I was sure the scariest thing about making The Green Chain would be climbing 50 feet up a tree, driving on an impossibly narrow logging road on the edge of a mountain just outside of Hope (and ain't that a shining metaphor for Canadian filmmaking), or maybe interrupting our shoot to scare off a giant black bear before it snacked on us—but nobody warned me about the dangers of opening weekend.

We open Friday (March 6) at the  Fifth Avenue Cinemas. I am saying these words so often this week that if you're playing The Green Chain drinking game you'll need a new liver by Thursday.

Since we've won some awards, scored a few decent reviews, and have an amazing cast (Babz Chula, Jillian Fargey, Brendan Fletcher, Tricia Helfer, Scott McNeil, Tahmoh Penikett, and August Schellenberg), theatres across the country have expressed an interest in the movie and have been expressing that interest since we played the festival circuit last year. How cool is that?

And we've got an amazing distributor (Kinosmith) that specializes in turning indie films like Up the Yangtze into buzzed about, money-making hits. All good, right?

So when I talked to Robin Smith, the boss at Kinosmith, and asked what the plan was after we opened in Vancouver, I was shell-shocked when he answered, "It depends what happens that first weekend."

And that's when I discovered the scariest part about making a movie.

All that interest from all those other theatres across Canada is contingent on how many people show up at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas between 1:30 p.m.  on March 6 and 9:10 p.m. on  March 8th.

If we do well over those three days, we get to stay at the Fifth Avenue for another week and, if we do well after that, then we get another week and so on. And we start to open in theatres across the country.

If we do really well over those three days, we get to open in a lot of theatres across the country.

If we do really, really well over those three days, U.S. and global distributors will want to see what the fuss is about because they actually watch "per screen box office numbers" and not just overall totals.

Who knew? So if every one of our Facebook friends shows up this weekend and brings a date, maybe we'll get to subtitle the movie in American and remove any stray "ehs" and "abouts".  

I'm not talking about what happens if we don't do well—because that way lies madness and makes me want to climb a higher tree or go best two out of three with the bear.

I was asked by our publicist if I'd do "question-and-answer" sessions after a few of the screenings on the weekend. After I found all this out, I said if there's any chance it'd sell even a few tickets I'd do Q&As after every screening this weekend.

So that's the plan.

I'm also cool to share my popcorn.  

And at our 7:10 show on Friday night, it looks like half the cast is joining me.

I’ll also talk about the movie at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and environmental studies classes—join our Facebook Group or our MySpace site to set something up.

Not only do big U.S. movies have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on advertising, they generally have a year in advance to decide how to spend it. It seems like comic geeks worldwide—and that would include me—have known that Watchmen was opening this weekend since about this time last year.

I've known when The Green Chain would open in Vancouver for less time that it took me to read the original 12 Watchmen comics.  

And we only knew our dates more than a few days in advance because the patron saint of the Vancouver movie scene, Leonard Schein, gave us the invaluable gift of setting an opening date two weeks in advance. And while that’s no notice by the standards of a big U.S. release, it’s not an easy thing for an indie theatre owner to commit to, so it’s incredibly rare for a small film like ours to get more than a week’s advance notice about an opening date.

That’s not enough time to get stories in magazines, or arrange for school tours, but at least it's enough time to print the info on the posters saying "opening March 6th at the Fifth Avenue".

There's a group that gets how all this works that was started back in 2003 known as the  First Weekend Club.  They're the unsung heroes of   the Canadian film scene and are responsible for helping to make sure there is a Canadian movie scene.

Their motto: “See it first. Make it last.”

This weekend they're supporting three movies. For our movie they've put together a green panel for our 1:30 show on Saturday featuring a bunch of great speakers, including reps from Greenpeace and The David Suzuki Foundation doing a post show talkback about all things enviro.

We’ve got another green talk after our Sunday 1:30 show when Ken Wu from the Western Canada   Wilderness Committee will talk about saving our ancient forests.  

The First Weekenders are also supporting One Week, starring B.C.'s own Joshua Jackson and Bruce McDonald's new horror flick, Pontypool.  

I hope you'll catch at least one of these movies this weekend. Okay, I really hope you’ll catch ours and it’d be nice if you caught one of the other ones too”¦because I can pretty much guarantee that you'll still be able to check out Watchmen next weekend—no matter how much Alan Moore hates it.

And while you’re on-line, join the First Weekend Club. And don't just join it... attend those first weekends.

See you at the Fifth Avenue.