Monday. March 20. 2000
AGGTF.T.TFF.
THE BATTALION Page 3
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BY KYLE WHITACRE
The Battalion
PART 1 OF 2
A nother year has swept the
annual South by Southwest
music and film festival into
history, which descended upon
Austin with all its might and fury
this spring break, breaking rules and
standards,
and setting
the bar for
modem
culture.
My
trip began
with a
two-hour bum down Highway 21
and 290, which brought me straight
into the heart of Austin and to the
Austin Convention Center, the
headquarters of this year’s festival,
where I hosted the filmmaker’s
lounge for the next five days. Work
began early Friday morning, where
one of the first things we learned
was that the AC thennostat was bro
ken and the lounge would be a brisk
55° F for the next five days. I
lamented not bringing anything
long-sleeved.
Saturday 1 hunted down the
MSC Film Society execs, who
bought badges for their members
but ended up using the badges
themselves. We began the day by
attending the world premiere of the
modern day remake of Hamlet,
staning Ethan Hawke, Bill Murray
and Kyle MacLachlan. It’s amazing
how well brooding Gen-X actor
Hawke can portray Hamlet. The
film had excellent night cinematog
raphy and musical score but was
marred by horrible day photogra
phy and bad acting by Bill Murray.
After Hamlet, I headed over to
the Alamo Draft House for the
midnight showing of Rated X: A
Journey Through Porn, a funny
and insightful documentary about
the pornography industry and the
issues involved.
Sunday started out the same as the
previous days, with corporate spon
sors freaking out about the fact that no
filmmakers showed up for the com-
plimentaiy breakfasts in the lounge
while starved volunteers watched
pans of eggs and bacon go untouched.
When will people learn filmmakers
are second only to mu
sicians as the laziest
people alive?
In the afternoon,
one of the feature con
ference sessions of the
festival took place — ~ r \i
a conversation with
John Carpenter (Halloween, Escape
from New York), Robert Rodriguez
(Desperado) and Harry Knowles
(Ain’t It Cool News). In a confer
ence room fifty people over capaci
ty, the three talked about everything
from censorship in film to the revo
lution in digital filmmaking. Car
penter
remi
nisced on
how cen
sorship
in the
’70s
caused
more
filmmak
ers to be more creative with the pre
sentation of violence in storytelling
and said that because of more gov
ernment involvement today in cen
sorship and lawsuits, the same kind
of creativity is starting to reappear.
Sunday night also saw the pre
miere of one of the most anticipat
ed films of SXSW, The Indepen
dent. The line for the film stretched
around an entire block, and I ar
rived an hour early to take my place
behind a hundred other people al
ready in line.
While waiting with the Film
Society crew, we talked with Ann,
a Canadian film student who was
on an internship that gave her
three-all-expense paid trips to
three U.S. Film Festivals.
She explained to us why many
U.S. film business is moving to
Canada and taking with them big-
budget projects like the upcoming
X-Men movie. Apparently the
government there does not tax
and censor films, but instead sup
ports them financially, gives
them tax breaks and funds the ed
ucation of artists. Impressed by
the brilliant ideas of the Canadi
an government, I told her how
most our taxes go to military re
search, and while most of our cre
ative minds struggle to eat, we
could wipe Canada off the face of
the Earth.
We were then let into the theater
where Janeane Garofalo and Jerry
Stiller introduced the film. What
followed was an hour and a half of
non-stop comedy centering around
the life of fictitious exploitation di
rector Morty Finemann (Stiller),
whose firms include Acupuncture
Academy IT. Pointy, Pointy, Pointy,
World War III II and The Justice
League of Superfreaks.
Monday, after a boring day in
the filmmakers’ lounge, Jason
Puckett, next year’s chair of MSC
Film Society, and I headed over to
see the animated shorts. All the
shorts were amazing, but the best
was When The Day Breaks, an an
imated short from Canada which
is up for an Oscar this year.
After the shorts, we met up
with everyone else to see the
much-anticipated Dark Days, a
See SXSW on Page 4.
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