Godzilla and King Kong in Alabama.

Director Adam Wingard works on big Hollywood movies, but he still calls Alabama home. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that he hosted a friends-and-family screening of his new blockbuster, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, last week at a Birmingham movie theater. I was maybe a little surprised to get an invite to the screening. Adam and I were friendly when he was living in Alabama. This was a couple decades (!) ago, around the time I was working on Hide and Creep. In fact, Adam edited the trailer for Hide and Creep. Around the same time, Chuck and I helped Adam out while he was shooting some footage for the opening credits of his movie Home Sick. I think that was his first feature. It was shot on 16mm film, and I had a 16mm camera at the time, so Chuck and I were basically his camera assistants for that shoot.

I’ve followed Adam’s career at the movie theater (I’ve seen at least four of his features at the cinema) but hadn’t seen him in person in years. So I was glad to get an invite to the Godzilla x Kong screening from a mutual friend of Adam’s and mine, Kyle McKinnon. (Kyle has done acting cameos in a couple of my movies, and he worked on the music for Adam’s home invasion movie You’re Next.)

Apparently Godzilla x Kong had its Hollywood premiere Monday March 25, and then Adam flew back home to have a premiere for his pals on Wednesday March 27. (I obviously should have posted this last week.) Not only did all of us who attended get to see the movie early, with the director, on a big screen, but the studio (Warner Bros.) made sure we all got popcorn, drinks, and Godzilla x Kong movie posters. As Alabama movie screenings go, it was pretty dang glamorous.

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