DIVING NORMAL

[Diving Normal releases on Tuesday (get it here). I thought I’d take the next week to share some of my favorite stories from the past few years.]

The Chad. One of my favorite people on the planet.

In the Summer of 2011, I stayed with him and got all caught up in New York and the idea of shooting the movie there. In the Summer of 2012, he did more for the production and me than he’ll ever know.

[Diving Normal releases on Tuesday (get it here). I thought I’d take the next week to share some of my favorite stories about the movie.]

[Diving Normal releases TOMORROW (get it here). I thought I’d take the next week to share some of my favorite stories from the movie.]

When Philipp and I did the second run of Diving Normal in Hollywood, Ashlin Halfnight (the playwright and eventual screenwriter) said he’d come out from New York to see the play. He and I had met a few years before in a very loud bar/cub/thing in Union Square, but we’d never really had a proper face-to-face conversation. Philipp and I were excited for him to see our production and asked if he’d do a talkback with the audience following the play. He said yes.

He came to the play and brought a bunch of his friends (some of whom have become our friends). We had the Q&A, and after we’d wrapped and were on the way out to celebrate, he gave us a bottle of champagne as a congrats. It didn’t make sense to open it at that point in the night, so I stashed it in my car.

And for some reason, we didn’t open it after the closing of the play. So I kept it in my fridge. And I don’t really drink champagne, so it stayed in my fridge. And I moved twice and for some reason, always took it with me and always put it in the new fridge. And I had friends over or took it with me when BYOBing, but it was never opened.

Last Friday before I headed to Arena for the final screening of the movie, I opened my fridge and saw that bottle of champagne. It dawned on me (or, more appropriately, dusked on me) that I should take it with me to the theater.

Philipp and I sat in the back and watched the movie with everyone. After, we jumped on stage to thank some important folks before I told the story above.

It starts out with me saying Philipp and I had met in class, and after a few weeks, he said he wanted to do a play at that studio and had found one in which he thought I was perfect for the character “but don’t be offended.”

"…this well-acted piece is a gentle, humanistic look at the unexpected ways in which relationships form, flourish and flounder and how we define who — and what — is ‘normal.’”

Our last 2 divingnormal screenings of the year are this week in Seattle (Monday: https://www.tugg.com/events/12003) and Orange County (Thursday: https://www.tugg.com/events/11938).

Last week, Diving Normal screened in Atlanta and Washington, DC. As I’ve intro’d the movie on this tour, I keep saying thatall along, each completed step in the process of making this film - optioning the play, starting prep, wrapping production, completing post, premiering at festivals, getting distribution, completing post again - felt like a dream come true. But in truth, this is the dream come true: showing the movie to rooms full of people around the country.

Atlanta and DC were unique in that the audience was comprised of a healthy number of friends and family. It was a wonderfully horrifying pleasure to finally share what I’ve been up to for the last few years. Thank you to all the wonderful folks who have helped make the screenings so successful thus far. I do feel like the luckiest guy in the world.

Diving Normal will release digitally (iTunes, Amazon, Cable VOD, Youtube, GooglePlay, and others) on January 27th. Before then, if you’re in New York, Seattle, Orange County, Austin, or Los Angeles, we’d love for you to join us and see it on the big screen as intended. It is, after all, our dream come true.