Piano notes ring out and fill the empty main room of the Outerland nightclub. Rather than enjoying the sunny Monday afternoon, the five-member cast of Ruthless!, an Off-Broadway musical that debuted here Thursday evening, is in full costume.

The gnarled grapevines that snake along two dozen rolling acres on Stoney Hill Road stand as survivors, straight rows that have withstood the cold, the creatures who would rob their fruit, and, perhaps most of all, the critics.

Amid the stacks of DVDs and under the piles of papers, press photos and programs, the sixth annual Martha's Vineyard Independent Film Festival is coming together.

Slowly.

"This is the crunch time, for sure," festival founder and director Thomas Bena says one afternoon last week from the festival headquarters in North Tisbury. "We still have a lot to do."

He is the Vineyard's own piano man and his story has been told dozens of times, but even in the retelling it is remarkable and ordinary and gifted and funny - all words that describe David Crohan himself. Above all else he is funny, with a relaxed, deadpan humor that spills out unexpectedly and uproariously, some of it quite unprintable.

And suddenly you are laughing along with him and rocking back in your chair and laughing some more.

When Paul Garcia looks back at that hectic summer 31 years ago, he mostly remembers a lot of standing around, talking baseball with the lead actor and waiting to be called to the set. For Lynn Murphy, that summer meant time in the Valerie N. towing boats, barges and shark cages across Island waters. And for Hershel West it was the summer his dog Chipper won him a speaking role in one of the biggest films of all time.

Silver Screen: Theatres Seeing a Mere Trickle of Moviegoers

By MAX HART

At the Edgartown Cinemas on a recent evening, the most popular movie in America plays to an almost empty theatre. About a dozen patrons enjoy a laugh as Ben Stiller and Robert DeNiro engage in madcap hijinx in Meet the Fockers.

Over at the Island Theatre on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs, Brad Pitt and George Clooney are scheming their way to riches in Ocean's Twelve, the fifth highest earner at the box office. But they, too, look down from the screen to a mostly empty room.