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Cinevent in Columbus and the Persistence of Memory

By Scott Eyman | Tuesday, May 19, 2009, 02:23 PM

As I pack my bags for Cinevent in Columbus, I realize with a sinking heart that I’ve been doing this for slightly more than 40 years. With all due respect for my friend John McElwee - whose Greenbriar Picture Shows is, for my money, the best of the old movie blogs - I think I’ve been going even longer than him.

I haven’t been going constantly - there was a 10 or 12 year period after I moved to Florida when I stopped, mostly because I got interested in other things, like writing books, getting married - you know, having a life. But now, dear God, it’s probably the only remaining constant in my life from when I was a teenager.

In those days, all you had to do was climb in the car and cruise down I-71 from Cleveland and there you were. It’s different now - bigger, for one thing, with enormous dealer’s rooms, and a poster auction that goes on for days, with some jaw-dropping prices - but in most respects it still feels like a bunch of film dweebs getting together to put on a show.

The movies - even the rarest ones - are in 16mm, and heads occasionally get in the way of the projector beam. Definitely low tech, and all the better for it.

In the beginning, I loved Cinevent because it was a place to see movies you couldn’t see anyplace else, and buy things you couldn’t buy anyplace else - or at least anyplace not named New York or Hollywood.

Then it became a place to get stills for my books, and see old friends.

And now it’s basically a place to see old friends, buy a few things just to keep my hand in, and enjoy the Sunday sausage buffet at Schmidt’s in German Village. And yes, I am absolutely serious, as is the sausage buffet - I believe I’ve just about finished digesting last year’s order of Bahama Mama.

When I started going, the founding generation of Midwest film aficionadoes were still alive - guys like Jerry Clark, Don Poston and Harold Kinkade. I realize with a sinking heart that I am now the age they were when I met them.

It’s an older crowd now; there are very few twenty-somethings watching movies in preparation to be film scholars, but those people are probably sitting in their living rooms doing it via downloads. To each their own.

I’m looking forward to it, but then I always do. And when it’s over, I’ll be glad I went, but then I always am.

And John - that print of “The Human Comedy” I sold you 20 years ago? If you still have it, I’ll buy it back.

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