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We have just returned from the Charlotte Film Festival. It was a great time. We were really impressed by the film selection there. It’s always a wonderful experience to spend time with other filmmakers. It gets the creative juices flowing. Sprawling From Grace was very well received. Our Q& A’s were really lively. We heard over and over that “Everyone in America should see this film.”

The irony was that as our film played, Charlotte was in the middle of a serious gas shortage. Numbers were down at the festival because people couldn’t get there. Gas stations all over the area were shut down. There was no gas to be had anywhere. People could not get to work, let alone leisure activities.

The Charlotte Observer reported that violence was erupting:

“Lines, traffic backups and scuffles at the pumps dominated in Charlotte on Thursday and Friday, with people in some cases parking at gas stations overnight, waiting near the pumps with their gas gauges on empty.”

Around 8:30 Friday morning, a woman in line at a Citgo station in Charlotte’s Plaza Midwood neighborhood told others in line she was saving a place for her father, who was on his way with gas cans. The station was selling only premium gas and had a 45-minute wait.

Several customers got out of their cars and began cursing at the woman, who went nose to nose with one man before someone called 911 amid a chorus of car horns. In pouring rain, one man threatened to “hurt” the driver of a Ford F150 who was confused by the line and got to the pump before him. Two police officers arrived and calmed everyone down.

At a Texaco at Independence Boulevard and Sharon Amity Road Friday morning, motorists waiting in line for up to an hour honked horns and yelled at each other. One woman trying to back out of the swarm of cars hit one.

“It’s a mess, man,” said LeRoy Talbert of Charlotte, who stepped out of his car for a cigarette break while his girlfriend stayed in line with the car. “This is getting crazy.”

The scene was similar in north Charlotte. Sara Ratclif waited an hour in the rain at a Texaco at North Tryon Street and Bingham Drive to fill her Honda Civic, which she needs to get to her job waiting tables at a SouthPark restaurant.

“If I don’t have gas, I can’t get to work,” she said, “and if I can’t get to work, I don’t have money.”
It is no wonder that the people of Charlotte were moved by our message. They are experiencing the pain of living without the ability to move around unencumbered. They know it is real.