Local Indies

The first thing that struck me when I read about Goliath was the cast, which was full of names familiar to Austin film fans. Writer-director David Zellner has one of the lead roles, and his brother, producer Nathan Zellner, is also in the film. In addition, the list of actors includes Wiley Wiggins (who does so many different things that I don't know how to preface his name), actor/filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, local filmmaker John E. Bryant (whose short Loveolution is premiering at SXSW, and who's also a producer on Baghead), animation expert/filmmaker Bob Sabiston in what may be his first feature-film acting gig, and Austin Film Society programmer Chale Nafus. I don't associate most of these people with acting, but they're all part of the local film community.

The choice of cast made me wonder just who these Zellner guys are, anyway. I've seen some of their short films, the last three of which premiered at Sundance in the last three years. And now in 2008, their feature Goliath also premiered at Sundance, and is making its way to SXSW this week. Not only was I intrigued by the filmmakers, but I thought that I'd be accused of some kind of bias if I interviewed the Duplass brothers and not the Zellner brothers. (Aside: Why don't we have any sister acts in indie filmmaking? Hmm.)

So I emailed a few questions to the Zellners, and here's what they had to say about Goliath.

I vividly remember the screening of The Puffy Chair I attended during SXSW 2005. The brothers who wrote and directed the film, Jay and Mark Duplass -- why did their names sound so familiar? And their mom, who was in the film, handed out buttons with little puffy chairs on them afterwards, and she looked vaguely familiar too. I thought about going to talk to them after the screening, but they were mobbed.

So I called my mom, because I suspected this might be a case of the old familiar "New Orleans has one degree of separation, not six" syndrome. I was right. In fact, my mom had just seen Cindy Duplass over at the grocery store and had heard all about her sons' new movie. Years before, my mom had bugged me over and over again about how I should try to get in touch with one of my little brother's high-school cross-country team buddies who had moved to Austin, but I didn't see why I would want to hang out with one of his bratty, jock-y friends. And now that track-team kid, Jay Duplass, had teamed up with his little brother Mark to make movies, some of which had played Sundance.

I ended up emailing the guys and then meeting them in person in 2006, when they showed The Puffy Chair at St. Edward's University and did a long Q&A about the business of indie filmmaking. We had several things in common: that weird background of both New Orleans and Austin, film geekiness, and a delight in making slightly mean jokes about my brother.

Jay and Mark Duplass will be back in Austin next week for SXSW to show their latest feature, Baghead. The minute I heard the title, I had to wonder if they were inspired by a certain New Orleans sports-based trend that occurred in my childhood. And I was right ... sort of. We did a quick email interview earlier this week about the film.

I wrote an article for Cinematical today about the Kindly Rewind short-film contest that Alamo Drafthouse and AMD are sponsoring. If you have a few minutes and you want some light entertainment, you can't do better than to head over to the Filmmaking Frenzy site and watch some of the Kindly Rewind entries. You don't have to register on the site unless you want to vote for the entries, but voting is a nice way to support the shorts you like: the winner gets a fancy video-editing computer setup from AMD, and the winning shorts will be shown before Be Kind Rewind at original Alamo theaters.

My husband and I watched at least a half-dozen of the shorts this weekend, and caught the first minute or two of a dozen others. I realized, while watching these, what the real star of Kindly Rewind was: the Frost Bank Tower. This iconic building in Austin showed up in almost every short we saw, whether it was as a futuristic building in Blade Runner or as one of the many downtown Austin sites in March of the Penguins. It was also shown to good effect in Koyaanisqatsi.

Austin landmarks are often the best parts of these shorts. One of my favorites so far has been The Blues Brothers, because the film was transposed entirely to Austin. "Ray" isn't Ray Charles in this movie, but Ray Hennig of Heart of Texas Music (who legend claims sold Stevie Ray Vaughan his favorite Fender Strat in 1973). Bob's Country Bunker becomes the Broken Spoke. Other films also use Austin locations well: Nick Robinson's Beastmaster jumps off the Town Lake bridge, the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride are on Capitol of Texas Highway, and one version of Jurassic Park involves the Mangia dinosaur.

But it's the Frost Bank Tower that appears again and again. Is this a subtle message about what we consider iconic in Austin? Or does it just look good on film?

[Photo credit: Mr. Wright on Flickr. Original photo here. Used under terms of Creative Commons license.]

Yesterday, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a Texas law that banned the sale of certain kinds of sex toys. Forbidden Fruit will no longer have to mark some items as "educational models" and others as "novelty items."

And today it is Valentine's Day. (You have to wonder if the date of the federal court ruling was coincidence.) To celebrate hearts and flowers and educational models and novelty toys as well as local filmmaking, here's a clip from the 2002 Austin-made documentary Dildo Diaries, which gave the full low-down on the state law. This clip features an explanation from the late great Molly Ivins, whose columns about this law first introduced me to the bizarre concept of being arrested as a "dildo pusher." Eat your heart out, Warren Chisum.

I was at a party Friday night where somehow I ended up trying to explain what "mumblecore" is (and failing, I suspect) and someone said, "I remember liking this film I saw at Village a few years ago, what was it, Pillow?"

"Dear Pillow," I guessed.

"Yes, what happened to that, is it on DVD?"

"I don't think so," I said. "Too bad, I liked it a lot."

Less than 24 hours after that conversation, Dear Pillow producer Jacob Vaughn posted to his blog, e-Jake, that Dear Pillow will be out on DVD on November 13. How's that for coincidence?

Dear Pillow, which was made in Austin by writer-director Bryan Poyser and producer Vaughan, premiered at Slamdance in 2004, then pla­yed SXSW and a number of other festivals. The filmmakers were nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in the "Someone to Watch" category.

