Local Indies

Austin filmmaker James Christopher is directing Twitchy Dolphin Flix's new mockumentary-style features The XXXX Saga: Rise of the Beaver Slayer and The Porn Movie Massacre (no, they're not pornos). Check Slackerwood for his updates as the production continues.

You see the indie world of making a movie. The truly indie world where you rely on the kindness of strangers and you're often subject to rapid changes of mind and focus on the part of those that are not truly invested in the project as you are. It's one of the hardest jobs of an indie director ... to keep people's internal motivation to work on the project high, knowing that some of the normal motivators of the film industry just aren't there.

We got everyone going this weekend, knowing it would be a fast shoot. Most of us were being pulled in a bunch of different directions for SXSW and we needed to be freed up for that.

The film's diversity of story dynamics is proving to be very interesting. First, we're shooting two films at once, with the sequel (The Porn Movie Massacre) being a very different film from Rise of the Beaver Slayer. The actors are really responding well to the challenge of shooting scenes with completely different tones and beats from one scene to the next. We're tying to do a horror comedy with a lot of gore, but keeping the laughs there. We've got a creepy killer design, some fun ways to dispatch some folks and are even making a joke by having a different actor play the killer in every seen. Still looking for more! So far it's coming together, even if the mask is a miserable thing to wear.

The challenge of Rise of the Beaver Slayer is a little different, in that we're trying to make an over-the-top mockumentary about porn stars, peppered with political commentary and still have some heart. Too often, films with these high-concept setups forget that movies connect to audiences when they are about people. We're doing that by having characters face real problems, challenges and facing human dilemmas, all through the context of making an adult film.

I've been a fan of Austin filmmaker Chris Eska's work since 2007, when his beautifully shot and quietly affecting feature August Evening became one of my favorite Texas films. So I had high hopes for his new feature, the historical drama The Retrieval -- and I'm happy to report that it lived up to my expectations in every way. In a word, The Retrieval is outstanding.

The Retrieval is thematically complex, but the story is deceptively simple. Set during the Civil War, the film follows 13-year-old Will (Ashton Sanders), a fatherless boy who has taken up with a bounty hunter gang. Gang leader Burrell (Bill Oberst Jr.) sends Will on a risky mission to retrieve Nate (Tishuan Scott), a wanted man with a lucrative bounty on his head. To ensure Will's return with Nate, Burrell threatens the boy with death if he doesn't bring back his quarry.

Will and his fellow gang member Marcus (Keston John) find Nate digging graves in a Union graveyard and convince their unwitting prey to follow them back to Burrell's gang, under the ruse that they're leading him to see his dying brother. Along the way, the initially aloof Nate and Will begin to bond, developing an unexpected surrogate father-son relationship.

After several years in the making, Sean Gallagher's Austin-shot film Good Night debuted at SXSW -- find out more about the journey from Gallagher in Elizabeth's interview. The good news is that since this narrative provides glimpses of the past, the filmmaker was able to capture the main characters over a time span that could mirror the fictional narrative.

Good Night revolves around a young twentysomething couple, Leigh (Adriene Mishler) and Winston (Jonny Mars) Rockwall, as they gather with their closest friends to celebrate Leigh's twenty-ninth birthday. The guests enjoy casual conversation as well as controversial and current topics as they enjoy their dinner, until Leigh drops a bomb having a profound effect on them all.  The guests, including Leigh's best friend Alice (Samantha Thomson), all react differently as they process the news. Through voice-overs and flashbacks we learn how each person became connected to Leigh.

Mishler is sweetly exquisite as Leigh, and Mars embraces the complexity of a husband who is frustrated by his inability to solve their problems. Good Night is also strengthened by its talented supporting cast, which includes Chris Doubek, Alex Karpovsky, University of Texas alum Todd Berger (It's a Disaster),  Parisi Fakhri and Jason Newman (The Man From Orlando).

