I've been all over Spoleto and its Piccolo fringe since it started. One of the most enjoyable experiences for me has been recording podcasts for Spoleto Today ("SpoTo Spocasts"), the Post & Courier's daily audio coverage of the festival.

You can hear an conversation between SpoTo honcho Janet Edens, myself and three enthusiastic ladies from the Charleston Academy of Music here.

Today we discussed the best of the fest so far.

With events going on all over town throughout the day, I find myself writing up my coverage late at night and into the wee hours of the morning.

Maybe I should skip the aftershow parties and get straight to work?

Nah. It's not going to happen.

The organizers of Charleston's International Film Festival turned out to be a nice bunch of folks. They provided an enjoyable experience for filmmakers, local moviegoers and visitors. The Terrace Theater was an appropriate venue for a cautious first year of a festival.

For me, the event offered a chance to help out where I could, catch up with friends and introduce a few entertaining films that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. I'm glad Osso Bucco won the Audience Choice award; with its infectious charm and competent acting, this crowd pleaser deserved its prize.

Best of all I got to see Post & Courier film critic Bill Thompson letting his hair down. This inveterate newshound is usually stuck at his desk barking at people on the phone or weeping into his popcorn in a dark screening room, so I'm sure a few late night parties in venues like Bridgeside and the Cottage on the Creek in Mount Pleasant didn't do him any harm.

The Golden Crescent Award for best film went to Camille. The Jury Award for Best Feature went to Crazy. (Incidentally, one of the jury members was my fellow West Countryman John Cleese). The Golden Crescent Screenplay Competition was won by Natashia Sanders for her script, The Spinning Wheel.

For full details on winners and a wrap up of the event, visit the International Film Festival website.

I've just heard that Philip Hyman, organizer of the "Evolution" multi-venue art show and all around good guy, had a heart attack yesterday and is recovering after surgery. He wants the show to go on and he's looking for help.

Local photographer Badjon has put out this APB:

"If u can help with hanging art, setting venues, directing people, organizing, anything...we need your help...

"We will need someone to help with accepting all the art, mostly during the day and afternoons...

"If u can give anything, lights, wood, screws,nails,concrete screws,hanging wire, etc...we would be much appreciative..."

For more information and contact details, visit the Evolution webpage on MySpace.

On the weekend I was invited to the Post & Courier's cozy recording studio/broom closet to interview David Lee Nelson, director of Lobby Hero and star of Silence of Lucky.


David likes to talk (hell, he's a stand up comic living in New York), so he was an easy man to interview. In fact we could easily have talked for half an hour instead of ten minutes. But in our allotted time we covered both his shows, which are part of Piccolo's Stelle di Domani series and feature College of Charleston alumni like Mr. Nelson and local theatre star Jamie Smithson.


You can listen to the podcast here. In the picture, I'm on the left and David's on the right.

An alternate take from Patrick Pelletier, a documentary about the Charleston, SC painter filmed in 2007.

In Charleston during the Spoleto Festival and not sure what to see? Fear not, I'm here to help. I checked out the Chinese opera Monkey: Journey to the West on Friday and you can read my review here. Some people found it bewildering, too contemporary or too exotic for their tastes. I ate it up like a tasty peach.

On saturday I caught Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief by Paula Vogel. I'd heard great things about the show and although it's slight, it still packs a wallop as it charts the Othello heroine's lusty life up to her final brush with death.

After that I went straight to see A Devil Inside, a zany murder mystery at the College of Charleston. The real star of the show was actor/set designer Richard Dunn, who provided some mesmerizing monologues and crammed half a New York street onto the stage with a split set.

I had to run as if the devil himself was after me to get to the Footlights Theatre for This War is Live, a late night take on the Iraq conflict from the perspective of embedded journalists. As far as I'm concerned, there aren't enough plays that have journalists as the heroes. But maybe I'm biased.

Late Night @ Footlights director JC Conway discusses This War is Live, a Piccolo Spoleto show that runs through June 8.

On Nick TV today, PURE Theatre co-founder Rodney Lee Rogers discusses Janine McCabe's costumes for the PURE Theatre production of "Eurydice."

This week, the Spoleto Festival has descended on Charleston like a day-glo fog. I can see the signs already: Calhoun Street jammed with out-of-state vehicles, tents nestled on Marion Square like a Native American reservation, and Chinese acrobats shopping at the local Asian grocery store (what's wrong with Publix?).

Spoleto is a 17 day festival of music, theatre and dance. Visual art is non-existent, because it's harder to charge an entry fee for art shows. But fear not, all lovers of marsh paintings. There's also a Piccolo Spoleto - a fringe fest organized by the city's Office of Cultural Affairs. Piccolo is full of plays, musicians, comedy and -yay! - artists.

