When a film festival is crap! The Catoosa County Film Festival was a first time event, and was to be held last weekend at the Catoosa County Colonnade in Ringgold, GA. The idea was a film focused event with screenings, a dealer’s room and an eclectic line-up of guests including Sid Haig, Linnea Quigley, Larry Butler, and a full array of bit players, former zombies and wrestlers. But on the day the show began, something went wrong.
With a few hours warning, the event, now immortalized as #barncon2017 was moved to a barn, specifically, the Queen’s Chestnut Grove Farm. I’m sure it’s a very nice barn, as they hold weddings there and such, but by 3:30 on Saturday the whole thing was shut down, and everyone had to evacuate the premises.
The Facebook accounts have the usual guests weren’t paid, hotel rooms weren’t paid and so on.
So far, so good. Let’s face it, these crappy fan events are a weekly thing now, although the barn aspect adds a novel touch.
Sadly, according to a report by Kent Wagner, an actor seen in Walking Dead, Stranger Things, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and so on, things took a darker turn. UPDATE: The original post has been deleted and at Wagner’s request we’ve removed his report. How the jist is that at the con and at a post con party some of the guests, including wrestler Brian Lawler, became rowdy. Wagner confirms that the show was poorly organized. The festival’s FB page has been deleted, hence the broken links above.
A comment on Wagner’s post confirms some of his account, although it’s also been deleted. A mother did confirm that an 11-year-old given a bottle of “Sex Syrup” and posted a picture of it. She also noted that actor/wrestler Josh Turner had gone out of his way to help make her child feel comfortable. And things had a relatively happy ending:
My son ended up having a private barn party with many of his friends and he met new friends. He got to have a fire and roasted marshmallows with his Walking Dead friends. I don’t think he will ever forget this and I am okay with that because he had fun.. I do have a bottle of sex syrup if anyone wants it..
Yet another underfunded, poorly run event. The alleged rowdy behavior by some of the guests adds a really awful element to this story, however. And that it happened at a show sponsored event is a big red flag for event promoters: letting guests rampage is a liability disaster waiting to happen.
