Diary of a Butt-Numb-a-Thon Survivor, Part One

Once again, I survived the 24-hour-long movie marathon known as Butt-Numb-a-Thon, earlier this month. I wrote a lovely news-like article about BNAT for The Circuit, Variety's film-festival blog. If you want to find out which films were shown, that's the place to look. But there are some details that The Circuit readers probably would rather not know, or don't care about.

This year I decided to take notes on BNAT in diary form. Here are the scribbles from my notebook, with some enhancements. I'm also including photos -- you can't take photos at BNAT, so I used photos taken earlier that morning, or used stills from the movies shown.

11:00 am: Arrive at Alamo on South Lamar. The Alamo folks have set up a registration/pick up/standby area in one of the vacant stores on the other end of the strip mall. I get my badge and giant swag bags, then run back to the car to store everything. Back at the car, I grab a blanket roll and an extra sweater.

11:30 am: My assigned seat is a folding chair next to the regular seats in the last row of the theater. I'm quite pleased. It's not a high stool (as in previous years) so my feet touch the floor, and I don't have to fool with armrests. The chair is even slightly padded. I am sure my butt will feel just dandy, with help from my blanket.

11:45 am: Jarod Neece of SXSW shows up and we discover we have been assigned the same seat. Jarod offers to find someone to help straighten this out, as opposed to flipping a coin to see who sits on whose lap.

11:50 am: The theme of this year's event is "The Ten Commandments of Butt-Numb-a-Thon" since it's the 10th annual. Cargill presents Harry Knowles with a set of Ten Commandments tablets that were actually used in the Cecil B. deMille movie.

11:55 am: Jarod ends up sitting in the seat next to me, also a folding chair, which no one has claimed. He has no blanket to use for padding. Poor Jarod.

Noon: Trailers start: Invasion USA, a Chuck Norris movie; a red-band trailer for Slumber Party Massacre (lots of topless teens); "a winner at the prestigious Atlanta International Film Festival," Pinocchio's Birthday Party; and the perennial favorite of BNAT audiences, the Stunt Rock trailer.

12:10 pm: Tim League appears onstage, claiming he's going to interrupt Harry's programming to show Teen Wolf. This is only funny if you've been to the past couple of BNATs -- Tim annually vows to show Teen Wolf after a longtime attendee begged them to back in 2006, and the film always "melts" on the projector after a few minutes so it can't continue, thus crushing the attendee's hopes and dreams.

12:11 pm: Lars appears on stage dressed as the title character in Teen Wolf during his wolfiest phases in the film. Lars (pictured above, sans costume) is as tall as two Michael J. Foxes and the effect is ... stunning. I wish I could have had a camera in here. I wish anyone had a camera here. He gives the hopeful Teen Wolf fan an autographed basketball.

12:13 pm: Annnd the credits for Teen Wolf roll. How far will we get? About one minute into the actual film. Poor guy is thwarted again.

12:14 pm: Harry introduces the actual first film, telling us of his great love for Fay Wray before revealing that the movie is Viva Villa, a 1934 film that Howard Hawks and William Wellman both directed and were removed from, before someone else finished it. Wallace Beery stars as Pancho Villa. "It might be vaguely racist at points."

12:15 pm: Jarod is trying to get comfy in his folding chair, and whispers, "You know, we may be the only two people who can actually call it Butt-Numb-a-Thon." (He didn't see the row of folding chairs near the front, I presume.)

12:16 pm: Wow, the credits include Ben Hecht and James Wong Howe. Hope this'll be good. I love a good 1930s movie. I love when BNAT starts with something from the Thirties, like The Great McGinty in 2007.

12:50 pm: Coughing fit, for no apparent reason. I duck out to get some water, and end up chatting with Scott Weinberg (my managing editor at Cinematical) for a few minutes.

1:00 pm: Back in the theater, missed very little. Thirties movies are like that. Order a Blazing Saddles pizza, and water in case I start coughing again. The movie is entertaining in spots, but too long and more than vaguely racist. Blake posted stills from Viva Villa to Cinema is Dope: here and here.

2:00 pm: Short break after the movie. I arrange my blanket on my chair to add a layer of padding. Jarod and I speculate about the rest of the films in the lineup, using the "fake BNAT" list that Harry posted earlier that day on Ain't It Cool.

2:10 pm: Ain't It Cool contributor Capone introduces the next film, which turns out to be The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. For some reason I felt confident that this film would be shown at BNAT; I'm not entirely sure why. I've seen it already, so I can take a short break. I decide to wait until after the Tilda Swinton bit, because she's my favorite thing in the movie.

