Celebrity Sightings

In most posts, I try to be as objective as possible. I'm not even going to attempt it in this account of Cinemapocalypse, Saturday's all-night movie marathon. It is not complete, but it should be enough to help you live a little vicariously, if only to build your DVD queue or library. Those of us at Cinemapocalypse were very, very lucky, and the rest of y'all have a right to be jealous.

Earlier this year, Alamo programmers Zack Carlson and Lars Nilson took 18 exploitation films on an eight-night West Coast tour and called it Cinemapocalypse. Apparently it was so successful the Alamo gang decided to incorporate elements of QT Fest and have a dusk-til-dawn film fest in Austin, kicking it off with Quentin Tarantino's latest, Inglourious Basterds. Only one of the films from the original tour made it into this weekend's marathon.

Despite only knowing that the first film would be Inglourious Basterds, that Tarantino would then program the next two films, and that none of the films besides Basterds would be known in advance, Cinemapocalypse Austin sold out in a record minute. The tickets went on sale at noon, and people who tried to start buying at 12:02 pm were out of luck -- and only Fantastic Fest 2009 badgeholders and AFS members could even try the first day. And yes, Alamo was verifying every single purchase.

Character actor Danny Trejo is in town for the filming of Robert Rodriguez's new grindhouse flick, Machete, and I've spotted him twice this weekend. He attended the special screening of Inglourious Basterds at Cinemapocalyse last night, and was sitting in the row behind me several seats down. He graciously let me take the above photo during a break between films.

I also saw Danny today at the Austin premiere of Robert Rodriguez's family film Shorts. It was quite amusing to hear young children say, "I've seen ALL your movies!" I was able to ask him a few questions this weekend. Here's what he had to say, short yet enthusiastic:

On filming in Austin: "I love it, I love Austin!"

On Texas weather: "I was in Miami recently, with all the humidity. Austin is much better."

On working with Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino: "They are my boys, I LOVE working with them."

The movie Julie & Julia opened in theaters last weekend, as you can see from our group review. The film was adapted in part from the book of the same title by Julie Powell. Powell returned home to Austin for a few days this week to visit with family and support the film's first week. She was in attendance for a Q&A at the first two of four movie-and-feast events at Alamo Drafthouse.

I attended a small book signing and pre-feast party on Tuesday at her dad's law office in downtown Austin, where friends, family and colleagues were treated to Southern hospitality. Upon meeting Julie's mother, Kay Foster, I thought of Will Rogers' quote: "A stranger is just a friend I haven't met yet."

I had the opportunity to ask Julie Powell a few questions during the party. Here's what she had to say.

You've mentioned that you've seen the movie at least six times now – is it surreal to see yourself portrayed, or when people say "I saw you in the movie?"

It will be seven tonight. It's gone from surreal, to in the middle there I was able to kind of watch it as a movie. Now I'm watching a movie I've seen six times, in close succession so I can barely watch it anymore, but I think it's a great movie. It continues to be strange. I'm probably a little more prepared for it than some people would be, because I started my blog at a time when people got intensely involved with my blog. I was writing about very personal stuff. People thought that they knew me, so I've gotten a little bit used to that. The difference is that the movie is not me.

Austin film-related news does seem to have a definite musical theme going this week. Or maybe I'm just stretching the point to justify the above title? I do have a whole lot of movie news today, some of which has nothing to do whatsoever with music, but you can always sing while you're reading or play some nice show tunes in the background.

• A small paragraph in the Arts: Casting Call section of the Austin Chronicle provides us with the news that Salvage Vanguard Theater and Doctuh Mistuh Productions are planning to stage Evil Dead: The Musical in Austin in the near future. They're still holding auditions this week, so contact Elle Mahoney at stylelle [at] gmail [dot] com for details. I'm looking forward to seeing this very curious theatrical production when it opens: Ash! He sings, he dances, he uses a chainsaw!
• The celebrity-spotting related to Machete shooting in Austin has already started. Several people, including our own Jenn Brown, spotted Danny Trejo (pictured at right) catching a movie at Alamo Ritz over the weekend. In addition, Austin Metblogs' Tim Trentham got a peek at Tom Savini while at the Paramount watching Forbidden Planet. Obviously if you want to see the coolest cast and crew from Robert Rodriguez's production, you should go to the movies. (I know my audience: I bet most of you would rather see Savini than Lindsay Lohan.)

