Air Guitar Takes Edinburgh by Storm

Last week, at the Edinburgh Film Festival, I joined Alexandra Lipsitz, director of Air Guitar Nation, and Cedric Devitt, one of the founders of US Air Guitar, to screen the film. It was the first time I had seen it with a non-American audience and I was a bit worried, since it is a very American film at heart. At the end of the film, they clapped politely, and I was concerned it might not have translated. But once the Q&A began, it was obviously they loved it completely. It turns out the Scots are simply polite moviegoers.

It was later though, at the bar during the after-party that their true feelings came out.

“Re-speeeeeect! NO! RE-speeeeeeeeeeect!” shouted a gigantic lumbering inebriated Scotsman with a brogue as thick as haggis, nearly hugging me to death. He apparently loved the film immensely. Others told me it was literally the funniest movie they had ever seen. (Could this be true? Did Over the Top never make it to Scotland?) Suffice to say, the film was a big hit.



We had two Aireoke parties. Both were incredibly amazing, sweaty affairs.


The Scots proved they could rock as hard (or harder) than the rest, and Cedric (a/k/a Aer Lingus) got a ride on the shoulders of another gargantuan local.




For a short respite from the madness of air guitar, Alexandra, Cedric & his girlfriend Minji (my personal air guitar costume designer, btw) and I took a relaxing journey up to the utterly gorgeous Isle of Skye in the Scottish Highlands.


About an hour into the drive we got a flat tire.



“Front left tire?” asked the Norman-Bates-from-Psycho-meets-Jack-Torrence-from-The-Shining B&B proprietor, under the watchful gaze of taxidermic birds of prey.

“Yep,” said Cedric, who had been driving at the time of the puncture.

“Americans,” he said, shaking his head. “Always the front left.”

(Recall that in the UK, they drive on the opposite side of the road).

While changing the tire, we were attacked by a swarm—literally, a SWARM!—of blood-sucking midges: tiny white bugs that nibble on one’s flesh.

The next day we took a hike through a bog, getting lost and covered in mud. We then went fishing for four hours and caught some air salmon.



It was a comedy of errors really, but we had a good time.

(note: some of this bloggage is repeated from my guest blog this week on Powells.com)