I was at an ad club meeting and had the strangest experience. After the meeting, I was talking to several other members and one of them asked me how things were going with Saying Goodbye. A woman I didn’t know was part of the discussion, and she asked, “Wait, you’re the one who made the cat movie?” I said I had, and she told me how much she loved it. Figuring she’d watched it at one of the festivals or at Cinebarre, I asked her where she’d seen it. She said a friend had a party and invited a bunch of people over to watch it. Because of restrictions around film festivals, we haven’t put it online or sold it on DVD yet, so I figured her friend must be someone involved with making the movie. When I asked who it was, I didn’t recognize the name at all! So then I thought maybe we were talking about different cat movies, but all the plot points matched.
How awesome is that?!? Our film is not even available to the public yet and already there are bootlegged copies out there floating around; and people like it so much they’re having parties and inviting their friends to watch it. We’d love to know how they got a copy, not because we’re upset (we're not, we think it's cool!), but because it would be fun to know what chain of events led to them getting a copy. Plus, hearing this story has us seriously rethinking our film festival strategy – maybe it’s better to just get it out there so our little film can be seen by anyone interested in this type of emotional movie?