Day 8 (10/19/2000 )

Well, the film festival really burned me out, so it's taken me a few days to write up this last, rather drab, rather disappointing day.

Mark Brauner, aka Jeffrey Stylus, of LubeTV fame called up and asked what I was seeing in the evening. I had plans to see "Venus Beauty Institute" at the Arbor at 7pm and "Two Family House" at the Paramount at 10:15pm. Mark wanted to catch some shorts at the Ritz in hopes of finding something worthwhile for the LubeTV thing, since they program short films on the show. We decided to hook up at the Driskill after our first screenings, since it's only a block away from the Paramount, and see the late movie together.

At the Arbor, there was a really long line for "cicadas," which I was happy to see and only a few people for "Venus." I saw my friend Jan there who goes to almost every screening in town and is a friend of Harry Knowles. Jan and I chatted about "cicadas" a bit and about "Crouching Tiger..." Then we went in and watched the film.

I met Mark at the Driskill as planned and we had a drink and talked about the films we had seen. They had shown a couple of shorts in the program he viewed that weren't listed as being part of the program and I explained to him how sometimes filmmakers take their work home early because they are leaving town or they have other festivals. This was probably why some other shorts were substituted. One of the shorts he saw that I had seen was "My Old Man," which we both agreed was quite good.

We moseyed over to the Paramount at 10ish and saw a crowd outside including Jan and Harry Knowles. We also saw Barbara and the AFF crew loading up and taking off. After a bit of waiting around for the crowd from the "Slapshot" Q&A to clear, I tried to get in but the front door was locked. A volunteer came over to tell me that there was no screening of "Two Family House," that it moved to the Arbor. I was pissed as this was posted no where. Not on AFF's website (which sucks anyway) and not at the Arbor or even at the Paramount. I got angry and then apologized to the girl because I knew she was a volunteer and had absolutely nothing to do with this fuck up. Jan came over and told me that Harry didn't even think they got the print. So - either the volunteer had been told a lie, had been told TO lie or they moved the screening and told no one.

I'm inclined to believe that they didn't get the print which is really a huge problem. That would mean there were at least two "advanced screenings" promised which did not occur, "Sunset Strip" being the other. Why did these films not play? Whose fuck up is this? What a ridiculous thing to occur. Just another example of how AFF is really a screenwriter's schmoozefest that has absolutely nothing to do with screening good, quality films by interesting and upcoming filmmakers.

Mark and I continued on with our evening enjoying 6th street and some other things which you can read about on Notes from Austin, Volume 2 #34

Until next fest...

peace lodger2000

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