JASON HEADLEY TALKS ‘A BAD IDEA GONE WRONG’ PREMIERE @ SXSW

Laughs, Nerves, And A Successful First Outing

It’s possible I was just too dumb to be nervous.

That’s what people kept asking me before my first feature film, “A Bad Idea Gone Wrong,” premiered at SXSW: “Are you nervous?” And I honestly didn’t understand the question. The movie was finished. I’d watched it enough times, building it piece by piece, to have no perspective on it whatsoever. But I still had a low, lingering feeling that I’d made the movie I set out to make. So my work was done. All I had to do was sit in a theater and watch it with a bunch of strangers.

“I’m excited.” That’s what I would tell people. And I meant it.

Then the rain started.

Our world premiere was on a Saturday afternoon and it was raining pretty good. One thing I hadn’t considered was the possibility that I might not watch the movie with a bunch of strangers after all, but with a smattering of wet, grumpy people in a mostly empty theater.

I started to get nervous. There was a lot going on as the doors opened. We were quarantined in a green room underneath the theater for a while, either due to a health scare or because we were being too noisy. (It’s because we were being too noisy.) When we got let out of detention, we had to take various configurations of photos on the red carpet and I honestly had no idea how many people had gone into the theater. Finally free to take a look, I saw nothing but sweet relief: The theater was full. Three hundred people, some of them wet, none of them grumpy.

I was back to being excited.

People were laughing from the very start. The movie is a comedy, so that’s a good thing. Great laughs and gasps in all the right places. It was a true rush listening this bunch of strangers go on the ride. To the point where, near the end, my awareness of all the effort it took to get here — all the failure and rejection and opportunities made and teamwork required — began to cause a disturbance in and around my eyeballs. I was about to cry. Luckily, I come from a place where we stifle our emotions with great rigor and proficiency. I wasn’t about to cry my way through my Q&A. So I pulled it together and just felt some good, old-fashioned joy about the whole thing. A rare indulgence.

Three days later, we all went to the awards ceremony. I was neither nervous nor excited. I felt the same as when I took my brother’s girlfriend to prom: Certain I had no chance. Our film was in Narrative Competition, but it’s a comedy and comedy doesn’t win awards. Even at the Golden Globes, where Comedy has its own category, “The Martian” won. The. Martian. So I was just sitting there, minding my own business, when judge Scott Mantz started talking about our movie. He was talking about a Special Jury Recognition for Best Ensemble. And suddenly we were onstage and I got to sing the praises of my cast — Matt Jones, Eleanore Pienta, and Will Rogers — into a microphone in front of a thousand people.

It was a superb experience all around. We finished the night at a diner at 3 a.m., too tired to eat but too wired to sleep. Just like that, my first feature was out in the world, all on its own. And I’m ready to get started on the next one.

– Jason Headley

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