A little about the Texas Rose Festival

To someone who has never heard of it, I typically describe The Rose Festival as "much like a debutante ball," but this description is shallow compared to the story that can be told.

As an introduction, here is the official Rose Festival website, and here is a collection of articles and photos printed in the Tyler Morning Telegraph. Here is the wikipedia article, which is brief and descriptive.

Each of those resources is pretty good, but all three might be a little overwhelming. If you're just hearing about this for the very first time, I'd recommend looking at some of the pictures. They speak in volumes.

The film is progressing well: I contacted the Executive Committee, and it looks like they will be an instrumental part of the filmmaking process, which makes me very excited. Their participation helps to insure that the film will connect with an audience of people outside and inside the festival, which is one of my biggest goals.

beginning

I've started to ask people if they're interested in doing interviews for the film, whenever I run into them (I still haven't proactively contacted anyone, but probably soon).

So far, the list is up to 3:

• Michael, my brother. Michael is escorting the Rose Queen during next year's festival.
• Grace, my next-door-neighbor. Grace was the Queen last year. Her family was directly involved in establishing the Rose Festival, 75 years ago.
• Duel, my good friend. Duel helps sponsor a Rose Festival event every year. His mother was Rose Queen in 1954, and he hopes that his daughter (now 13 years old) will have a chance of being Queen some day.

This is a really good start. I'm excited to watch things develop.

In 2 weeks, next year's Rose Court will be announced. I'm hoping to attend the Gala to meet people and spread the word about the film. It would be ideal to have cameras to cover the event, but it will probably be more appropriate to focus our efforts on a 2-month production this summer/fall.