Will Goss posted these photos on Facebook, and I have stolen them to show to you. They are from my last day at SXSW, the one where we got stuck a few miles from downtown and had to wait for a bus and I sat in a shopping cart.
Here’s one with Eugene and Weinberg. Why Eugene is pushing the cart, I don’t know. I don’t remember this part specifically. I must have been very engaged in my reading.
Day 8: Friday, March 14
We figured that a good way to spend our last day at the festival would be to go watch “Doomsday” at a multiplex somewhere. It opened in wide release today without having been screened for critics, and it had to do with a deadly virus and a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and what the heck, why not? It’s not like we were already at a film festival or anything.
I suggested last night that we catch today’s noon showing, as this would enable me to be back downtown in time for a 3:30 SXSW film I wanted to see. But Weinberg insisted noon would be far too early, considering we were about to stay up too late watching movies, so we planned on the 2:30 showing instead. Indeed, noon came quite early after our 4 a.m. bedtime. Honestly, even 2:30 was pushing it. Also honestly, why were we in such a hurry to see “Doomsday”? We make no sense.
Weinberg, Eugene, Goss, and I took a cab to a multiplex a few miles south of downtown. We did indeed watch “Doomsday.” This happened without incident.
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Day 7: Thursday, March 13
I made up for seeing only one full movie (and parts of two others) yesterday by seeing six of ‘em today. Yes, SIX! And three of them had to do with Iraq! Wheeeee!
I began my day with a heaping helping of nerdery, thanks to “Second Skin,” the aforementioned documentary about World of Warcraft players. It is very interesting to me that there are 50 million WOW players, and I don’t know a single one of them. Or at least if I do, they have kept their WOW involvement secret from me. The film does a nice job of showing us the lives of several players without making fun of them or treating them like jokes. Of course, I still think they’re all losers worthy of ridicule, but I think that about a lot of people. You can’t blame the movie for that.
After “Second Skin” is when my Iraq marathon began. Initially my plan was to see one film and be done with it, in and out, easy-peasy. But I realized after the first one that I should probably stick around for the second one, and then that led to the third one, and even though my resources were drained and I really wanted to do something else, I was stuck and had no choice but wait until it was all over, no matter how lengthy or costly it became. When it was all over, I questioned whether I should have ever started in the first place. I’m sure you know the feeling.
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Day 6: Wednesday, March 12
Today was unusual, and I have very little to report. Finding myself grotesquely behind in my writing assignments, I had no choice but to forsake most of the films I’d planned to see today and devote myself fully to writing. It may sound odd to hear a writer complain that he has been forced to write, but the truth is that most writers spend about 90 percent of their time looking for excuses not to. That is probably why so many of them are driven to drink.
As it happens, today was going to be a light day anyway, as most of the films on the schedule either didn’t interest me or were movies I’d already seen. I did catch “At the Death House Door,” an impressively well made documentary about a man who was the chaplain at a Texas penitentiary for many years and as such ministered to 95 inmates on their final days before being executed. It invokes important questions not about the rightness or wrongness of capital punishment, but about the haphazard way it is administered in the United States.
This screening was at the Convention Center, and as I walked across the main pavilion afterward I saw people gathered around the Dell Lounge, a glass-encased room built by the people at Dell Computers. I do not know what the general purpose of the Dell Lounge is; one assumes it was built cheaply and flimsily, and that we won’t be able to get tech support when it collapses. But at this particular moment, everyone was gawking at the event occurring within the Lounge, which turned out to be Billy Bob Thornton being interviewed. So you can add that to your list of celebrity sightings.
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[Sorry about the tardiness. It was a busy week!]
Day 5: Tuesday, March 11
Jeff and I had to check out of his hotel this morning, and I’d already made arrangements to head back to Casa de Greg for the duration of my stay. There would prove to be complications in this, but as they are not the kind of complications that would amuse you, I omit them.
I left my bag with the front desk and walked across the street to the Convention Center, where I wrote for a while and then caught a screening of a documentary called “Frontrunners.” It’s a very amusing story about the student body election at Stuyvesant, the most competitive public high school in New York (it’s for gifted students), where some of the kids take their politics VERY seriously. Sometimes these docs have universal themes that can be extrapolated; this one is pretty much only about these kids at this school, but that’s fine. We got a kick out of it anyway.
“We” consisted of me, Eugene, and Melanie, and while Eugene then wandered off to meet some alleged other friends who were allegedly in town for the alleged SXSW Music Festival, Melanie and I went to the Alamo Ritz to meet Kim for another movie. (We eschew the kids and their rock ‘n’ roll.) This movie was called “Yeast,” and I was very eager to see it for the simple fact that it was written and directed by the wife of the guy who made one of my least favorite movies from last year, “Frownland.” I was genuinely eager to see what her style would be.
