CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 03/30/07

Keeping Austin Weird:
South by Southwest 2007

By paul benjamin

Austin, Texas continues making its reputation as one of the coolest film cities in America with the ever-growing South by Southwest film festival. Los Angeles expatriate Paul Benjamin took advantage of his new home by hitting the festival.

Start at the end. That's Jeff Daniels' advice in Josh Frank's The Lookout. The end of my time at Austin's South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival came way too early on account of an international trip that could only happen at the tail end of the festival. Still, packing in a week's worth of films around pre-trip writing deadlines and travel preparation is what I call a high-class problem.

This was my first SXSW Film Festival, and it was everything I'd hoped for and more. Austin is a beautiful city and the only thing that could make bustling and funky downtown more fun in a town whose motto is "Keep Austin Weird" is filling it with movie buffs ready to stand in line for hours over the course of a week and a half in hopes of seeing great films.

Opening night set the tone for week with The Lookout, a fantastic directorial debut for screenwriter Scott Frank (Out of Sight, Minority Report). It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who proves yet again that he's an incredibly talented actor despite the fact that too many people still know him as "that kid from Third Rock from the Sun—see Mysterious Skin and Brick if you want to get slapped in the face by his serious acting chops. Frank's script is a perfect blend of indie film character exploration and Hollywood heist movie that eschews fancy camera moves to focus on Frank's strength as a screenwriter. Frank's script tells the story of Chris Platt (Gordon-Levitt) as he deals with the consequences of a car accident that left him quite literally unable to think straight. Chris went from a promising teen sports hero with a bright future to lowly bank janitor. Frank explores Chris' personal journey as he struggles with his circumstances in a way that is funny as often as it is tragic. While Chris tries to find his place in world, his new "friend" Gary (Matthew Goode) schemes to secure Chris' help robbing the bank he cleans every night. You know right from the start that Goode is bad news, but at the same time you can see why Chris is taken in by his charismatic performance. Isla Fisher is alluring as lovely Lovlee Lemons (her former stage name—the kind of stage with a pole) and Jeff Daniels is as brilliant as you'd expect playing Chris' blind roommate/best friend.

I spoke with Frank after the film and he couldn't have been more pleased with the audience reaction. "That may have been the best screening I've ever had in my career." Frank was excited to have the audience rooting for his film. "I've had some good screenings and some good premieres but nothing, nothing like I had last night." His biggest surprise? "They got all the humor. I've seen the movie a couple of times in small screening rooms and test screenings and they don't understand that it's okay to laugh at a lot of stuff. They caught everything in this movie last night." That statement was funny to me because I couldn't imagine an audience not laughing at The Lookout. Sure, the film is riddled with darkness and suspense, but there's a whole lot of humor as well. In fact, I missed a few lines of dialogue because I just couldn't hear them over the guffaws of the crowd.

When I asked Frank about the screenplay's excellent merger of character exploration with a heist movie, he had this to say: "We used to have Hollywood movies about character. Look at Dog Day Afternoon. It's a heist movie, but he's robbing a bank so he can get his male lover a sex change operation. That movie doesn't happen today, but that was a big Hollywood movie in its time."

That's what attracted Frank to a film with a low budget by Hollywood standards. "It's become more relegated to the indie world anytime you want to do anything about character or anytime you want to do anything that has even a twinge of darkness." With the lower budget he was allowed to make the movie he wanted to make. Nobody was putting pressure on him to change the movie to fit any kind of preconceived marketing because the risk wasn't as high.

Approaching The Lookout as a director was a new thing for this veteran screenwriter, who looked to other filmmakers for inspiration. "There was a film that I looked to and that was Capote. I love that it was classically shot. I'm really tired of movies that are standing on their head to be cute in terms of how they're shot, where the technique becomes a character in the movie. I didn't want to do that at all in this movie." And it shows (in a good way). Frank lets the story and actors do the heavy lifting. Frank's modest translation: "I knew that I did not have the chops that would reinvent anything."

Curious about Frank's approach to writing this film, I asked if he took Jeff Daniels' advice from within the movie—did he work from the end backwards to the beginning? "Not really. I do that to a certain extent, in the sense that I think I'm aware of the end and I think that's important. For my own comfort level, I like to know the end. I rewrite over and over and over. Gradually set-ups and pay-offs become more apparent through the process."

But why premiere his directorial debut at the SXSW film festival? "I always thought that South by Southwest would be a cool place to show a film…they love movies here. Even more than they do in Seattle, which everyone looks to as the big film town. I think Austin is way more of the big film town."

