The Origins of a Nightmare in Eureka Springs
In March of this year, hosting a film festival wasn’t even on my radar. As of today, October 10, we’ve sold 400 tickets to the Nightmare in the Ozarks Film Festival and have been featured in the New York Times as one of five Halloween Film Festivals worth traveling for. How on Earth did this happen?
I was in Los Angeles for a business trip earlier this year. On the final day of the trip, my friend Athena asked if I’d be interested in having dinner at her friend Barb’s house. Sure, why not? “By the way,” Athena said, “She lives at OJ Simpson’s former residence.”
After dinner, I spent a long time chatting with Barb’s husband, who is a former executive of a very large media company. He was asking about Eureka Springs, The Zombie Crawl, and what Halloween was like in town. Finally, he asked, “Why don’t you have a horror film festival there?”
Great question, maybe we should.
I flew back to Eureka Springs the next day and spent the entire flight thinking through what a film festival would even look like in Eureka. Would there be enough time to plan one this year? Would we have the space for screenings? Do I even have time to figure out how to do this during my busiest month of the year?
After I got home, I immediately went to see if the City Auditorium, a century old grand theater downtown, was already booked in the days leading up to the annual Zombie Crawl. Surprisingly, it was available, so I reserved it Thursday - Saturday. They had also just installed a brand new projector and screen. It was ready to be a film venue.
I have the space. Now what?
The next thing I did was reach out to my friend and frequent horror-collaborator Mariam, of Headcinema Productions, to see if she’d want to help me organize it. Fortunately for me, she was more than excited to do so.
We immediately got to work. I put together a website and social media pages while she reached out to her extensive contacts in the film industry to let them know what was happening. Over the next several months, we received around 300 film submissions from over 20 countries.
Nightmare in the Ozarks might be a first year film festival, but it certainly doesn’t feel like one. First year film festivals don’t sell hundreds of tickets. They don’t have cover art from one of the top designers in the horror industry. They don’t have partnerships with respected distributors. And they don’t end with one of the largest zombie parades in the world.
And they certainly don’t have trophies or mascots as cool as ours.
Most of these feats were made possible by the City Advertising and Promotion Committee and local businesses who sponsored the film festival very early on.
Tickets are pretty cheap this year - $20 for a day pass or $30 for the full festival. We’ll have vendors all day Friday and Saturday, free workshops, horror trivia, social hours, a filmmaker meet n’ greet, and much more on the schedule.
If you are a paid subscriber, you can get free tickets to the festival. Just use the code below…
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