Best Dialogue at a Film Opening

Overheard at Thursday's Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film festival kickoff party in a crowded tent beside St. Anthony Main's Aster Café.
"We're hoping that over the next couple of years we're going to take this festival to a level it's never been at before. Hopefully if not Toronto [North America's largest] we want to make it the next best thing. We're hopeful we're going to have an organization that will match some of the better festivals in the country." -- Sen. Dick Cohen. DFL-St. Paul, a board member of the Fest's parent organization, the Film Society of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
"I showed my film at the Telluride Film Festival, the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam and the Palm Springs Film Festival. I've been treated so well here. I loved 'Fargo,' but I'm not meeting those people. That must be the twin city, right?" – Los Angeles filmmaker Shannah Laumeister, director of the documentary "Bert Stern, Original Madman," about the photographer who shot Elizabeth Taylor, Twiggy and Marilyn Monroe. Laumeister will host a q & a at Saturday's 7 p.m. screening.
"I'm excited that this festival has a lot of films I haven't seen yet and I've been to a lot of festivals this year and last year. I'm going to be talking about it with other filmmakers when I get back to New York. I want to be a liaison to other filmmakers who ought to bring their work here. I made a romantic drama called 'Polliwogs' here in October, a thoroughly Minnesota movie that I hope of show here for a Minnesota audience next year. Minnesotans have a sense of nationalism for the state that's not like anything you see outside of Texas." – First-time fest visitor and Hibbing native Karl Jacob.
Also on hand: Lucinda Winter, executive director of the Minnesota Film and TV Board, filmmaker Shelli Ainsworth, Minneapolis based entertainment attorney Dan Satorius, and Walker Art Center Film Curator Sheryl Mousley.