Day 2: Saturday, March 8

Though the accommodations at Casa de Greg were hospitable, there was no denying one fact: My Fat Brother Jeff was staying in a nice hotel in the heart of the SXSW district. So last night I had Kim drive me to Greg’s so I could get my stuff, then drop me off at the Marriott Residence Inn, where I slept on the pull-out bed in Jeff’s room. I’m pretty sure this was the first time Jeff and I had shared a bedroom in at least 20 years. Passersby would have heard a symphony of snoring.

Today’s activities commenced with me taking a cab down to the Alamo Lamar for a documentary called “Secrecy,” about the CIA’s obsession with keeping things on the D.L. There are two points of view on this issue. On the one hand, some things need to be kept secret as a matter of national security. On the other hand, the public must be informed in order for democracy to work, and sometimes “national security” is just code for “we don’t want you to know about this because it’s illegal and/or we really screwed it up.”

I like that the film doesn’t take a strident tone one way or the other, and people on both sides — former CIA executives, Washington Post journalists, etc. — make good points. I think we can all agree that on certain matters, secrecy is a must. For example, if Congress were planning a surprise party for the president.

Eugene was at the screening, as was Laremy, my Film.com overlord. Afterward we three attempted to get a cab back to downtown but were intercepted by a stylish-looking older woman asking us if we needed a ride there. You’re not supposed to get into cars with strangers, I know, but there were three of us, and she was old. Plus, she was going the same place we were, which I believe is the exception to the “don’t get into cars with strangers” rule. (Pay attention, kids!)

She was obviously well-monied, well-educated, and well-coiffed, with one of those short haircuts that upscale ladies of a certain age often get. She pointed out important Austin landmarks are we drove (”That’s where the hippies live”), and when Laremy noticed the Obama bumper sticker sitting on her dashboard, politics became the subject of conversation. She loves Obama! She hasn’t actively campaigned for a candidate since George McGovern in 1972, she said, and some of her Hillary-supporting lady friends currently aren’t speaking to her. I say if you have any Hillary-supporting friends who aren’t speaking to you, count yourself lucky.

(In the interest of equal time, I should also point out that John McCain is a creepy old warmonger.)

Our new best friend dropped us off downtown and we all went separate ways. I was headed to the Alamo Ritz, the new downtown location of the legendary movie house. Apparently the original location, a few blocks east, lost its lease last year and this old theater/concert venue became the Alamo’s snazzy new home.

And whom should I see in line but Obama Lady again! She must have followed me over after parking her car. She waved to me and said to save the seat next to me when I got inside. I didn’t like where this was going. When we got inside, she sat by me, and she started discussing her movie schedule for the rest of the day. Evidently we were destined to be seatmates forevermore.

As she talked and I didn’t listen, something dawned on me. There was an incident last year where I was watching a documentary about the appalling conditions in Darfur, and a woman sitting near me kept vocalizing her horror with audible gasps and tut-tuts, and when the frustrated Marine in the film said all he could do was write reports about what he was witnessing, this lady said, aloud, “To who?!” It wasn’t enough that she should be appalled about Darfur; she wanted to make sure everyone knew how appalled she was. Well, I’m 95 percent sure Obama Lady is that woman.

When I realized this, I casually asked if she’d seen SXSW films last year, and if she’d seen “The Devil Came on Horseback” specifically, and she said she had. I wanted to follow that up with, “Did you constantly express your horror with vocal reactions in order to let everyone around you know how socially conscious you were?,” but I thought that might be pushing it.

The movie we were seeing now was called “Wellness,” a documentary-style sad comedy about a hapless middle-aged guy who has poured all his money into a multi-level marketing program. Like 99 percent of all people who get involved with MLMs, he’s getting a sucker’s deal, and the film follows his fruitless attempts to recruit other investors even as he starts to see the handwriting on the wall.

The director introduced the film by saying it wasn’t produced the normal way, that the story grew “organically,” i.e., there was no script when they started. As he described the intentionally haphazard filmmaking process, Obama Lady said what I was thinking, which was, “This doesn’t sound like a very good movie.” She wound up leaving it halfway through, perhaps to do some canvassing.