There are a few classic holiday films we like to pull out each year in addition to the Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, such as A Christmas Carol, It's a Wonderful Life and the more modern A Christmas Story. A common thread between these films that has helped make them annual favorites is that they don't focus on the religious or ritual aspects of the holiday, but instead on it as a time for homecomings and shared memories with family and loved ones, friends and neighbors. Soon to join those ranks is When Angels Sing, the adaptation of a Turk Pipkin story by director Tim McCanlies and writer Lou Berney.

Easily the best Christmas movie since 1983's A Christmas Story, When Angels Sing was shot in Austin and features a Who's Who of talent with Texas ties. Stars Harry Connick Jr. and Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights) are joined by Houston-born Chandler Canterbury, Fionnula Flanagan, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Lyle Lovett, Kris Kristofferson, Sara Hickman, Eloise DeJoria, Turk Pipkin and Willie Nelson.

Connick stars as Michael Walker, a college professor and father who refuses to celebrate Christmas due to a tragic accident. When faced with his son giving up on Christmas himself because of another tragedy, Michael is forced to reexamine his own guilty feelings that have made him such a Scrooge.

The Bounceback could have been just another clichéd romantic comedy about angst-filled twentysomethings looking for love. (Okay, let's be honest: they're looking for sex.) But thanks to Austin filmmaker Bryan Poyser's considerable talents -- he graced us with Dear Pillow and Lovers of Hate -- the film is a wryly observant take on relationships and popular culture and a cut above most movies in its genre.

Shot in Austin and awash in River City landmarks and youthful culture, The Bounceback centers on New York City medical student Cathy (Ashley Bell) and her ex-boyfriend Stan (Michael Stahl-David), a wannabe actor currently delivering pizzas in Los Angeles. Both are former Austinites, and when lonely Stan learns that Cathy will visit her friend Kara (Sara Paxton) in Austin for a weekend, he hastily books a flight to Austin also, hoping to cross paths with his ex while partying with his friend (and Kara's former boyfriend) Jeff (Zach Cregger).

If all this sounds like a setup for lots of cutesy romantic semi-hilarity, rest assured that it isn't. Stan's plan for a not-quite-coincidental reunion with Cathy falls apart before he even arrives in Austin; he's so busted when Kara and Jeff see each other at the airport while waiting for Cathy and Stan. Things spiral downward from there; Stan discovers that Jeff has taken up Air Sex (think air guitar, but without guitars and with sex) and seems content to spend his time with an infantile crew of beer-swilling horndog roommates. Serious student Cathy finds that Kara is no more mature than Jeff; her major goal for the weekend is to help Cathy get laid.

Renaissance man Owen Egerton is on fire.

... metaphorically speaking, of course. But the redhead's career has been making sparks in national literary, film and comedy circles recently.

Next month, the Texas State University MFA alum will lead readers through a bizarre apocolypse, filled with Jesus clones, a prophetic hermit crab and a slacker couple who are haunted by ghosts as they wait out their final days on Earth in his latest novel, Everyone Says That at the End of the World.

The Austin-based master multi-tasker also debuted his short film Follow, about one man's dangerous challenge to open a gift by his wife (starring local actor Jonny Mars), this week in the SXSW Film Midnight Shorts collection. Egerton based the film on a short story from his 2007 collection How Best to Avoid Dying.

Egerton and producer Seth Caplan are currently raising production funds for a feature-length version of Follow. I chatted with Egerton recently about writing and his current projects.

Yeah, she loves her gun all right.

Well, not really the gun itself. What the protagonist of Loves Her Gun really loves is the feeling of security and power a gun gives her. She sleeps better at night knowing it's there in case she needs it. She's no gun nut -- she's just wants to stop being afraid. Can't blame her for that, right?

Austin filmmaker Geoff Marslett has delivered a stunning new film with Loves Her Gun, a stylish and captivating mix of two genres: twentysomething angst-fueled indie drama and horrifically timely message film. Plenty of movies have shown us aimless young adults indulging in Austin's slacker milieu, but none do so as tragically as Loves Her Gun. The movie deservedly won the SXSW Louis Black Spirit of Texas Award earlier this week.

