Day 1 (10/12/2000 )

Thursday at lunchtime, I went down to the Omni to pick up my badge for AFF. Everything about this, except for parking, went pretty much as expected. Parking was a little harder than I anticipated, but that's also to be expected in Austin. I looked around in the Omni Hotel, but saw no recognizable celebs.

Jeffery Stylus, Brandon Howe, Lodger, and John Christensen celebrate at The Driskoll Bar.

John Christensen sent me an e-mail saying he was back in town and going to AFF so I called him and we caught up a bit and decided to hook up for "Shadow of the Vampire." John likes to hang out at the Driskoll Hotel bar during the fest, and it is a pretty good place to sightsee.

I went to "Black Milk" at 7 at the Dobie. There were maybe 20 people there. The film was preceded by a short film called "Endgame" which was introduced by it's maker. This short was pretty typical. Nothing to write home about.

"Black Milk," which had no filmmaker in attendance, began directly after the short and the two film were conjoined with a missplice. Whoever edited the short to the feature did it incorrectly, so "Black Milk" started with the bottom half of the picture at the top of the screen. Sigh. Why is it that the Dobie cannot ever - EVER - do anything right during AFF screenings? Why can't we have these screenings at a better venue? Someplace with a better staff? Oh, I don't know... The Alamo Drafthouse perhaps.

Remember this name!

Time for a rant: The people at AFF must have something against The Alamo because they do not show films there. This is just fucking stupid, plain and simple. If I want to see another film screened at the Dobie, I will think twice. At least the people at the Alamo give a fuck about what they show. Hmmm... Maybe they're the ones who don't want to associate with AFF. Tim League, owner of the Alamo, is pretty wise. Maybe he realizes he's dealing with fucking amateur at AFF who don't give a fuck about the product that they show and would just rather not deal with the hassle. While I am no big fan of Cinematexas (mainly because it is put together by people associated with Cinemaker Co-op), at least they give a rat's ass about their festival's films. Maybe that's why Alamo does Cinematexas rather than AFF. In the harshest reality, AFF is a giddy, overtly feminine, schmooz fest that isn't worth the fucking money.

Anyway - back to the Dobie. After they got the film framed correctly, which included another 5 minutes after the initial misframe to get the subtitles on the screen correctly, the film broke during the screening no less than 3 times. The sweet, cute, young and well-spoken house manager came in during one of these impromptu intermissions to let us know the problem was "static" on the print. (Probably because this piece of dung film was shipped from Greece and hadn't been played since it was previewed to boos there last year). Still, with 4 AFF volunteers at the site and only 20 people in the audience to service, one of them could have sat in the booth and kept an eye on the print so that it ran smoothly.

After this, I went to the Paramount for "Shadow of the Vampire." Sure enough, walking to the lines for the film, I met up with John Christensen and Jeffrey Stylus (aka Mark Brauner) of "LubeTV" fame. John and I chatted for a bit and he had numerous and amusing stories to tell from the set of "Jesse James," now known as "American Outlaws." John is not only an extra in the film but doing some crew work as well. Apparently during the night at the set some cows from a neighboring farm came and chewed up some cables. I bet the producers didn't budget for that! John has spent some nights at the set making sure all is good. He also told a story of meeting up with a wild boar out in the country at night during one of these stays. Weird tales from location shoots.

John is also going to do some behind-the-scenes work on "The New Guy," a teen comedy filming currently here. John's hoping to land the plum assignment of escorting Meatloaf around town. Dude! Party! DJ Qualls, the nerdy guy from "Road Trip," who is starring in "The New Guy," has invited me on the set and now that I know Johnny, who knows his ins-and-outs around a set, I just might take DJ up on the offer.

I also ran into Kelly O'Hare, my favorite local actor, who was continuing his part-time gig as a bartender for the Paramount. Kelly shot a short film with Tim the Wonder Horse recently. I was allowed to visit that set and even helped Kelly with some body make-up, a rare treat for me!

I also was greeted by David Bilow, who shot "Rector" with John and myself was also hanging about. David is doing some volunteer work for AFF. He thought he was going to get to chauffeur Fred Williamson around town but that fell through. David did, at least, get to say hi to the actor/filmmaker. David is also doing some volunteer work in projection for AFF. I'm sure he had nothing to do with the numerous print scratches and platter marks that marred the otherwise pristine print of "Shadow of the Vampire."

Director Elias Merhige was in attendance as was actor Cary Elwes of the film. They did a Q&A after the screening. I wanted to ask Merhige if he was pissed off that AFF had destroyed yet another print before a screening, but didn't.

The Q&A was moderated by the guy who is from L.A. which AFF has hired to procure studio releases for them. That's right, we don't even have an Austin person working on this for us, AFF went to L.A. Last year AFF had one person to get together all films for screenings, competition and advanced studio fare. This year, they went outside for this latter process. Yet another reason to deride them.

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