While I admire the natural, realistic central performance, I had trouble enjoying the film because it’s just so bleak. I love awkward, uncomfortable comedy; this just isn’t funny very often, and the poor fellow never catches a break.

I had only a few minutes turnaround before the next movie, also at the Alamo, a moody dramedy called “The Lost Coast.” I believe it qualifies as mumblecore: listless twentysomethings spend Halloween night wandering around San Francisco and being angsty. In particular, there are two friends, a gay guy and a straight guy, and the straight guy is engaged to be married but is grappling with the fact that back in high school he and the gay guy (who was “straight” then, too) engaged in some shenanigans, if you know what I mean. (I mean gay sex.) Apparently this is unacceptable. I mean, it would be one thing if they’d been in a college fraternity together, as the straight guys there fool around with each other all the time. But not high school, dude. That’s not cool.

During this film I was seated next to two quintessential fat movie geek Kevin Smith-looking types. They shared a giant plate of nachos and saw nothing wrong with speaking to one another during the film. Usually that annoys me, but I didn’t mind too much with these guys because the things they were saying were really insightful. Like when a character in the movie dressed as a Frenchman for Halloween and carried around a baguette as a prop, the guy right next to me laughed and said, “He’s got a baguette!” That sort of remark quelled my anger, because I was getting more out of the film than I would have on my own. It was like watching a DVD with a director’s commentary, only instead of the director it was two chubby social retards who COULDN’T SHUT THEIR FAT STUPID MOUTHS. I gave them a few warning glares and finally resorted to saying, “Could you not talk, please?,” and then they actually shut up for about 45 minutes. I don’t know what the lesson of that story is, except maybe that you should get the nachos at the Alamo because they’re awesome.

It was dinnertime now, and I’d been invited by Laremy from Film.com to join him, a Film.com corporate boss, and our Austin correspondent C. Robert Cargill for dinner somewhere. Cargill drove us up to a place called Ruby’s, reputed to have some of the best barbecue in town. We ordered giant piles of meat and feasted like carnivores while having animated (and, if I may say, intellectually stimulating) conversations about movies. It was interesting to meet Cargill in particular, simply because he was a co-worker I’d never actually met before. And it was nice to meet Mike the corporate guy, too, in particular because he paid.

Cargill got me back to the Alamo Ritz in time to hop in line with my regular posse for a world premiere called “Explicit Ills.” We were within 10 spots of the front of the line, so we had a great vantage point when no fewer than 120 people associated with the film entered ahead of us and almost filled the theater. I’m not exaggerating. The theater seats 165, and I’m certain no more than 35 actual festival-goers got in.

We noticed that at “21″ last night, a few rows were reserved for people associated with the film, only instead of taping or roping them off or putting up signs, they just had a squad of the Paramount’s austere old-lady theater staff — all of whom look like former Texas Gov. Ann Richards — stand guard and not let people sit there. Seems like rope or tape or signs would have been easier, but who am I to criticize local custom? Anyway, maybe the “Explicit Ills” people solved that problem by just reserving the entire theater. Our group found seats only in the very front row, and I had to leave after a half hour because I was getting a headache.

[Read more about the large "Explicit Ills" entourage here.]

I rejoined the gang for the midnight movie, back at the Alamo Ritz again but this time not quite as overly populated with film folk. It was a horror flick, “Shuttle,” in which an airport shuttle van taking people downtown late at night turns into a NIGHTMARE RIDE FROM HELL!!!! While I was willing to give that weak-sounding premise a fair shake, the film proved to be laughably stupid. You accept that the characters in movies like this will occasionally make poor choices that prevent them from escaping, but these people were complete idiots. There would be a thousand possible ways they could escape or at least turn the tables, and many of these ways had very strong chances of success, and they would choose to throw a bag of ice at the guy’s head. It reminded me of that joke in the first “Scary Movie” where the victim passes up a gun and knife and chooses to fight with a banana.

But oh well! You can’t win ‘em all. Something I’ve said about SXSW all along is that it doesn’t particularly matter whether the films are any good, because the experience is a blast either way. I drank a milkshake during the movie and managed to limit myself to one “There Will Be Blood” reference, so it was a good night.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 8:05 pm and is filed under SXSW Film Festival. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.