3:15 pm: During a relevant point in the Tilda Swinton sequence, Alamo serves caviar and freezer-cold vodka. A lovely surprise.

3:45 pm: Sneakin' out for a break on the patio, chatting with a bunch of other people who have seen the film before (mostly critics). Just as I'm about to walk back in ... there's my husband. What is he doing here? He and a friend were in the theater next door, watching Slumdog Millionaire. Another lovely surprise. I realize I have a giant pizza stain smack on the front of my shirt. Not so lovely.

4:30 pm: After scrubbing pizza sauce off my shirt, back to Benjamin Button. This movie would be twice as good (or half as bad) if they got rid of the redundant and sometimes cheesy voiceover narration. Also, that accent of Brad Pitt's does not sound New Orleanian to me.

5:10 pm: Harry announces several scenes from Coraline, totaling about 25 minutes. The film isn't complete yet. He says Henry Selick will be in Austin in January to preview the whole film (hope I can go, ooh ooh ooh). The film is in 3D and we have all been given fancy glasses.

5:35 pm: Beautiful and creepy. I loved the scene set in the theater. The 3D is fine but doesn't seem necessary to me.

5:37 pm: Harry introduces a double-feature, starting with an obscure Humphrey Bogart film. Oh, please, let it be In a Lonely Place. No, it's a World War II theme, and the Bogart film is Sahara from 1943. Then we'll see Valkyrie. Harry warns us to keep the 3D glasses around for later.

7:25 pm: Sahara turned out to be one of the better Bogart films. Wondering if that was Dan Duryea as Jimmy. (It was.) Wish I could whip out my iPod Touch and look, but it's in the car.

There was one critical moment near the end of Sahara when the film messed up -- for a few seconds, the screen went dark, and the theater filled with boos and awwwwws. People were truly into this 1943 film.

More trailers: Doc Savage, Megaforce, where "the good guys always win ... even in the '80s," and The Villain, a truly appalling looking comedy with Kirk Douglas, Ann-Margret, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ruth Buzzi, and Paul Lynde as an Indian chief ... is it trying to rip off Blazing Saddles? (Less than a week later, I see Adam Sandler's film Bedtime Stories, with Rob Schneider as an Indian chief, and wonder if we've made any progress regarding racial stereotypes in 30 years.)

7:30 pm: Video intro for Valkyrie from Bryan Singer. "It's a story not everybody knows about, but ... now you will."

8:00 pm: At a critical point in the movie, the actual "Ride of the Valkyries" music plays. I realize this music has been ruined for me forever by a key scene in Billy Wilder's movie One, Two, Three, in which a German doctor runs down the stairs singing "Schwanger is pregnant, pregnant is schwanger ..." to the tune, and I have to fight the giggles.

9:30 pm: I had no idea that was Eddie Izzard. Damn.

9:40 pm: "There's only so much Nazi filmmaking you can take." Indeed. We need something lighter. And we get it: the first 45 minutes of the Pixar movie Up. Hooray! Jonas Rivera, the film's producer, is here with Pete Docter, the film's co-director.

Isn't there a Russ Meyer movie entitled Up!? What a double-feature that would have made.

9:50 pm: I'd been unimpressed by the trailer I saw for this movie, but I'm enjoying this movie no end so far. It doesn't matter that the animation is unfinished sketches in some of the opening sequence, that sequence is extremely sweet.

10:15 pm: Someone should compare the old man in Up to Clint Eastwood's growly old man in Gran Torino.

10:30 pm: Everyone wants more Up and people are already quoting a catchphrase from the film ("Squirrel!").

10:45 pm: No more Nazis, please, unless we're going to watch the 1968 The Producers. Which would be great right about now, come to think of it.

Jarod and I peruse the fake BNAT list. The next movie in the fake lineup is Flash Gordon. "It's going to be Flesh Gordon, isn't it." "Please God, no."

10:47 pm: Harry explains that the connection between Flash Gordon and this movie has to do with the soundtrack. There are several versions of this movie, and the version he wanted wasn't available to rent anymore. But he found a private collector with a print, so we are going to watch the Moredor cut of Metropolis -- the version from the 1980s with the soundtrack that includes Adam Ant and Freddie Mercury. "This is the way to drop acid to this film -- this is the fun way to watch it. No, Alamo will not hand out acid to everyone."

11:30 pm: This movie is interesting but way, way too loud. I feel like a little old lady. I end up in the lobby chatting with Anne Heller.

Midnight: Loud soundtrack or not, I need food, so I go back in the theater. I meet local filmmaker Emily Hagins outside the theater door. Emily, who is in her late teens, has been outside too because the music in the theater is too loud for her. I feel a lot less old.

End of Part One ... more to follow.