Local Indies

In the days before YouTube or viral Internet videos, people were passing around third-rate copies on videotape of the outtakes of a Winnebago commercial featuring one Jack Rebney, whose gift for colorful profanity under pressure was immense. Hearing his outbursts can be oddly uplifting if you're having a bad day yourself. Local filmmaker Ben Steinbauer, intrigued by the lasting popularity of the "Winnebago Man" video, set out to find Rebney and get the whole story behind the videotape in the documentary Winnebago Man.

Winnebago Man premiered at SXSW in 2009 and has enjoyed a fair amount of popularity since then. Don Clinchy calls it "funny and sometimes poignant" in his review. The movie won several prizes on the film-fest circuit, as well as the Austin Film Critics Association award for Best Austin Film in 2010. One of Rebney's catch phrases from the video, "Will you do me a kindness?" turns up frequently in the oddest places ... apparently one of the characters in the recently released movie Crazy. Stupid. Love says it.

If you haven't yet seen Winnebago Man, now's your chance. SnagFilms is making the documentary available to watch online for free for the next two weeks -- until August 19 -- as part of their SummerFest lineup. You can watch the film from the SnagFilms website, on Hulu, on the SnagFilms iPad app ... and I've embedded it below so you don't even have to leave this page. I especially recommend this movie after a difficult day at the office, where you can hear Rebney say all the things you wish you could, and better.

To flesh out a review, a film critic sometimes relies on production notes for a synopsis, short biographies of cast and crew members and production details that readers might find interesting. These notes usually are very concise, running no more than a few pages.

And then there are the production notes for Terrence Malick's sprawling and much anticipated new movie, The Tree of Life. If you're familiar with Malick, it may not surprise you that The Tree of Life's production notes are 45 pages long. With their lengthy expositions about the film's genesis and meaning, even the production notes for this most Malick of Malick films are themselves very, uh, Malick. (Much as I adore Malick's work, I did not read all 45 pages.)

Not that being very Malick is a bad thing, of course, especially if we define "Malick" to mean "laden with sumptuous imagery and thought-provoking ideas." And The Tree of Life certainly is thought provoking; had I not found the production notes' ponderous content to be a perfect metaphor for this exceedingly ponderous and metaphorical film, I might have opened this review with a paragraph containing only one word: "Hmm."

When I originally wrote about Austin and Texas films playing at Cannes this year, I had no idea that two of them would walk away with major awards. It has been a great year for Texas movies at the French festival.

The biggest news is that Terrence Malick's film The Tree of Life took home the Palme D'Or, the grand prize of the entire festival. The Smithville-shot movie opens in Austin on June 3 -- however, if you want to see it earlier, Austin Film Society is hosting a special screening and benefit reception on Tuesday, May 31 at the Paramount.

In addition, Austin filmmaker Jeff Nichols' movie Take Shelter won the Grand Prize in the Critics' Week program ... and in that same category, Nichols also won the screenwriting award for his film. Take Shelter premiered at Cannes this year and will get a theatrical release in the fall from Sony Picture Classics ... no word yet on when we'll see it in Austin. Both Take Shelter and The Tree of Life star Jessica Chastain, who will be attending the AFS screening of Malick's film next week.

Other Cannes coverage and news:

• Charles Ealy at the Austin American-Statesman has a good round-up of all the Austin folks at Cannes this year. 
• Ealy also reminds us that even a Woody Allen movie can have Texas ties. Allen's latest film, Midnight in Paris, which played Cannes (and will open in Austin on June 10), stars UT alum and Dallas native Owen Wilson.

I came of age in the early 1980s, but feel no nostalgia for the era. From its anti-government politics to its greed-fueled economic ethos to its mostly insipid popular culture, the decade of Ronald Reagan, Madonna and Dallas wasn't exactly America's finest hour. Thirty years later, sentiments like "government is the problem" and soulless techno-pop like "Rock the Casbah" are hardly the stuff of fond memories. (That is, at least for those of us who so wish we'd come of age during America's coolest decade, the 1960s.)

