Just got back from the closing night party for the Gasparilla Film Festival, and those folks have something to celebrate. The final numbers will be forthcoming but executive director John Rosser told me they're looking at three times last year's ticket sales -- a nice leap from practically nowhere.

Looks like Tampa (and ...Bay by extension, if you don't mind traffic) has a solid foundation for future film festival success.

The shindig at Florida Aquarium was packed, a bit pickled and proud of the past five days.

Lots of nice people to chat up, including "rising star" award winner Brittany Snow (Hairspray, the
upcoming Prom Night update) and Shane West (ER, League of Extraordinary Boredom uhhh, Gentlemen) who earned a special acting prize for What We Do is Secret, in which he plays Darby Crash, lead singer of the 70's punk band, the Germs.
(Snow and West share a laugh at right.)

Awards were presented to Gunn Highway for best locally produced
film, young filmmaker Nadia Samova (twice for Oneiric), and The Flock, a Richard Gere thriller that needed chairs moved into an auditorium Saturday night to accommodate the overflow crowd. The Flock is produced by Bauer-Martinez Studios -- which has offices worldwide including right here in Largo. BMS president Phillippe Martinez (at left) accepted the award.

Other winners included American Fork (grand jury prize), the trucker documentary Big Rig (grand jury special mention), Fly Boys (audience choice, best narrative),  Tocar y Luchar (audience choice, best documentary)  and Ariel Kiebble with a special mention acting prize for Daydreamer.

BTW: Daydreamer is written by Adam Sigal, who reminded me that we once conversed in a St. Petersburg College film studies class about the works of Stanley Kubrick. The former Clearwater resident is doing well in L.A. now, regularly playing poker with roommates Paul and West. He's sending me a DVD screener of Daydreamer since I couldn't make the Sunday screening.

What? No award for the Blood Feast retrospective? Hey, we cleaned up the screen. (photos to come when Hope ships 'em to me.)

Big props go to Rosser and festival prez Eric Odum, who came up with this great idea last year and just needed someone savvy like Rosser to make it happen.