As much as I appreciate festival press screenings, I hate going to them. The theaters reek of work and fatigue, and worst of all, a press screening's snobby austerity is no match for the anything-can-happen fever of a public premiere.

Take last night's opening of A Stadium Story: The Battle For New York's Last Frontier for example. Directors Benjamin Rosen and Jevon Roush arrived at the AMC 34th Street theater as sleep-deprived as they were ecstatic, the victims of a crashed...