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Day 4: Monday, March 10
Today was chilly and rainy — wholly unacceptable weather for Austin. Something called Zappos.com was promoting itself by handing out free plastic rain ponchos, so we saw a lot of people walking around in them all day, their hoods up and their bodies covered with a white plastic sheet. These ponchos have the unfortunate (and presumably unintentional) effect of making the wearer look like a Klansman. Evidently Zappos.com did not think its cunning plan all the way through.
My first movie of the day, at 11 a.m., was at the Paramount Theatre, a large venue anyway and one that’s particularly difficult to fill when you’re showing a documentary at 11 a.m. on a rainy Monday. A publicist for the film I was seeing was out on the sidewalk handing out fliers, inviting one and all to attend. It was downright evangelical!
The movie was “Crawford,” about the tiny Texas town that became famous when George W. Bush chose it at his adopted hometown right before he ran for president in 2000 — just in time to show voters how folksy and rugged and ranchy the Connecticut-bred, Yale-educated man-of-the-people is. It’s an interesting look at how intense scrutiny — every time Bush is in Crawford, it’s on TV — can affect a small, rural town.
Eugene and I were at that film, and we joined Goss and Melanie at the Alamo Ritz next for “‘Bama Girl,” a documentary about a black girl running for homecoming queen at the University of Alabama. She wouldn’t be the first black queen in the school’s history (she’d be the fifth), but she would be the first one to be elected without being endorsed by “the Machine,” a secret cabal of fraternity and sorority higher-ups who control all the school’s elections.
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Day 3: Sunday, March 9
It is cruel irony that Daylight Saving Time should begin — and that we should thus lose an hour of sleep one night — during a film festival that prides itself on keeping people out late. I got back to the hotel room a little after 2 a.m., which was now 3 a.m., and found it quite difficult to arise at 9 this morning. I got up at 10, made an executive decision to blow off the 11 a.m. movie, and took my time getting ready, stumbling around, bumping into things, and doing some writing (some of my best, no doubt).
It is funny to walk around Austin at almost noon on a Sunday and see people shuffling and yawning like it’s 6 a.m. on a Monday.
My first screening, at 1:30 p.m., was “Up With Me,” a verite-style drama about a kid from Spanish Harlem who gets a scholarship to a fancy prep school and is torn between his old world and his new one. Sounds awfully generic, but the naturalistic acting and photography give it an engaging sense of realism. It also practically reeks with the aroma of Spanish Harlem, and you can well imagine how great that is.
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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.
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Day 1: Friday, March 7
Yee-haw, dude! I am once again in Austin, capital city of Texas and hipster capital of the South, for the South By Southwest Film Festival. This is only my third time at SXSW, but it’s already one of my favorite annual events: fun movies, fun friends, and fun parties. And I don’t care what you’ve heard on the street, I like fun things.
I arrived last night without incident, but some of my friends weren’t so lucky. Scott Weinberg, Eugene Novikov, and Jason Whyte (all acquaintances from eFilmCritic.com and elsewhere) had connecting flights in Dallas that were canceled due to weather. Who knew they had weather in Dallas? Weinberg and Eugene rented a car to drive from there to Austin, while Jason hitched a ride with someone, and all of their luggage remained behind (as did Eugene’s driver’s license, which he left on the counter at the rental agency).
The only incident of note in my travels was when I landed in Austin and saw the usual line of hired drivers holding cards bearing the names of the passengers they were collecting, and one of the cards said “Brown Mary.” Not Mary Brown; not even Brown comma Mary; just Brown Mary. Naturally, my first thought was, “Big wheel keep on turnin’; Brown Mary keep on burnin’.” Whoever or whatever you are, Brown Mary, I salute you.
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My pal Scott Weinberg wrote something for Cinematical the other day where he was talking about Chris Sivertson, the director of the recent Lindsay Lohan fiasco “I Know Who Killed Me.” In the course of this, he mentioned that Sivertson’s last film, “The Lost,” premiered at South By Southwest last year, and I realized: I totally saw that movie! And I totally hated it!
I had glanced at Sivertson’s IMDB page while writing my review of “I Know Who Killed Me,” but “The Lost” is a rather nondescript title, and it didn’t register that I had seen it. It wasn’t until Scott mentioned the SXSW connection that my brain caught up.
And then I realized that I once corresponded with Sivertson! And he was kind of cool!
In my 2006 SXSW Film Festival Diary (Day 5), I said this about “The Lost”:
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