Slightly off topic but I have a feeling new folks will be joining us, due to Louise's message on her LJ.
New folks...welcome. I will try to say hello individually but I have one of those pesky things called a "real" job and I need to spend serious time at it this week. It's the end of the month and I have a number of projects with June 30 deadlines. I am going to try to stay off the board during the day...we'll see, that hasn't happened in months. But anyway..
I just wanted to give a little introduction, who we are and tell you why we are named Chez Tremblay, which I know is not intuitively obvious.
Way back when (like December), people started going to see BBM in the movie theater and as we all know, we have all had varying reactions to the movie--usually a profound, unsettling disquietude that doesn't go away. In an effort to assauge and understand these feelings, I sought out an online community and ended up at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). It was a good discussion but as everyone knows, IMDb is crawling with trolls.
In late January, one of the regulars (Brandon) got the idea to start posting on the Pierre Tremblay board. Pierre was the 1st Assistant Director of the movie. Everyone at IMDb gets a board, but when Brandon discovered it, Pierre had 0 posts. It quickly became "home" for a group of us (I would guess about 200 folks).
We tracked Pierre down (I was the one who found his email address) to let him know what was going on. He actually started posting (a little bit) and his wife, Nicole, became a bit of a regular. One of the coolest things was that we came up with 10 questions about making the movie, and Pierre answered them all. Here's a great tidbit: the tobaggoning scene--that's was Pierre's idea. The original screenplay had Ennis and Alma spinning circles in their truck in a parking lot. But the weather wasn't cold enough for an icy parking lot and the scene wasn't working. Pierre suggested they go up to the mountains and go sledding instead. And I am sure that everyone has heard the story the Michelle twisted her knee, Heath went with her to the hospital, and this is when they started falling in love. Pierre confirmed this little tidbit of gossip to be true. [The ten questions are actually archived on this board somewhere if anyone wants to read them.]
We managed to keep it semi-private for about 6 weeks. At our peak, we had 20,000+ messages.
Then the trolls invaded.
They didn't just post hateful messages, they figured out a way to auto-delete. They started ripping through the board. We lost 10,000 messages in 6 days. By this time, we had truly become a community of people. A group had gotten together from the board and gone to the Aero screening. Another group was planning a brunch in NYC. The thought that these trolls could destroy our community...it was beyond overwhelming. We needed to find a new home.
And that is how we ended up here at Bettermost, bringing our moniker (Chez Tremblay, to honor Pierre's French-Canadian heritage) and our little band of die hard Brokies (also known as Tremblayans, but I am seeing that less and less).
I think, because of what we went through, we are a very friendly and welcoming group. Philip, who runs Bettermost, is also a terrific guy and has provided us with a happy and safe haven. Chez Tremblay...we try to stay on BBM topics but yeah, we get sidetracked. LOL.
I would encourage newcomers to spend some time exploring the board, not just the Ennis and Ellery thread, and not just Chez Tremblay (although I will admit, I don't venture too far--Anything Goes is fun, though). Welcome to ouir community and keep in mind the thing that brought us all together--a story and a movie that has grabbed us and just won't let us go...for whatever reason.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled Ennis and Ellery discussion!
Leslie
MaineWriter (LazyLFarm on LiveJournal)
PS, Feel free to PM me if you have questions, need more info, whatever...