That said, I do enjoy some modern cinematic takes on the Eighties; it's interesting to see the era filtered through various filmmakers' visions, even if their sentiments are more nostalgic than mine. I particularly enjoy films that regard Eighties culture with a mixture of warm fuzziness and well deserved mockery.

A case in point is Skateland, a pleasantly entertaining story about coming of age in a small Texas town in 1983. The film sets an oft-told tale of dawning adulthood and family turmoil against an authentic backdrop of, well, 1983. (Think Camaros, skin-tight jeans and music stores -- remember those? -- in shopping malls. 'Nuff said.)

Skateland's protagonist is 19-year-old Ritchie Wheeler (Shiloh Fernandez), manager of his town's once-popular but now fading roller rink. Although he toys with a writing career (the awards on his bedroom wall attest to his talent), Ritchie is mostly content to work at his dead-end job, party with his friends and maintain a halfhearted relationship with his friend Michelle (Ashley Greene).

Well. Leave it to Alamo Drafthouse to rework the alphabet in a twisted and kid-unfriendly way. Drafthouse Films is teaming up with Magnet Releasing and Timpson Films on an anthology movie that will consist of 26 short films, each of which will feature death -- as the press release puts it, "Death in all its vicious wonder and brutal beauty." Each short film will represent a letter of the alphabet -- you probably already guessed that -- and will be directed by a different filmmaker.

The filmmakers for the 26 shorts in The ABCs of Death have not all been confirmed yet, but cover quite an international range (they need more than two female directors, though, please). If you are a frequent Fantastic Fest-goer, many of the names will probably sound quite familiar to you, even though none so far are Austinites. A full list is after the jump.

Alamo Drafthouse's Tim League and New Zealander Ant Timpson are producing The ABCs of Death. They'll start shooting in June and plan to finish next January, which makes me wonder if we'll see it in the SXFantastic section of SXSW in 2012.

One of the filmmakers might not be a familiar name: The producers plan to hold a competition to find a new director to make one of the short films in the anthology. We'll post more information about this as soon as it's available. You can also keep an eye on the movie's website.

The Los Angeles Film Festival has a heavy dose of Austin in its lineup this year. Not only that, but I've counted at least three films involving local actor John Merriman (pictured above with Kerri Lendo at AFF 2010). Is there some sort of conspiracy afoot? Is he becoming the Austin version of Dick Miller? Along with the films playing at LAFF, I've been on set visits this year for two upcoming movies with Merriman in them, and he was in one of the SXSW bumpers this year. I think someone needs to look into this before something tragic -- or very funny -- happens.

Merriman aside, here are the Austin-connected features and shorts popping up all over LAFF in June:

• In the narrative competition, the latest feature from Mike Akel (Chalk), An Ordinary Family, is premiering. The locally shot movie is set at a family reunion where one man shows up with his new boyfriend. The cast includes Chalk cast members Troy and Janelle Schremmer, The Happy Poet filmmaker/actor Paul Gordon and yes, Mr. Merriman.
• Akel's competition in this category includes a film from Steve Collins, the former Austinite whose previous feature, Gretchen, won him the LAFF Target Filmmaker Award in 2006. You Hurt My Feelings, also havings its world premiere at LAFF, is about a man who becomes a nanny to show his ex-girlfriend that he would make a good father. The leads are three actors who starred in Gretchen -- Courtney Davis, Macon Blair and ... John Merriman. You Hurt My Feelings is produced by Anish Savjani, who produced Gretchen as well as a number of other Austin films.

Food trucks and trailers are increasingly popular in Austin these days, serving everything from traditional tacos to kimchi fries to frozen chocolate-dipped bananas. Local filmmaker Robert Lemon, who is also a PhD student in geography at The University of Texas, compares and contrasts two very different mobile food vendors in the short documentary ¿Tacos or Tacos?, which played Cine Las Americas this week and will screen at the Hill Country Film Festival tomorrow.

