Slackery News Tidbits, July 6
By Jette Kernion on July 6, 2011 - 11:30am
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Here's the latest Austin film news, as well as some other bits of news you might have missed earlier.
- Rolling Roadshow has added one last Texas movie to its summer tour: Bottle Rocket. The Wes Anderson movie will be shown on Saturday night at the hotel in which it was partially filmed: the Days Inn in Hillsboro. It's part of an event to save the hotel from being closed down. Road trip, anyone?
- For an excellent and thorough summary of many upcoming Austin films, check out Matthew Odam's write-up for the Austin American-Statesman ... as well as his follow-up on Paul Stekler's latest project.
- The latest local filmmaker running a fundraising campaign for his film project is Paul Gordon, whose film The Happy Poet premiered at SXSW last year and has been making the festival rounds. Gordon is looking for pre-production research funding for Mexico Carpenter, a feature film he plans to shoot in Mexico later this year. Visit his page on the United States Artists website for more information and to chip in -- matching funds are available right now, and there are various thank-you gifts for different donation levels.
- I'm worried about what's happening to the old Varsity Theater mural on the side of what I always think of as the Tower Records building (since that's what it was when I started UT in 1991). The Austin Chronicle reports that the mural has been damaged and partially removed to make room for some national fast-food chains that will occupy the space, which The Drag certainly needs more of, right? The architect says they're not going to renovate the mural but will instead provide "a reasonable facsimile." If we were promised a reasonable facsimile of the Daniel Johnston frog on The Drag, people would have been outraged. This is at least as iconic if not more so.
- The documentary For the Sake of the Song: The Story of Anderson Fair (Chip's review) is now available on DVD, in case you missed this SXSW 2010 selection about the Houston folk music venue. If you want to buy local, Waterloo Records has it in stock.
- Local author and screenwriter Ernie Cline (Fanboys) recently posted a script online that he wrote in the 1990s: Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League. Check out his blog entry explaining exactly how he came to write the script.
- If you missed Simon Pegg's book signing in Austin recently (or if you didn't but enjoy any excuse to gaze upon the actor's visage), BookPeople now has a Flickr set from the event. The barbecue photo is my favorite.
- Finally, we'd like to congratulate filmmaker Ryan Piers Williams (The Dry Land) on his recent marriage. The former Austin Film Festival staffer and UT alum got a lot of press for his recent nuptials ... but why do they keep calling his lovely wife "Ugly"? (Embarrassing confession: When I chatted with Williams and America Ferrera at Marfa, where The Dry Land screened, I knew she was the film's producer and co-star but didn't realize there was any other relationship. I could never cut the ice as a celebrity maven.)