The woman who loves her gun is Allie (Trieste Kelly Dunn), a young Brooklynite with no job and no desire to keep dating her annoying boyfriend. After a brutal assault, she ditches her life in New York and hitches a ride to Austin in an RV with her friend Xoe (Ashley Spillers) and Xoe's fellow members of a karate-themed rock band.

Seeing Bastrop State Park after the 2011 wildfires inspired director David Gordon Green to make a movie there, and he already had a title given to him in a dream: Prince Avalanche.  A friend recommended he see an Icelandic film called Either Way, and the concept for this film was found. Prince Avalanche was shot, under the radar, in 16 days at the devastated park.

Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch star as mismatched road workers in Central Texas in 1988, cleaning up after fire has beseiged the area. Rudd's Alvin is uptight and in a long-distance relationship with the sister of Lance (Hirsch). Lance is slightly feckless; Alvin has brought him to this job to help him grow, but they aren't really getting along. They share a tent and are limited to the company of one another, except for the few times they are visited by a friendly older truck driver (Lance LeGault in his final film role).

Their solitude is punctuated by a score from David Wingo and Explosions in the Sky and the hauntingly beautiful broken landscape surrounding them. Lance and Alvin complete repetitive tasks as we learn more about them: painting lines on the road, installing posts on the side of the road, and such.

You never think about getting older when you're younger. But before you know it creeps up on you, and you're there already.
-- Robert Mainor, Before You Know It

Old age can be hard enough for anyone lucky enough to reach that stage of life; imagine how much more difficult it can be for gay people in a society that hasn't fully accepted them.

The lives of senior citizens in the LGBTQ community are the subject of Before You Know It, a deeply moving documentary that presents the often unhappy and seldom-discussed realities of being elderly and gay. Austin filmmaker PJ Raval's ambitious film introduces us to three elderly gay men who lead disparate lives, and their stories tell us much about a largely ignored segment of our society.

The men are all gay, but have little else in common. Dennis Creamer is a widower who did not come out until his seventies, after his wife died. He divides his time between a Florida trailer park and Rainbow Vista, an LGBTQ senior living facility in Portland. Often lonely and looking for a new partner, Creamer sometimes wears women's clothing and goes by the name Dee, which he does openly at Rainbow Vista and on gay cruises and vacations.

This year's SXSW Film Festival includes many movies with Austin connections, but perhaps none that can be considered so completely Austintacious as director Josh Johnson's labor of love, Rewind This!  After three years of work alongside Christopher Palmer and Carolee Mitchell, the documentary about VHS premiered to a packed house at the Paramount on Monday.

Rewind This! is one of the most entertaining documentaries I've seen, detailing the birth and rise of home video recording technology in both VHS and Betamax formats and their impact on the filmmaking industry. Johnson, Palmer and Mitchell shot thousands of hours of footage with interview subjects like Lloyd Kaufman, Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Charles Band, Jason Eisener (Hobo With a Shotgun) and Cassandra Peterson (Elvira), and cut the material down to a feature-length exploration that blends these among with many others into a single cohesive narrative voice.

In addition to the big names, local personalities like Alamo programmers Zack Carlson, Lars Nilsen and Brian Kelley, and film critics like Drew McWeeny of Hitfix and Twitch Film's Todd Brown provide their insights and anecdotes. From flea-market shopping to rummaging through video-store back rooms to expansive home collections, Rewind This! explores titles that are unavailable on any other format, titles that were produced only on VHS, and titles that are noteworthy only for their actual titles or box art.

It's a fascinating rabbit hole to jump into, accompanied by a driving score from Josh Freda that brings to mind many titles from the 1980s glory days of VHS. There is no way you could walk out of this film without wanting in some corner of your mind to go digging through a box or library somewhere to try and find one of the many crazy movies mentioned in Rewind This!  

Austin connections: As aforementioned, a number of Austin film personalities are featured in the documentary, plus local stores Vulcan Video and I Luv Video, and shots of Alamo Drafthouse. Johnson lives in Austin, and Palmer and Mitchell are former Austinites.

Rewind This! screens again on Wednesday, March 13 at 9 pm at Violet Crown 1&2, and on Saturday, March 16 at 1:30 pm at Topfer Theater at ZACH.