CPals Invade Manhattan
by Linda Schwartz

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Sat, September 8th, 2001 8PM

The day started off with an air of excitement. I was part of a group of CPals that were descending on Manhattan's Sutton theater on 57th street to see Chris Potter's movie "Rocket's Red Glare." It was one of the movies that were being show as part of the New York Film Festival. Our group consisted of me, Laura, Dawn-Marie, Melody, Dawn, Sue and Ed, Kat and Janine.

I arrived at Laura's house at 3PM and then Dawn-Marie joined us. We piled into Laura's car and drove over to the train station. On our way to the station, Laura had her cellphone out and was talking to her husband, then she threw the phone at me and said 'here'. I said, "Here what? What do you want me to do?" She said she wanted me to talk to our friend, Sue and tell her what we were all wearing.

We got to the train station, but the train was a few minutes late. As we waited, we were wondering where Sue and Ed were. We didn't see them as we boarded the train. It took us about 45 minutes to get to Penn station. The train stopped just outside the station and the conductor said they had a red light, which meant we had to wait until we got the green light to continue into Penn.

We agreed to meet Melody and Dawn at Houlihan's restaurant at the station. Dawn likes to call herself the 'other Dawn' so there is no confusion with her and Dawn-Marie, Dawn was the lucky one who caught CP's hockey stick at the Long Island game in 1999. There were a lot of smiles and hugs when we got together. Sue and Ed joined us a few moments later. It turned out they had gone to another station down the line and gotten on there.

We all made our way up top and walked over to the TGIFridays restaurant near Madison Square Garden. We were on the second floor and had a nice view as we waited for Kat and Janine to join us. The food was very good and we had so much fun talking amongst ourselves. Some of us had cameras. I had two, one digital one and a regular one. I was clicking away with both of them.

We left the restaurant and headed for the subway, and took the 'E' train uptown. Melody and I had metro cards. Mine was a day pass only good for that day. Melody had a commuter pass so she was using it to get the rest of our group through the turnstile. When it was Laura's turn to get in she was stuck on the other side. Turns out that there is a limit on how many people you can have use the card at one station. I tried to give her my card but you can't share day pass cards with anyone else. So the train that was waiting for us had to pull out without us. Laura wanted us to leave without her and she would catch the next train but we all said 'No way.' We were a group and we were staying together (gosh, I sound like Peter in the Challenge ep of Fu) This was just the beginning of many fun incidents of this day.

When we arrived, we saw two lines outside. We had our tickets and we found out which line was for 'Rockets Red Glare.' We were also talking about Chris, wondering if he was going to show up. We already knew that he had won the NY Film Festivals best actor award for this picture.

All of a sudden, Melody yelled out, "He's here!" I said, "Who is here?" She said Chris. She had spotted him (now we know that Melody has a CP radar system) I looked between the crowd and spotted him too. He was being interviewed by someone. I ran off the line and tried to get as close as I could to get some pictures. I managed to get one with my digital.

Then he was whisked inside the theater. We were so happy that he showed up. After several minutes, we were finally allowed inside. We were trying to find seats together, but it was very hard to find 9 in one row so we ended up sitting separately. We noticed one section had reserved signs on the seats, I figured that was where the movie people were going to be sitting, including Chris.

Janine and Kat found seats in one row, Dawn-Marie found another seat. Sue and Ed were in another row. Dawn and I were sitting together and in the row ahead of us Melody and Laura found some seats. A few minutes, later Laura turned around and motioned for us to look to her right. Imagine my surprise when I saw Chris sitting 3 seats down from Laura. He had chosen to sit with the rest of us. Laura had tapped him on the arm and said 'HI', she told him that we were there. He looked over at Melody then at me and Dawn. I waved at him and said hello.

Just before the movie started, the awards were given out. Chris was called up to receive his award for best actor. On his way up the row of seats, Laura got up to let him by and he tripped on her jacket which had fallen on the floor. Chris lost his balance and he leaned up against Laura. They steadied each other and Chris continued on his way to get his award. Chris did mention Laura in his acceptance speech, he said he wanted to make sure she was okay. Then he made his way back and Laura was so embarrassed that she held the program in front of her face to try to hide. Chris did not seem bothered in the least, it was just an accident.

The theater grew dark and the movie began. They showed a short film called 'The Right Hook' just before Rockets. It was actually very funny. Then the main event started. I think the movie was good. Chris did a wonderful performance in this very gritty story about a Vietnam veteran who was still haunted by the nightmares of the war and his struggle to overcome the conflicts of civilian life.

After the movie ended, we filed out of our seats and stood off to the side of the theater. We were pleasantly surprised when Chris joined us and we congratulated him on his movie. I told him how wonderful he was, then someone had asked him how he felt about seeing himself on screen and he said it was difficult to watch himself.

Dawn walked up to him and told him of a member of her family that had been in that war and how he had difficulties talking about it. Chris was very attentive and was touched by Dawn telling him of how accurate his portrayal was.

We asked him if we could take pictures with him and he said 'sure'. We weren't sure where we could go to do the pictures. We followed Chris out into the lobby, but it was so jammed with people exiting and other people coming in for the next film that we were told by the ushers to get out. We weren't leaving without Chris. He had stopped in the lobby to talk to some guy.

We ended up outside the theater and we spoke some more with Chris. We took pictures and he signed our festival programs. He told us he'd seen his movie "A Wrinkle in Time," and was very pleased with what he saw. That movie is set to air in February on ABC.

He said he hoped he would have some more projects in the future, but did not go into any specifics. He also indicated a cut he had on his lower lip, he told us he got hurt doing repairs on his family's new home. He got hit with a piece of lumber and had to have stitches, he said it hurt like hell.

We hung around for a while then decided to go home. Chris was going to go to a private party for Argus, the film production company for his film.

Laura walked over to say goodbye and tripped, she reached out to catch herself and ended up hugging Chris. He was taken a bit by surprise but was cool about it. Talk about a CP encounter!

We said our good-byes, Janine and Kat took a cab and we headed for the subway to get back to Penn Station. While we waited for the subway we couldn't stop talking about the evening, we were all in the PSZ. Melody and Dawn got off at the stop before Penn and we took the train back to Jersey. We all still had smiles on our faces. We will never forget our CP experience.

Chris mentioned a possible hockey game in Philly in Nov, we have since found out that event has been moved to Trenton NJ.

Stay tuned...