nice, said "thanks" and shook my hand several times and talked me into taking a picture with him. (I'm not too big on being in the pictures myself.)

Haig, his Spider Baby co-star Beverly Washburn and frequent director Jack Hill provided a very entertaining Q&A after a Spider Baby screening. After watching Grindhouse last year, I got an idea for a script that would largely be an homage to certain movies on Haig and Hill's filmographies. Meeting them has me feeling that I should get to writing that script A.S.A.P.

Austin Stoker from the original Assault on Precinct 13 was a cool guy as well. I was getting DVD covers signed and hadn't brought the cases along, I was just carrying the covers loose in my Leatherface tote bag. He was worried that I'd get them all wrinkled that way, so he dug around and gave me a large envelope to keep them in.

A sight that make me smile: Brad "Halloween 8 Michael Myers" Loree kicked back, barefoot, reading a copy of Lloyd Kaufman's book Make Your Own Damn Movie.

Despite my social anxiety, and the fact that I nearly fainted while talking to my favorite classic scream queen Marilyn Burns at one of last year's shows, these conventions get easier for me to handle each time. I'm still not very interactive, but I'm not intimidated by the celebrity guests anymore. Though they may be idols of mine, they're still regular people who just happen to have really cool jobs.

I'll definitely be at the Wasteland once again in October.