And Frank's not the only one who thinks Austin is a great town for a premiere. New Zealand native writer-director Jonathan King brought Black Sheep to Austin for what I can only hope is the first of many U.S. screenings. Black Sheep was everything a midnight movie should be, especially if that movie is about zombie sheep overtaking the Kiwi countryside. Put simply, Black Sheep is exactly what you'd expect from a zombie sheep movie. In fact, this is hands-down the best zombie sheep movie I've ever seen.

Black Sheep was also in the perfect venue: the downtown Alamo Drafthouse Theater. The Alamo and its sister theaters are the place to see a movie in Austin, with a full dinner and dessert menu and buckets of beer for your movie-going pleasure.

To round out the zombie theme, I made sure to return to the Alamo for Undead or Alive: A Zombedy. This zombie western stars Desperate Housewives' James Denton as a Union Army deserter and Chris Kattan as a dim-witted pansy turned outlaw. Essentially, Geronimo's last act before he jumped off a cliff was to lay some bad medicine on the white man, creating a plague of flesh-eating zombies. The obligatory midnight-movie eye candy is provided by Numb3rs Navi Rawat, who fulfills every boy's fantasy as the fringed-leather clad, bow-wielding (yet New York-educated) niece of Geronimo. The script and visuals are a hilariously anachronistic blend of modern-day vernacular with western tropes that never takes itself too seriously. But for me it is comedian Brian Posehn who steals the show as a stumbling, brain-eating zombie with that classic, depressed Posehn moan/groan that fits so perfectly with his flesh-eating demeanor.

Even with my limited time schedule, I wanted to be sure to experience more than just films at SXSW, so I headed for one of the panels in the Austin Convention Center. Cue Troublemaker Studio's producer Elizabeth Avellan, producer of Grindhouse, as well as wife of director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids). The partnership between Rodriguez and Avellan is a driving force in the growing Austin film industry; Avellan has plenty of fans in town, and I'm proud to be one of them. I went in the door expecting to hear all kinds of tips about producing a movie, but true to form for this Austin innovator I learned more about producing my life. Avellan has a strong philosophy regarding the work/life balance that once rarely sees in the trenches of Hollywood. She and Rodriguez raised their children on film sets, and they've given their staff the freedom to do so as well. So much so that, according to Avellan, at one point they were calling the studio Babymaker Studios.

Grindhouse actor Jeff Fahey asked Avellan the questions in this session, their comfort level clearly high after working together on the film. He even made a special film celebrating Avellan's involvement in a charity that brings toys, friendship, and fun to the lives of children in Afghanistan; once again showing Avellan's level of attention to the real world rivals her devotion to filmmaking.

My last film of the festival was another offering from a writer-director, Frank A. Cappello's He Was a Quiet Man. This tragically funny, cubicle-bound fairy tale tells the story of Bob Maconel (Christian Slater), a man who's on the verge of going on a shooting spree in his office when…let's just say, things take a surprising turn. Slater is perfectly cast and gives a performance that is sure to lead to meatier roles. Slater plays opposite Elisha Cuthbert as the hottest paraplegic ever. Cuthbert shows a broad range in a tragic role that is sure to get her noticed, and William H. Macy is predictably fantastic as Maconel's boss (and Cuthbert's more-than-a-boss). This film is full of laughs side-by-side with the drama, and just when you think you know where it's going, Cappello's script takes a hair-pin turn and heads in a completely new direction. Quiet Man is heavy on star power and surprises, thanks to its independent financing, and a script that keeps you guessing right up until the end.

This was my first SXSW Film Festival since I moved to Austin two years ago, but now that I've had a taste, I'm already ready for next year. The festival seemed quite organized and the volunteers were generally well informed and helpful. Even when they couldn't help, they were at least plenty friendly. Most important, the Austin locals and out-of-towners were always an excellent crowd whether waiting in line or watching a film. You're welcome to the hustle and bustle of Cannes and the sub-zero lines at Sundance, I'll be keeping it weird in Austin next year at SXSW, and you can be sure that I'll be in town for the whole festival this time!

Paul Benjamin is a writer, editor, and supermodel whose Tokyopop manga Pantheon High is on shelves in a store near you. Paul has developed comics-to-film projects for Hollywood, edited graphic novels for Humanoids Publishing, and writes comics for Marvel. His webcomic Sci-Fu can be seen at sci-fu.com. And, of course, everyone in the world is familiar with Paul's long list of credits as a supermodel.

The Lookout courtesy Miramax Films
Black Sheep courtesy IFC Films
He Was a Quiet Man courtesy Quiet Man Productions

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