The Life & Times of a Self-Proclaimed Movie Star

NO WHALES IN WALES…

I recently had the honor of attending the Iris Prize Film Festival in Cardiff, Wales. And by recently I mean two months ago. To call me a procrastinator would not only be a sad understatement of truth, but a welcomed compliment as far as I’m concerned. As the old saying goes - It’s not easy being me. Who said that? Rodney Dangerfield I think. Listen, being an actor is HARD (We are keeping it clean since it's the holidays and all.) Constantly having to look pretty, spending endless hours in front of the mirror practicing my winning smile, checking my star meter rank on IMdb on a daily basis to make sure I haven’t dipped below the 20,000 mark. HARD, I tell you. (Ok, I couldn't resist the second time around.)

Where was I?… right - Wales. So I get this call from overseas one day—actually it was an email, but getting a phone call from overseas sounds much more important, so phone call it is. So I get this "phone call" from some guy with a funny accent who asks if I want to skip over the pond (that’s what they call it), and take a trip over to Cardiff, Wales as part of the Jury of the Short Film Selection, an award and prize that is actually pretty incredible and is one of the few these days whose primary agenda is promoting up and coming short filmmakers. Incidentally, one of the films I’m in this year, Redwoods, (directed by David Lewis) was part of their Feature Film Selection, competing for the feature film award alongside some other great works including, Hollywood je t’aime (directed by Jason Bushman), The Big Gay Musical (directed by Casper Andreas and Fred Caruso), Highly Strung (directed by Sophie Laloy), Give Me Your Hand (directed by Pascal-Alex Vincent), and Fiona’s Script (directed by Florencia Manovil).

So I went. No shit, right? Free trip to Wales. All the attention and alcohol I want for a week? Count me in.

When I arrived, I was a bit stunned at the false advertisement of the city’s name. There wasn’t ONE whale is ALLLLLL of Wales, and trust me, I looked. Also, EVERYONE was driving on the wrong side of the road! And somehow, they’ve managed to get away with roping everyone in on it. Someone really needs to tell them. Looks pretty dangerous to me. I thought by my not driving, I’d escape this crazy, backwards road insanity. Nope. Being a pedestrian isn’t any better. In fact it might even be worse. I almost got run over by a honking car driving on the wrong side of the road at least twice a day. I counted. By day two, I was beginning to feel like I was playing a reality show version of Frogger.

Other than the crazy drivers, and mediocre plumbing, (and the lack of whales in Wales), the rest of the trip was pretty spectacular. Redwoods even won BEST FEATURE - and I only had to blow one person to get it!

If you want to track this self-proclaimed movie star besides Homopop, check out Matthew's website Matt-Montgomery.com.