The film sadly never found theatrical distribution (the sexual subject matter might have been a difficult sell), but in the fall of 2004, Alamo Village showed it nightly for about a month, where it built on word-of-mouth.  I remember that my husband and I went to see the film at the end of its run, having to push ourselves because we are not usually 10 pm moviegoers, even though we live around the block from Alamo Village. We were seeing it on the urging of friends (and John Pierson's persuasive article about the film for the Austin Chronicle) and weren't sure what to expect, but the film totally blew me away. I reviewed it later for Celluloid Eyes. [More after the jump.]

Austin is celebrating Home Movie Day this Sunday, August 12, at the Carver Museum's Boyd Vance Theater. From 2 to 6 pm, you can watch other people's home movies, which sounds like a wonderfully voyeuristic experience. You can also bring your own home movies -- which must be on film, not video -- and if the film is in good condition, everyone could be watching what happened that Easter on your grandmother's birthday when you secretly taped a piece of paper with her age onto the back of her blouse. Not that anyone I know would have ever behaved like that. In addition, film experts will be around to offer advice on caring for home movies on film. Admission to the event is free.

I have two shoeboxes full of Super 8 film from my parents and grandparents (luckily, I borrowed my grandparents' film shortly before the post-Katrina floods swamped their house). I had it all transferred to DV, but I've always wanted to watch some of the movies on a projector again. It's not quite the same on TV as it was when we were kids, trying to keep the flimsy screen from falling, and learning the great responsibility of running the projector. The above photo is a screenshot taken from a family home movie at Christmas, I think in 1973, at my aforementioned grandparents' house. At least the groovy outfits are interesting.

If you're interested in learning more about Home Movie Day, News 8 Austin has posted an interview with the event's founder, Snowden Becker.

I'm always so happy when a movie I liked at a film festival finds distribution and plays in Austin, so I can nudge ­all my friends and acquaintances to go see it. And if the film was shot in Austin, that's even better. Last year at Austin Film Festival, I saw the locally produced film ­Chalk, a mockumentary that focused on a school year from the point of view of teachers and administration. I reviewed the film for Cinematical.­ Chalk won AFF's narrative jury prize as well as the audience award. The film landed a distribution deal this year through Morgan Spurlock's ne­w distribution label. And now you can see it here during a weeklong run at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, starting tomorrow, May 18.

For the next week, Chalk has a screen all to itself, with multiple showings per day. Director Mike Akel and co-writer/actor Chris Mass will attend the evening shows on Friday and Saturday along with other cast members and will hold Q&As afterwards. However, the Friday night showings have already sold out (!), as well as the early evening show on Saturday, so you might want to get your ticket now for the late Saturday screening if you want to catch the filmmakers in person.

If you're a teacher, you can show your school ID and get the student discount when you buy a ticket for Chalk at Alamo. If you're not a teacher, I strongly recommend you find one and bring him/her with you to see Chalk. I watched the movie with an audience of Austin teachers who laughed until they cried at school-related in-jokes. So find as many teachers as you can. If you attend an evening show on Thursday, May 24, the filmmakers will be giving away shirts and other stuff to honor Teacher Appreciation Day. Alamo often offers themed menu items to go along with special screenings, but I'm glad that's not happening for Chalk -- would anyone really want to order school cafeteria food? Be glad you can drink a beer and eat pizza while watching these teachers.

The Texas Filmmakers Production Fund (TFPF) annually gives grants to filmmakers around the state, and this year, the total amount to be awarded has doubled. $150,000 in cash awards is budgeted for this ­year, up from $75,000 in 2006. The awards include a new $10,000 travel grant that will be given (not all at once) to filmmakers year-round, which will be handy for Texas filmmakers whose movies are accepted at remote film festivals.

If you're a filmmaker and wondering how to get some of this money for your own specific film or video project, you can attend one of the TFPF workshops taking place in the next couple of months. The Austin Film Society website has all the details, including the application. The deadline for submission is June 1.

Here's a list of last year's TFPF winners if you're curious. I looked at grants from earlier years to see if anyone sounded familiar: previous local or locally connected recipients include Kat Candler for Jumping off Bridges, Emily Hagins (then 12 years old) for Pathogen, Bradley Beesley for Summercamp! (SXSW 2006), Heather Courtney for Letters from the Other Side (SXSW 2006), Nancy Higgins for Viva Les Amis (SXSW Presents 2006), Kyle Henry for Room (Cannes 2005), Jacob Vaughan for Dear Pillow (SXSW 2004) ... and many many more.

Congratulations to Austin filmmaker Steve Collins, who won the Target Filmmaker Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival for his feature Gretchen. IndieWIRE has the details on the award, including a photo of Collins accepting from Virginia Madsen.

Collins' response to the win? "Thank you very much. I'll go shop at Target now!"

I saw Gretchen during its premiere at SXSW earlier this year, and reviewed it for Cinematical. I hope the movie plays in Austin again soon. A few people have asked me how it compares to Welcome to the Dollhouse, which is also about a teenage loser girl, and my embarrassed reply is that I haven't yet seen Welcome to the Dollhouse. I know, I know.

The locally made feature film Gretchen, which premiered at SXSW earlier this year, has been added to the Los Angeles Film Festival lineup. Gretchen was directed by local filmmaker Steve Collins as an expansion of his short film Gretchen and the Night Danger.

I was surprised and pleased by the film about an awkward teenage girl when I saw it at SXSW. I was impressed by the cinematography from the ubiquitous P.J. Raval, as well as the music by Graham Reynolds (who also scored A Scanner Darkly). If you're going to LAFF at the end of June, the film is well worth seeing.

If you're in Austin, you also may get a chance to see Gretchen soon -- I ran into the Screen Door Film guys earlier this week, and they told me that they're planning to host a screening of the movie in the next couple of months.

[via Back to Me]