The last week or so has been crazy with announcements for red-carpet film events in Austin, so much so that keeping them all straight is enough to keep your eyes crossed. Count 'em, no less than three in four days in August:

• Saturday, August 15: Cinemapocalypse kicks off with Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds
• Sunday, August 16: Austin premiere of Robert Rodriguez's Shorts
• Tuesday, August 18: World premiere of Mike Judge's Extract

To ease the vertigo and help you schedule your ticket buying, we've compiled the relevant information below. You will notice that there are benefits to membership, as AFS members and Fantastic Fest 2009 badgeholders have an advantage over the general public.

See, sometimes I go to events that aren't in movie theaters, or where movies aren't shown. Last Wednesday, stuntman/actor/filmmaker and now author Gary Kent had a book signing at BookPeople, where he read from his book Shadows & Light: Journeys with Outlaws in Revolutionary Hollywood.

Kent, who now lives in Austin, has appeared at Alamo Drafthouse events for films in which he's worked on -- The Girls from Thunder Strip and recently Psych-Out. Besides Psych-Out, he's done stunts for other Richard Rush films such as Hell's Angels on Wheels, The Savage Seven, and Freebie and the Bean. You may remember Anne Heller's 2007 article for Slackerwood about The Pyramid, which Kent wrote and directed. More recently, he was stunt coordinator for Bubba Ho-Tep.

Last week, director Simon Rumley's latest feature finished filming here in Austin. Red, White and Blue, touted as a "slacker revenge thriller," filmed in various locations around town, including one afternoon at local honky-tonk landmark The Broken Spoke.

A few weeks ago, Tim League, executive producer of the film and co-founder of the Alamo Drafthouse theaters, posted a call for extras to the Alamo blog and Twitter, with the promise of fun and standing around and drinking beer.

I've got friends in Vancouver who've been extras on a few films, and they were telling me to bring a book or two, it'll be boring. It'll take hours to shoot a single scene. Well, okay -- it took 3.5 hours from the time we were asked to be there, to "That's a wrap. Thanks, folks." Even if I had brought a book, I wouldn't have had a chance to look at it. We were too busy having fun. And it helped a local film, so even better.

Writer/director/actor Mike White obviously wants to spend some quality time in the Central Texas area this fall. Fantastic Fest has just announced via Twitter that the Year of the Dog writer-director will be in town for the fest's opening-night film, Gentlemen Broncos, in which he has a role (and is a producer). He'll be joining the film's writer-director Jared Hess and actor Jemaine Clement.

But wait, there's more. White will return to Austin less than a month later for Austin Film Festival ... or maybe he'll hang out here the whole time, who knows? AFF has posted a fun interview with him that covers screenwriting, film fests, and other topics. No word yet on whether AFF will show any of White's films during the fest -- his screenwriting credits also include The School of Rock, The Good Girl, Nacho Libre and several episodes of Freaks and Geeks. Fortunately, both festivals are at the right time of year for Austin, weather-wise.

Writing about Weird Wednesday last week, especially Richard Rush's film Psych-Out, made me think about the time Rush was in town for some special screenings of his films at Alamo Drafthouse. This was in August 2006 at the old theater on Colorado. I brought my old camera that night and the photos are terribly grainy, but I still like them. At the time, I started to write about the evening, but never got it done (a placeholder was notoriously in the Slackerwood queue for about two years).

Austin's horror fans were either at Alamo Ritz Saturday night, or lamenting how quickly the tickets sold out for a special screening of Night of the Creeps, celebrating its pending release on DVD on October 19. If you weren't there, you missed a great screening, worth even having to wade through crowds of motorcycle enthusiasts and hundreds of bikes revving loudly all night long.

Old-time Alamogoers would've easily noticed a welcome difference from the old location; no external sound bleed at all. Walking to the Alamo, I was nearly deafened by the sound on the streets. Even some of the motorcycle attendees themselves were covering their ears as they walked down Sixth Street. In the bigger theater at the Alamo Ritz, it was a different world.