Serendipity

Each evening of the 16th Annual Sedona International Film Festival there was a festive gathering of some kind–always designed for food and fun–sponsored by a local business.  On the evening of the first screening of Fate Scores, I somehow found myself spending time at a most surreal table at the afterparty, seated with veteran actor James Karen and his equally-talented actor-producer wife, Alba Francesca.  James was attending the festival with the producers of the documentary in which he is featured, When the World Breaks.

As we sat at our table, nibbling on tortillas, smoked salmon, olives, hummus, and shrimp ceviche, James revealed that he and Alba had been at a film session immediately preceding the party–the session that included Fate Scores!  Moreover, of the three films in that session (two shorts and a feature), they both felt Fate Scores to be delightful and the best of the three.  (Really!  I’m not making this up!)  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, especially considering I had a bit of a challenge finding even a semblance of a relationship between the three films.  (Well, Fate Scores and the feature film each have one ice cream cone in them, so maybe that’s one of the connections.)  Even more amazing was the discovery that they are wonderfully lovely and down-to-earth people.  Alba is funny, sweet, full of life and (apparently) an excellent quilter.  James is warm, jocular, generous and an opera aficionado–nothing at all like Usher (whom I followed through the Phoenix airport to my gate), markedly aloof, with a manservant-person in tow and a small gaggle of girls trailing behind.  He even sang a small excerpt of Carmen from across the table (James Karen, not Usher) and revealed that had he known early in his career what he knows now about opera, he would have pursued opera performance instead of acting.  We chatted about films, the mafia, Blue Bell ice cream (the best ice cream in the country!) and many other topics that evening.  Surely it was happy coincidence that brought us together and made for a marvelous memory.