I'll be covering as much of the festival(s) as I can and contributing reviews, podcasts and videos to Charleston's local papers. If I ever get past all the traffic on Calhoun Street.

An interview with Orpheus from PURE Theatre's production of "Eurydice" for Piccolo Spoleto.

An interview with Nathan Koci of New Music Collective. Koci plays "Big Stone" in Eurydice, produced by PURE Theatre for Piccolo Spoleto.

I snapped a few pix at the Upper Deck art show, May 20th 2008. Music by Ice Bread. Prints by Johnny Pundt.

PURE Theatre are producing "Eurydice" at 10 Storehouse Row this week. I interviewed the heroine's father.

It took me a while (because it's kind of tucked round the side of Pita Pit on King Street) but last night I found the Upper Deck Tavern and saw some deft art on the walls. (I haven't been there for a while and I have a lousy sense of direction).

DJ/artist Ice Bread and graphic guru/artist Johnny Pundt threw up a show at very short notice - which is even more surprising when you consider that Pundt's part of a group show at West Ashley's Voodoo lounge on Thursday May 22nd.

Also on the Voodoo cards: Julio Cotto, SHT!, Wolfkid, Ishmael, Scott Debus, Carl Janes, Proton.rt, Josh Branstetter and Badjon Photography.

DJ D ROCK and DR FUZZ will be on the 1's and 2's!!

The organizers have also teamed up with Continuum skate shop for a Nike sb "heat" contest. Simply wear your best sb dunks to the show and come enter for free to win a pair up up coming sb's from Continuums new 843 store.

PURE Theatre is producing "Eurydice" at 10 Storehouse Row, N. Charleston, May 23-26 as part of the Piccolo Spoleto festival.

Earlier in the year I went to a Production Design Associates tradeshow with Clandestine Films producer Trevor Erickson. There we met artist Kevin Harrison, who has been making some beautiful ads and promotional films for PDA. He gave us a demonstration of the company's glidecam.

It takes a lot to get Trevor excited. This did the trick.

No sooner do I wrap filming of one competition (music videos for Jay Clifford's Know When to Walk Away) than another one comes up - but this time I was on the other side of the camera.

Author Paolo Coelho has teamed up with HP to bring his novel The Witch of Portobello to celluloid life. Filmmakers have been invited to shoot shorts from the points of view of different characters in the book. The best films will hopefully be combined into a feature.

I played a character called Heron Ryan in a short made by South Carolina filmmakers for the comp. The shoot was highly professional despite a modest budget, with some sumptuous images created with a Panasonic Pro HD camera.

The script by Beth Slagsvol and Shannon Bogan changed a lot since I first saw it, and I had to think on my feet when I arrived at the first Charleston location on Saturday morning. My agent had told me I'd be playing a different character, so I'd studied a different scene. But I figured things out as best I could.

On Sunday I appeared in a protest scene in the morning. Apparently some people don't take kindly to witched, even in this day and age. A downtown Charleston street doubled for Portobello Road, complete with black cab.

In the afternoon a "white room" was set up in a warehouse on Brigade Street. The room was created with white boards on the floor and white flowing curtains for walls. I was surrounded by professional dancers, ballet and tango experts. I danced with them and tried not to look too stupid.

A friend saw me doing this called her husband on her cellphone. She couldn't believe the sight. "Nick Smith's dancing," she said in hushed tones.

By the end of the day the film had wrapped and I'd figured out how my character fit into the story. Hopefully, Beth and Shannon's version of events will make the final cut. It's not too late to enter the competition yourself, mind. Further details below.

Although the movie theatre at Citadel Mall has won a reprieve - the ex-AMC concern has been taken over by a regional company - another West Ashley entertainment mecca is closing its doors today.

The Map Room on Sam Rittenburg Blvd blames low attendance numbers, high gas prices, Charleston's smoking ban and the economy on its dwindling profits. So it's pulled the plug. You can read the full story on the City Paper website.

The Map Room's a short walk from my house, and it's best known to me as an alternative art venue (hosting group shows of underground artists), a film and theatre space (for example, Theatre/verv performed there, and the Star Wars short Volition premiered there as well).

Most of all it was a music venue. A cap to my birthday party was a show by Southern Culture on the Skids at The Map Room. I didn't go - I was busy bursting out of a cake, or the other way round - but my pals did. A good time was had by all.

We'll miss you, Map Room.

I moved to the USA five years ago, which means 2008 is a big milestone for me. It means that this year I can apply for citizenship. Hopefully one day I’ll cease being a subject of the Queen of England and become a free man (in a theoretical sense, at least).

Becoming American will be a huge challenge. I will have to take a citizenship test and learn more about American history. (To a Brit like me, the Civil War was fought between Roundheads and Cavaliers). I will have to take a written English test too. But toughest of all, I will have to try to learn to understand Will Ferrell.

