So I’m here in Austin and haven’t blogged once. I’m a bad blogger, what can I say. Then again, I got here Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. and the Austin Film Festival didn’t really kick off until yesterday. I spent all of Wednesday in a “”Lost in Translation”-esque haze after flying all night. Then I got drunk while watching baseball so that really screwed me up for Thursday day. But I pulled it together, got some flyers and hit my favorite city.
There was an Opening Night party down the street so I hit that while putting my posters on every outhouse I walked past. It’s childish, but I got a kick out of it. The party was pretty sweet as both Dos Equis and Bombay gin are major sponsors of the festival. They had all these really cute girls in bright blue dresses handing out various Bombay drinks. If I were into gin, it would have been heaven. However since I’d been into beer all night the night before, I stuck to water. I met quite a few people and handed out bunches of flyers. The I headed over to the Paramount to see “”The TV Set,” the new Jake Kasdan flick.
One thing that is super cool about the Austin Film Festival is that it’s really geared towards screenwriters. They’re all over the place and they’re like, giddy because people actually give a s**t about them. It’s about time someone respected the screenwriters! I met a nice gal on the way to the Paramount who is a screenwriting semi-finalist here at the fest. We got to the theater about 30 minutes before showtime and they got us right in. Nicely done. The line moved incredibly fast and we were all in on time. To make things even more exciting Lawrence Kasdan was there! I was going to get a picture with him just to antagonize Gore and Bell, but alas, I’m not big into getting pictures with celebs. Unless they’re Gore or Bell.
“”The TV Set” was really great! It stars David Duchovny as a TV writer and the whole movie is about his newest series navigating pilot season. Sigourney Weaver is in it as is Mr. Fantastic himself Ioan Gruffudd who I didn’t recognize because he was in a movie that wasn’t total, utter crap. I’ll likely do a full review soon so stay tuned.
After the flick I came back to my room to chill as there was another party at 11:00. It was then I realized I had left my ATM/credit card somewhere. Nice going, jackass. I quickly tracked it down but nearly had a heart attack anyway. Then I went to the party. It was fun and I had some of my favorite kind of beer: free. I met a really nice dude named Alex. He’s 20 and has finished 3 screenplays and got one of them into the festival. Holy crap. He’s a business major at UT Austin too”¦not even a film student. The party was fun until they booted us all out at 1:00 a.m. It was probably better for everyone that they did that.
I came back to my room and crashed out but was awakened at 3:00 a.m. after a nightmare that no one came to my screening. It was me, my mom and my sister, at my screening and my sister didn’t like my movie. Not only that, but they somehow had a bad copy of my film and it was an older, less good cut. People left. I fell asleep. It sucked! I woke up in a sweat and talked myself down and managed to fall back to sleep. That is until nightmare #2 kicked in. This one consisted of my friend Dan getting his fake ID taken and he was arrested. The thing is, Dan is way over 21 and in the dream, I was actually Dan. You know how that works. Yet in Freudian hindsight (and pairing it with the previous dream) I realized that this dream was symbolic of my fear of people thinking I’m a fraud. Good stuff! Whee. Being creative is fun.
My screening is at 9:45 tonight and hopefully a few people show up. If they don’t, then I didn’t actually have a nightmare and am actually able to see the future.
The Austin Film Festival runs October 19-26 so come see me!
More information at The Austin Film Festival Official Site
