Beer Wars movie behind the scenes part one

UCLA's Royce Hall was the site of Beer Wars Movie Live Event April 16

Here’s a back of the house review of events leading up to last week’s Beer Wars movie and live event.

Five minutes before the end of the movie we left the audience to take our places on stage.  Six of us were still digesting the Beer Wars movie which we had just seen for the first time.  The live audience of 800 were laughing at scenes unseen to us.  We settled in our carefully positioned seats.  After a full day of set up and fine tuning the lighting and sound were perfectly set.

I was seated next to Ben Stein and as I was being miked up, he asked me, “What did you think of the film?”  I paused, my throat quite dry from up to that point a day of beer abstinence and said quite truthfully, “Uhhh.  I think the beer was quite sobering.  I need a beer!”  “That’s good, I like that,” he chuckled and smiled, perhaps the only time I saw him loosen up.  Before and after he was focused on being Ben Stein the moderator of our conversation. 

In Boulder, Colorado I arose at 4:30 a.m, arriving at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles just before noon.   We were going live to 440 theatres across America at 5 p.m. Pacific Time.  Maureen Ogle, historian from Iowa, Todd Alstrom, Beer Advocate from Boston, Greg Koch, Stone Brewery, Escondido, Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head, Delaware, Rhonda Kallman, New Century Brewing Co., Boston and Ben Stein all rendezvoused in the “green room.”  There was plenty of time to get to know each other and confirm to each other that none of us except Ben had seen the film.

Photo left: Left to right, Koch, Alstrom, Ogle, Calagione, Kallman and Papazian.  BeerWars event panelists.  Photo by Anat Baron.

It took each of us at least 30 minutes in the makeup room in order to get prepped.  The distinction was clearly made that since this was high definition a different standard of makeup was required.  A one millimeter stray hair on my nose might translate to 3 inches on the screen.   I specifically asked my makeup person to spare the viewers the horror of the nose hair from hell.

Interestingly my makeup artist noted she’d done makeup for August Busch IV for those Budweiser Select commercials we all missed while going to the rest room during the past NFL football season.

Royce Hall on the UCLA campus is impressivel.  An elegant venue and host to decades of world famous performers, from Leonard Bernstein to Arlo Guthrie and many others both inside and outside the box.  Our evening a group of brewers and beer enthusiasts were going on stage to tell the world a beer story.

Next:  Green sneakers, how many beers a day and command central.  Beer Wars movie behind the scenes part two.