The American fascination with this man is understandable. Like Adam Sandler or Jack Black, he’s fairly harmless. An everyman. He doesn’t give too much away – his eyes are soulless and his face fairly expressionless. Audiences can project their own fantasies onto his blank features.

Yet to become one with my future countrymen, I must try to find him funny.

So I’m taking a crash course in Will, urged on by students in my acting class who find him hilarious and crack up at the mere mention of one of his scenes (specifically a marriage counseling scene from Old School).

To some people, watching Will is like looking into the face of God and seeing Him smiling back and saying, "You are my most wondrous creation." I find this quite amazing. When I ask fans what they specifically like about the star, their standard answer is, "his flat shouting."

Bear in mind that I was born and raised in the UK, where Saturday Night Live is not the institution we know here. So I really know Will from strained and frankly depressing cameos in Zoolander, Wedding Crashers etc. To fully school me in the joys of Ferrell, a friend has lent me SNL’s Best Of DVD devoted to the man, which I dutifully watched last night.

The verdict: Ferrell delivers impersonations, some cruel (Harry Caray), some obscure, some funny (James Lipton singing the praises of Charles Nelson Reilly); he illustrates another friend of mine’s previously confusing reference to a model saying “I've got two poses to choose from - The Thinker and The Stinker.” He displays an implacable wit and a self-effacing willingness to show his hairy gut on national TV. And that’s about it.

The Will Ferrell onslaught continues: next up, I have Old School to watch. I’m still looking for that spark of genius that makes him worth tens of millions of dollars.

If I can "get" Will, then I'll be one step closer to integrating with American society. Perhaps many of the ills of the world can be traced to people who don't "get" him. But what do I know anyway? I like A Night at the Roxbury.

I'm enjoying the Charleston International Film Festival and I caught a charming flick yesterday called Osso Bucco. It stars Illeana Douglas and Mike Starr (who you'll instantly recognize as a heavy from countless gangster films - he's appeared in almost 100 motion pictures).



Osso Bucco is a character study-type comedy set in an Italian restaurant, with two gansgters forced to sit down to eat with two cops. If you miss it at your local movie theatre, be sure to check out the DVD.






Today I'll be back to catch more movies, including On the Road With Judas and Brad Jayne's short about the Jenkins Orphanage, Song of Pumpkin Brown. It will be accompanied by four other shorts so if you're in town, the festival's definitely worth a look.

This has been the busiest week of the year so far for me and I’m pooped. I started the week with three acting classes in a row, teaching at the Lowcountry Senior Center (where we’re planning a Shakespeare-themed showcase), South of Broadway in North Charleston and in Pine Forest, Summerville.

On Tuesday I directed a music video for Know When to Walk Away. It will be submitted to a competition created by Zach Braff to build a compilation film to accompany the Jay Clifford song.

The catchy tune will be featured in an upcoming episode of Gray’s Anatomy, so hopefully you’ll be hearing it everywhere soon.

By Wednesday I was working furiously on City Paper previews for Piccolo Spoleto. It gave me a chance to interview several cool creative people, including David Lee Nelson of Skinny White Comics and Chris Smith of the sketch comedy group Harvard Sailing Team. Check out their swanky new website!

I also took my eight-year-old son to baseball practice. It’s great to see him involved in the ultimate American pastime (no, i don’t mean video poker). Sam could be a great player if he ever stops lollygaggin’ on third base.

Thursday night I was a judge at Charleston County School of the Arts’ Spring Playfest. Talented high school-aged kids put on ten minute plays and I assessed their merit in terms of vocal ability, stage presence, believability etc.

Friday I appeared on Lowcountry Live to plug Undead on Arrival. I was the last guest on the local chat show, on after the dog. I think that would make a great title for my memoirs.

Today I’ll be signing copies of the novel at Waldenbooks, then racing to the Charleston International Film Festival to usher in audiences and introduce a couple of the films.

Strangely, despite the fact that I’m a film critic for the CP and I’ve covered the festival in depth, I haven’t been contacted by the organizers (I’ve had to chase them up) and I’ve been given no press pass or invite to the awards ceremony. They must know what a party crashing freeloader I am.

In between all that I’ve been auditioning for film roles, chauffeuring my family hither and yon, and trying to catch some zzzs. Of course, I couldn’t do it all without the support of my friends, colleagues and students. Thanks guys.

Signing at Waldenbooks

I’ll be at Waldenbooks, downtown Charleston tomorrow (Saturday May 3rd) signing copies of Undead on Arrival.

This is my first time at a Waldenbooks store, so I’d appreciate your support. Come and say hello if you can.

The signing will take place at 120 Market St. on May 3rd from 1 – 3 p..m.

For further information please call the store on (843) 853-1736 or visit the Nick Smith Books website.