The documentary focuses on Mighty Cone on South Congress and Tortas El Guero on Cameron Road. One serves gourmet meats and snacks in paper snow-cones, parked in a trendy lot devoted to food trailers; the other serves  Mexico City-style tortas and tacos from a converted school bus next to a car wash. Lemon shows up on camera discussing the Austin mobile food culture and trying some of the wares from the two vendors. In addition, he interviews not only the managers/owners of the trailers but also some of the patrons.

One of the points the documentary makes is that the two different trucks reflect the culture of their surrounding community, and the way that food is important to people, especially people far from their hometown. The interviews and discussions around Tortas El Guero are especially good.

Richard Linklater may not be there this year to scare European journalists with his "demonic gestures" (aka the "Hook 'em" sign) but Cannes Film Festival is going to have some excellent Texas and even Austin representation in May. I mentioned one short film last week but I keep hearing more and better news.

Here's what I have so far -- feel free to comment if I missed anything. I have no clue yet whether any of the local filmmakers/writers mentioned below will actually travel to France for the festival ... I just hope the movies come back here so I can see them (if I haven't already).

• The most obvious Central Texas movie at Cannes will be The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick's latest film, which we will hopefully see in Austin starting on June 4. The Tree of Life is one of the features in the main Cannes competition, up against new films from Pedro Almodovar, Takashi Miike and Lars von Trier, among others.
• Austin filmmaker Jeff Nichols' latest film, Take Shelter, will screen as part of the Critics Week competition at Cannes. You may recall that Take Shelter premiered at Sundance this year, although it hasn't yet screened here in Austin. Another Texas connection in the Critics Week lineup is a special screening of Walk Away Renee, directed by Houston filmmaker Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation).
• The Directors Fortnight at Cannes will include short film Fourplay: Tampa, directed by former Austinite Kyle Henry and written by still-an-Austinite (I hope) Carlos Trevino. It's one of only three American films in the Directors Fortnight this year. The short is part of a series that was awarded Texas Filmmakers Production Fund grants in 2009 and 2010.

Please welcome our guest contributor Peter Martin of Twitch and Dallas Film Now (and until lately, Cinematical), who caught a few Austin-connected films at the Dallas International Film Festival this year.

The fifth edition of the Dallas International Film Festival (Dallas IFF) concluded on Sunday, bringing an end to ten days of screenings and parties, and raising once again the eternal question: What does this mean for Austin?

In brief, we could say: Very little. Born in mid-2006 with the promise (and potential) of becoming a potent in-state rival to SXSW, thanks in part to the instant name recognition bestowed by its partnership with AFI, Dallas IFF has, instead, become pretty much the film festival that Dallas needs and deserves, showcasing regional filmmakers side by side with star-studded premieres sure to draw coverage from local broadcast and print outlets, and giving members of the city's social elite a reason to dress up and show off, while also boasting as many or more international titles than SXSW usually includes.

Romantic thriller Apart had its world premiere at SXSW earlier this month, and will be playing in competition at the Dallas International Film Festival on April 3 and 5. I interviewed star Josh Danziger and writer/director Aaron Rottinghaus while they were in Austin to promote the movie (read my review for more details).

But before I get into my conversation with Rottinghaus, allow me to take a moment to share what actress Joey Lauren Adams had to say, when I spent a few minutes chatting with her. Adams (Chasing Amy) hired Rottinghaus as an editor on her writing/directorial debut Come Early Morning, which Austin Film Festival in 2006 after a Sundance premiere earlier that year.

"In the process of editing [Come Early Morning], we became friends and he went above in beyond in helping me with my project," Adams told me. So she returned the favor to take a small but significant role in Apart.

"Once he gave me that first bit of direction, he was really good. And all at once he was my director and I was his actor, and I trust him. Aaron had a vision, whether you liked the film or not, and it was very thought out and very detailed. He did a great job on it, and he stuck with it." Would Adams work with Rottinghaus again? "In a heartbeat. As a director, or an editor."