Austin Film Festival 2000

Day 3 (10/14/2000 )

After an extreme day like yesterday, it's only typical that today be very mellow. Of course, I was hung over and Web and I had been together for several hours and we began to grate on each other's nerves. We got along okay, but I'm never a good second date. We worked on the site in the afternoon but had a lot of technical difficulties and that always makes me pissy. Eventually, we gave up and decided to eat lunch at Baby Acapulcos.

There were two parties at 5pm, the conference Wrap at Elements and the Variety Party at the Driskill. Since the latter had free cocktails, I opted for this one. A more stuffy and droll gathering could not be imagined. The place was full of schmoozers and well dressed types while I had on jean shorts and a T-shirt and had colored my hair blue. I got some weird looks.

Lodger tells Brandon Howe what he thought of his perfomance in cicadas. (Notice the Thumb poninting up!)

I saw Courtney Davis, AFF Competition Film Programmer, at the entrance to the hotel and she barely acknowledged me. I don't think she was upset with me, but who knows. She looked pretty wrecked; the days of partying have taken a toll on her! Inside was Hall Hood and his girlfriend Cindy Incidentally, who helped with film selection. We talked about "Black Milk," which Hall liked and chatted for a bit. We also talked to AFF volunteer David Bilow and I met his girlfriend Shannon who worked on "Daydream." She was pretty distant. And, of course, we saw Bob Ray, "Rock Opera" raconteur, who was the only person there as dressed down as I was, I believe. Bob introduced me to James Crowley, the director of "The Journeyman," a local film that I've heard about. He is in post on the film right now, I believe.

Cindy, Courtney Davis, AFF Competition Film Programmer and Lodger discuss best bets for upcoming films.

When the Variety Party started to get too corporate, we headed down to the Paramount to see the new David Mamet thing, "State and Main." This is a comedy about, ugh, filmmaking, but at least it's full of wry Mametian dialogue.

After this, we swooped up north to the Arbor to check out "Billy Elliot". This is a British film that has been getting a lot of buzz and deservedly so. But the Arbor was a chaotic mess as usual. There was a Paul Mazursky screening with Q&A prior to the showing and it did not let out until well after 10. No one came through the line and explained this to the crowd. No one kept us informed of what was going on. The numerous people waiting in line to see "Billy Elliot" just had to stand in the Texas nighttime humidity (they line up outdoors, of course) and wait and wait and wait. It was really poor of AFF to allow this to happen. Don't they have volunteers or house managers or something? The only thing that made the whole event tolerable was a cute young man who kept vibeing me while we stood in line. He was adorable and had that mussed hair look of casual abandon that takes hours to achieve. He couldn't stop looking at me. That rocked.

Because "Billy Elliot" started so late, we didn't get out of the screening until almost one. By this time it was too late to get to Red Eyed Fly and check out the "Rock Opera" screening party. The Fuckemos were playing and it was one of the things I was really looking forward to this weekend. But if we had tried to get downtown, parked and walked to the Fly and gotten in, it would have been well after one and we would have missed most of the Fuck's set anyway. We opted to go home instead and eat leftovers and watch "The Corndog Man."

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