I went downtown and parked by the Omni. It seemed dead downtown. It was a pretty dreary Sunday. Went upstairs at the Omni and there was no one around. There were a group of women talking and looking at a schedule on the table, so I grabbed a schedule and saw that they had moved “Manic” from the Omni to the Paramount after 7:00 showing of “Roger Dodger.” I wanted to see this film, so I decided to skip “Secretary” and see both films at the Paramount. “Secretary” is opening at the Dobie soon anyway.

The ladies were trying to decide what to go and see. They said something about there being a long line at the Paramount, but I figured with 1,400 seats and me liking to sit in the front row, it would be okay. I noticed that “Easy Listening,” my favorite competition film, was playing at the Dobie at 7, so I excused myself for eavesdropping and suggested it to the ladies. When I started talking to them I noticed that it was actually an older woman with two younger girls, high school aged or so. They told me that they were planning on seeing that film later on and thanked me for the suggestion. They also seemed pretty intent on seeing “Secretary.”

Walking to the Paramount, I noticed Marjorie Baumgarten, a critic for the Austin Chronicle walking somewhat ahead of me. Marjorie is always fairly easy to spot because she usually wears a scarf on her head. I thought I saw Chris Garcia of the Austin-American Statesman too. That made me think that I should catch up with him and ask him what he thought of “The Safety of Objects.” I assume he would hate it and then we could have a catfight right on South Congress! One of my fondest memories of going to Park City (Sundance/Slamdance) in 2000 is seeing Chris at a party and telling him that me and my friends had had a good laugh reading his “Magnolia” review. When he asked me why, I told him it was a masterpiece. He disagreed. As he had suggested in his review, he thought it was terrible. I think time has proved me to be right on that one!

Got to the Paramount and it was busy but not packed. Plenty of seats were available. Walking down the aisle, I tripped over a guy talking on a cell phone and excused myself. It was J.H. He looked at me and I at he - and we both laughed. I’m bumping into him everywhere.

I also saw Martin of cable TV’s “The Reel Deal” in the audience and the African-American woman with the lighted pen who had sat near me a couple nights previous was also in my row with the same damn pen!

For some reason, maybe because one of the stars of the film was in attendance, there were lotsa people with cameras and even a couple of people with video cameras. The cameramen with video kept taking shots of the crowd. One of them even got up on the stage at the Paramount to get a crowd shot and was promptly shoo-ed off by someone who came out from backstage.

That reminded me that the guys who made the “Gaydar” short were telling me that when their short debuted at the Dobie. Some people with a video camera were shooting their reactions as their filmed played and was shooting them in the lobby when they were meeting the audience after the film. It was during what turned out to be some sort of poorly organized Q&A session after the shorts. (They thought AFF should have had a moderator and that things should have been better organized). Anyway, they thought people seemed afraid to come and talk to them so they finally asked the people filming who they were and why they were filming them. The people said that they had met them previously and thought that they might want to capture the debut of their film on video, so they popped the tape out of the camera and gave it to them. The “Gaydar” filmmakers had no idea who they were.

Anyway, all these camerapeople seemed like much ado about nothing. It was like some sort of false contrived media circus, some sort of weird Warholian “You Are the Show” idea that hadn’t been au currant since 1968.

Some guy from KLBJ introduced the film’s director and star Elizabeth Berkely and they came out and did an introduction. The director said that he was nervous to see what kinda of reaction he got to the film on this night because, “This is Austin, a serious film crowd.”

The trailers for AFF, which are all people pitching to the same supposed film executive type, on both films this evening were the one about the lifeguard going to Afghanistan to be a spy and teach bikini waxing to the native women. Did I tell you about the one the other night that was the old man pitching “Welcome Back Kotter, Again?” Where Horshack becomes a spy? I also noticed that the trailer had no credits, only several festival sponsors listed. Maybe that’s why the credits are in the film program.

This guy from KLBJ, I think his name was Chris Steele, came back out after the movie and brought back Berkley and the director, Dylan Kidd. Although he asked a few interesting questions, the KLBJ guy thought he was doing some kind of profound film interview and he really did not know what the fuck he was talking about. He must have chatted with the star and director for 20 minutes before he gave anyone in the audience a chance to ask any questions. It sucked.

Kidd told how the film got made. It was virtually a dead project and as a resident of L.A. (he worked at a video store), he started keeping a copy of the script nearby hoping he would run into a star that he considered useable for the project. He was going to cold call them in public and hand out his script. One day he saw Campbell Scott at a coffee shop and a light went off. He worked up his courage and approached the actor. Scott read the script and came on board. After that, everything fell into place. Scott even brought the producers to the project and got Isabella Rosellini involved.

Went outside between movies and talked to my friend Jan. some young guy was also talking to her and we talked about “The Safety of Objects” and other films in the festival. I saw Ryan Williams and he was in a really cute striped shirt, but I didn’t catch his eye to say hi. I also saw Barbara Morgan, the AFF Executive Director but I don’t think she noticed me (I didn’t have any mascara gobbed on).

One thing that bothered me: The Paramount had the balcony closed off. Why? Why would you do that? The Paramount is a beautiful theater and one of the few screening facilities left in this great nation that has a balcony. There are visitors to Austin who live in cities that do not have theaters like the Paramount and have never seen a film from the balcony before in their lives. Don’t shut them out of this awesome experience. Keep the balcony open!

A nice girl at the bar, I think her name was Julie waited on me and she looked kinda familiar. I told her so and she said that she thought she met me through my friend Kelly. (He used to work at the Paramount and is in L.A. now with his friends Rich and Adam. Adam also worked at the Paramount). I asked her if she had heard from Kelly lately and she said no but Adam had called her a few weeks before and everything seemed to be going okay for them out there. I really need to shoot them an e-mail and check up on them.

“Manic” started with a pretty small crowd attending and no filmmakers or anything in attendance. It was a pretty depressing movie. I was going to go to the Driskoll but I was in such a depressed mood that I decided against it. I had thought about going to Elysium for Resurrection Sunday but then I thought against it. I really needed to go home and start writing. I had a 10am sneak at the Dobie the next morning.

Also, I was kinda depressed about the festival really being over, or at least the party part of it. After the Dobie sneak, I would have to go back to my regular day job and that means that for 8 hours a day, I’m not lodger anymore. I’m just a schmuck working for a living. No more schmoozing, no more meeting cool filmmakers, no more hanging out at the Driskoll to closing time. Just watching movies, writing and working. That prospect did not excite me.

Lodger2002 @ AFF2002