Answer This!

Christopher Farah was pretty concerned with how his movie, Answer This!, was going to do in its Cleveland premiere at the Cedar Lee Theatre last Friday.

"I have no problem saying that I am absolutely scared sh-tless," he told us a day before the screening. "I hope I make it out of there alive."

Farah, who wrote and directed the movie, isn't concerned because of the movie's content. He is concerned because of its sole setting — the dreaded University of Michigan.

"There really is a kind of weirdly personal rivalry between Michigan and Ohio," says Farah, who has also directed several shorts for the comedy website Funny or Die

The movie combines the world of pub trivia — a world with eccentric, outsized characters fit for a Christopher Guest mockumentary like Best in Show — with the world of academia. It's a combination that Farah thinks is perfect.

"The trivia world is obsessed with little facts," Farah says. "And sometimes, the academic world is, too. I wanted to explore that."

The movie is about something else, though. It's about a grad student who loses sight of why he hasn't moved on. He focuses too much on the big picture while losing sight of the small things — the trivial things.

Farah and his brother Michael, who is one of the movie's producers, are natives of Ann Arbor, Mich. Chris earned a bachelor's and master's degree from the University of Michigan. They get the OSU-Michigan rivalry.

"To me, [the Cleveland screenings] are the ultimate test," Farah says. "When you get an OSU fan to say, 'I really like a movie made about Michigan,' you know you've done something right."

Answer This! is showing at Cleveland Heights' Cedar Lee Theatre until Thursday, Nov. 10.

To test your own useless knowledge, check out trivia nights at these local bars: Becky's Bar on Thursdays, The Fairmount in Cleveland Heights on Mondays and the Parma Tavern on Wednesdays.