SXSW: Day 4

A late start again today, I woke up feeling awful and took my pills, including Advil - a blood thinner. This didn't help when I got a bloody nose. Not a good start to my day.

Once everything got sorted out, I hustled on down to the convention center to try to check out Al Franken's panel. I like Franken, while he hasn't done anything decent on TV in a while, his last book was pretty good (audiobook even better as he has dead-on hilarious impressions). I got there and found that it was so full that they had changed venues, filled up the larger venue, and set up a TV so that the overflow could watch. It was actually a pretty decent setup to watch it.

Franken was pretty on, really funny, it's a good environment for him. He mainly stuck to his politics and radio show, saying that he's considering running for Paul Wellstone's old seat and that Air America was launching two new stations that day - KOKE in Austin and KLSD in LA. The call letters, he said, were not their choices.

From there I booked it on over to check out Reel Paradise, starring John Pierson and the rest of his family, wife Janet and daughter Georgia and son Wyatt as they move to Fiji and show movies in the sole movie theatre for free to the Fijians. The line was pretty long for this, but fortunately, I saw the Cavite guys waiting in line and hung out with them while waiting. They mentioned they liked Shellfishing, so I was glad to give them a copy of it. We talked a bit about the festival and both of our films, including them asking how our gun effects were done. Success. Charles did an excellent job with them, and I was proud to tell them so. Really had a lot of fun hanging out with them.

Got into the movie, John introduced the movie while dressed up nice - complete with a Blair Witch pin on his label. Guess you have to flaunt your successes at every level. The movie itself was a great documentary, the Pierson's were real, and showed all the problems that an American family has, even when they're in Fiji. The movie was beautifully shot (although with some of the Fijian landscapes, in some places it'd be much more difficult to get an ugly shot instead of a great one). I don't know that it's the most humanitarian of films, in that while the Piersons are trying to cope with various issues, the movie just ends up being funny. John gets pissed and yells at a man, it comes across as being incredibly funny. The rest of the audience agreed. John's son Wyatt steals the show, as he acts as a backseat programmer, proclaiming that nobody will want to see boring Independent movies. Despite Wyatt's shunning of the smaller movies, the movie shows a family that has grown up with movies that has had a life in movies, and most importantly a love of movies. It's pretty fun.

The Q&A brought out the John that we all know and love, superslam John. Questions were asked and answered, more importantly bad questions were asked and the family let loose on the askers. A long rambling question about how the asker was surprised that the Fijians had a primal reaction towards the movies lead to John and Janet both taking shots. I wanted Kent to ask a question where he mispronounced the Pierson name and asked a question they were sick of. Unfortunately, he would not.

After Reel Paradise, it was rushing out of the Paramount and then going back into the Paramount for Sundance favorite Murderball. While the movie has distribution, and is expected to have some wide appeal, I still wanted to check it out early, while I could. It also helped that the national Wheelchair Rugby spokesman is an Austinite and was in attendance. The promotions that the movie was running was incredible, plastic mini-murderballs, legal-paper sized posters - and lots of them. Somehow I managed to get neither. Rarely does it work out that way, I'm usually interested in everything and anything that I can get, but, I'll blame it on the illness.

The movie starts slow. Really slow. I even began wondering why the movie was receiving such across the board praise. However, I stuck with it and was vastly rewarded. Murderball is, basically, the sport of Wheelchair Rugby as played by Quadriplegics. The term "Quadriplegic" I had always thought meant a complete non-use of all four limbs - but no so. It simply means a restriction in all four limbs. So some are not able to grip with their hands, some have no hands, etc. There's a wide array of degrees of ability. The movie follows a few people as they become involved in the sport, the expert, the ex-champion (who is cut from the team and goes to coach the Canadian team) and the learner (recently injured man who goes through a depression until he learns of Murderball). The documentary intertwines their stories as the US vs. Canada rivalry heats up (guaranteed to be a boon to the movie in both countries). I hate the cliche, but I felt really felt inspired on what these guys could do, they were given one of the worst turn of events possible and they made the best of it. Murderball is an absolutely incredible documentary and I recommend it highly - this one is going to be big.

Afterwards we talked with the Cavite guys a bit more, who in turn, introduced me to a guy from Palm Pictures. Not everyday that happens. After that, everybody from Dos Blokes reconvened at the Alamo Drafthouse for our first showing of the movie. Since we were screening with the first showing of "The Roost" the place filled up completely with ease. Great. The movies get introduced, and it takes a long time of black before Dos Blokes actually shows. But when it does, it really gets received well. Lots of laughs throughout, especially at the vomiting scene. Then the punchline hits and we get three rounds of applause for it. It felt absolutely great. An unquestionable success.

We sat and watched The Roost - a movie that was a really appropriate choice - a 1950's style B-movie about bats - you couldn't have a movie more suited for the timeslot/location if you tried. While horror movies are not my thing, I really admire what they did. They made a cheap, cheap, cheap movie on 16mm based on what he loved. That's what we're all trying to do. That said, I didn't particularly care for it. I'm not a horror movie guy, particularly the B-movie sort of horror movie, The movie starts slow, characters who I didn't care about are talking about characters that you don't know... takes a bit too much time. Then the bats attack and turn people into zombies. Creative. The movie is bookended by an old TV show hosted by Tom Noonan, and I have to say, those segments are really, really great. Really enjoyed that. Plus it didn't have the typical horror movie ending so I really have to give the accolades. The movie still isn't my thing, but people who like that sort of thing, will like it.

Afterwards we spoke to a few people about it, the guy from IndieWire had a lot of great things to say about it, and said that he would try to get a mention in on the site. Jack McWilliams, who would probably be best described as our executive producer on the movie, spoke to Tom Quinn of Magnolia pictures who really enjoyed the movie. I really have to say that none of us thought that this movie would go as far as it has, and would get the attention that it has. It's been beyond incredible.
11:36:36 PM    comment []  trackback []

Don't worry

I'm tired, but I'm making extensive notes. I'll type things up soon to have them here... I just need some sleep.
10:21:59 PM    comment []  trackback []