While it may be true that for some fests the panel is the bait to get coverage, I can assure you, having worked closely with this fest over the last year, that that is most assuredly not the case here. The fest explicitly and specifically flew us out to do the panel, not to cover the fest.

It's a small regional fest, they don't get a lot of out-of-towners, they don't care about national coverage, and they do not fly journos out to "cover the fest". It's not Sundance. We were there to do a panel for the benefit, primarily, of local journalism students on film criticism, not to write extensive coverage about the fest, and any of the fest's co-directors would be happy, I'm sure, to back me up on that. In fact, co-director Michelle Emmanuel noted to me yesterday that of course the rest of us weren't writing about the fest while it was happening, because we understood that we were there to participate in and enjoy the fest -- the movies, the parties, the great people there. Everyone who came out, with the exception of Wells, fully participated in every aspect of this great little festival.

Everyone there to do the panels understood why they were there, except for Wells. And I fail to see how he could have possibly misunderstood, given that he received the same email from panels coordinator Melanie Addington the rest of us did, an excerpt of which you can read for yourself right here (with the permission of both Melanie and the fest):

Hello all!

Please send me a preferred mugshot (headshot) of yourself as well as your working bio or a resume for us to create a bio. This will go in our publication.

That's about as explicit as you can hope to get about the reason why Wells and the rest of the panelists were flown out to Oxford. They wanted his bio and headshot not because they hoped he'd write about their fest (positive or negative) but because he was there to do the panel, period. We were all there to do specifically what we were brought out to do: participate in the panel, judge the films and, in the case of James Rocchi and myself, also lead a couple of filmmaker Q&As post-screening.

And on Friday morning -- the morning of the film criticism panel -- Wells, fed up with wifi problems at the hotel, announced publicly on his blog that he was leaving the fest without doing the panel, because he was angry that the hotel wifi wasn't up to standard.

I don't take issue with Wells needing to have wifi. In fact, when he asked me if I was having wifi issues the night before at the opening night party (which he attended, after walking out on the opening film when told by a security guard hired by Overture that he could not bring his camera into the screening), I told him that yes, the signal was weak, I was able to use it for basic posting and email but not for uploading pics, and that I was using my EVDO card when I needed more wifi power. (And Wells, it should be noted, has an AT&T wireless card he could have used to upload images when he needed to.)

A normal person would have handled this situation by, perhaps, privately contacting a festival staff member and saying politely, "While I very much appreciate the free hotel room you folks have provided me, the wifi isn't working, so could I perhaps move to the other hotel for the rest of the weekend?"

Wells, on the other hand, chose instead to blow it up into this huge melodrama, publicly announcing his temper tantrum and plan to leave before even trying to resolve the issue with fest staff. Then, after they offered to move him to the other hotel and made that happen quickly to accomodate him, he STILL did not attend the panel he was there to be on. Then, he showed up for the free filmmmaker/journalist luncheon at the very lovely City Grocery restaurant, where he proceeded to sit with his laptop at the bar, not talking to anyone. He wrote that he didn't feel it was a big deal to ditch the panel, which would probably only have 50-60 attendees anyhow, and was basically a waste of his time. How incredibly condescending.

He wrote on his blog that he felt shunned, and that's probably fair -- everyone, from the other panelists to the fest staff to the filmmakers to fest attendees, was talking about Wells ditching the panel. This was not just a little side thing that it would have been nice for him to attend if he felt like it, it was the only reason he was brought to Oxford at all. And he ditched it because he was in a "mood pocket" and then proceeded to blame everyone but himself for the fallout.

Further, Wells' "coverage" of the fest included a couple pics of the town square, numerous posts whining about the wifi situation and then feeling shunned because he ditched the panel, and, for the finishing touch, a post in which he asserted that the food served at the luncheon (he had his served up in the bar, by the way, not down in the restaurant with the other guests) was more interesting than the films on the fest's slate. Aside from being incredibly insulting to the fest and filmmakers, it needs to be noted, for the record, that Wells did not attend a SINGLE film the entire weekend. Not one. And yet he had the audacity to slam the films there with that statement.

And it's too bad, because in addition to upcoming SXSW entries Crude Independence and Make Out with Violence, the fest had Sundance fare Sunshine Cleaning, Ballast and Prom Night in Mississippi, and some really solid entries including Neshoba, Make Out with Violence and Rattle Basket. All of which Wells missed, because the films on the slate weren't good enough for him.

The parties are the heart and soul of this fest, and aside from the opening night party, Wells was absent everything else the entire weekend. He didn't attend the Friday night parties. He checked out Saturday, ditching the awards ceremony and closing party (which is fine, because he probably would have just found more reasons to slam the fest had he attended). He seemed more interested the whole time in sight-seeing and doing what he wanted to do rather than participating in the fest in any way.

So no, Karina, I would not call Wells the fest's "de facto best friend." To the folks who run that fest and live in that town, his behavior went beyond big-city pomposity and rudeness. Oxford is a small town with, like most small towns, a complex unwritten code of acceptable social behaviors, of which Wells pretty much violated every single one. No one there wants him back, ever, and I expect that other small fests whose staffs have relationships with the Oxford folks will never invite him to their fests either. He was the talk of the fest, but certainly not in a good way, and the type of coverage he "gave" them was certainly not beneficial to the fest in any way, nor was it what they wanted.

Karina asked where the coverage from the rest of us was, so just to clarify: First, the explicit expectation from the fest staff to us was that they wanted us focused on hanging out and enjoying the fest, attending films, and showing up at the parties -- not holed up in our hotel rooms with our laptops. Their expectation was always that our coverage would be primarily a wrap of the fest when it was over. This isn't a market fest, it's not high pressure. It's the South, and Oxford operates on a more laid-back schedule with the vibe being heavy on the socializing and mingling with the residents and filmmakers. We were all doing exactly what the fest expected of us. Also, many of us were also jurors, and because of that could not write about the films we judged before the awards ceremony. Now that it's over, I have posted my wrap, and talked about the many great films the fest showed.

As an aside, I feel personally responsible for this blow-up, because when the folks who run the fest asked me shortly after last year's fest to recommend some panelists for this year's fest, I sent them a list of names I thought might be good to try to get, and Wells was one of them. I knew enough about Wells' behavior at other fests, with studios, and in general that I should have known better, and I deeply regret even including his name on the list of possibilities. That, I can assure you, will never happen again.

In retrospect, I should have strongly recommended the fest invite Karina Longworth, not only because she's wickedly smart and would have been a great addition to the female voices on the panel (along with myself and Lisa Rosman) but because Karina understands how paneling at fests works, and there's no way in hell she would have ever pulled anything like this. I feel terrible about the whole thing. The good people who run this festival (every last one of them volunteers) did not deserve what happened, the fest itself didn't deserve it, the filmmakers didn't deserve to have attention drawn away from their films. It was unfortunate, but it's over. Moving on.