The UT game against Texas Tech was a blowout. I thought maybe Tech would be the first team to give Vince Young and the boys a run for there money but it was not to be. I gave up on watching the game in the second quarter and did some writing and finally finished reading Douglas Coupland's "Girlfriend in a Coma" for the first time. What a great book. It reminded me so much of my favorite book of all time, Kurt Vonnegut's "Slapstick." I think Coupland and Vonnie have a lot in common with the obvious difference being that Vonnegut's bleak hopelessness of the 70's has been replaced with Coupland's bleak hopefulness of the 90's. The end of "Girlfriend in a Coma" is perhaps the most optimistic and life-affirming end of a novel I've read since, well... Coupland's "Generation X."

Anyway, the game ended that's when I decided to head to the IMAX. It suddenly hit me that traffic in the area was going to be a nightmare since the football stadium is only about 5 blocks from the Bob Bullock State History Museum where the IMAX theater is located. I left a little early to be on the safe side. But traffic wasn't to busy until I was just a block away and then it was a nightmare of clogged lanes and massive foot traffic. At least there were a lot of cute young guys walking around all hooping and hollering in the post- coital glow of male-bonding via football comradery. I sat in my car for about 20 minutes but at least I had my Belle and Sebastian and Ric Ocasek to sing along with.

It was easy to find a parking place near the museum because everyone else was leaving when I was just getting there. I parked, walked about a block and headed in the museum's IMAX entrance. I've only seen one IMAX movie here, "Space Station Houston," and that has been about two or three years ago. I wanted to come see the IMAX "Polar Express" here but never got around to it.

I had been talking to Johnny about the screen and wondering just how curved it was and how weird a regular film would look on it. The screen is so huge, would it be just a tiny little square in the massive IMAX screen? Would it look funny because of the curve of the screen? Would they have a 35mm projector or would it be a video thing? I remembered last year they had honored Barry Levinson and shown his film "Liberty Heights" in the IMAX and I didn't go because I'd already seen that film. If they had shown my favorite Levinson work, "Avalon," I might have went.

I got into the IMAX and walking up the stairs into the theater, I could see that the huge screen was not curved much at all; this was going to be an excellent place to see a film. I remembered the seating was good and comfortable with big comfy chairs and lots of leg room in a "stadium seating" style arrangement. There is also lots of seating so the house can accommodate a fairly large crowd. And since the don't allow food and drinks, the place looks brand new and is very clean. Elegant is a word that comes to mind. This beautiful theater's charm was enhanced by the wonderful new agey, keyboard oriented, electronica music that was playing.

I sat in the third row. There was a microphone in the front center and it was easy to find the middle of the theater thanks to this. I was still a little early and as the start time of the movie neared, more and more people came in and sat around me. A young college aged couple sat directly behind me and the guy kept kicking my chair so much that I finally had to turn around and shoot him a nasty look. "Sorry," he intoned. If he knew he was doing it why the fuck did I have to seem like an asshole to make him stop? The more I see movies with people the more misanthropic I become! His girlfriend was an idiot and proved it every time she opened her mouth. I thought about moving and wished I had when the movie was on because they whispered to each other incessantly throughout the show.

A cute young man who was had some sort of title with AFF came out and introduced the producers who also had the film "The Ice Harvest" in the festival and it had screened the night before. They said they would do a Q&A after the film. The left to applause and the lights dimmed and the AFF trailer "Indians vs. Vikings" began to play but it was really shaky. The lights came up and a "canned" announcement about "experiencing technical difficulties" played evoking a bit of giggling. The delay lasted only seconds and the filmed intro continued without problems.

The Q&A after the film was interesting and enlightening but you could tell by the audience's questions that they felt as I did, that the film didn't quite work in conveying everything that the source novel sure must have to offer. The producers were quite open and honest about anything they were asked while trying to retain a positive light, of course. They told us that Gere's involvement helped to greenlight the film. That the teenage male actor in the film who play's Gere's son was, in fact, filmmaker Anthony Minghella's son. That the girl lived in a foreign country (was it Costa Rica?) and that they had seen a tape of her and noticed the resemblance to Juliet Binoche, who had already been cast and that she was a very good little actress; which, in fact, she is.

We were asked to exit the theater at the top of the room. While I was walking, my cellie vibed and it was John telling me he was close by. I went out to get back in line for "Brick" and I saw my friend Jan waiting in line for it as well. Jan has a "Film Pass" rather than a "badge" and she is usually the first in line but she was at the back of the line. But, also, she was facing the wrong was, as was the entire group in front of/behind her. We chatted for a bit and she told me that they had had them line up that way. It seemed weird. We made idle chitchat about how they were "quarantined" and our usual talk about what movies we had seen or were going to see before I went in using my ever- impressive badge to cut in line.

Inside the IMAX, the intermission music had changed from a new agey sound to more of a smooth jazz sound. In other words, there were horns involved.

The guys behind me, who seemed to be college aged were talking and one sounded like what Johnny and I would call "a real girl." By that I mean, he sounded obviously gay. Perhaps I am not the only Joey Gordon-Leavitt fan in the audience, I thought to myself smiling. One of his friends was discussing "Bee Season" and talking a lot about the use of religion in the film. He mentioned that Gere's character, who is a Jewish theologian in the movie, was actually a Rabbi in book. He felt that the man to be cast in the role was Hank Azaria and I thought that was a very clever and interesting idea. He seemed quite intelligent but he was surrounded by some idiot females who had the most inane conversation. I have no idea what it was about because my brain just automatically blocked it out in an act of desperate self-preservation. I remembered the chatty college students sitting behind me before and almost moved but Johnny came in and sat down and we decided to stay. I had sat about 2 rows further back from the previous movie because the screen was so huge and the 35mm projection on the screen was quite impressive. It took up nearly the whole screen.

John told me he had parked in the garage because it was free after 5pm. I made a mental note of that. It's good to know where any free parking is in Austin.

Phil Scanlan, the AFF Film Programmer for Advanced Screenings came out and told us there would be a Q&A with the director after the film and indeed there was. But the Q&A was marred by Scanlan's rambling verbosity. I've seen Phil do Q&A's before, in fact he did one after "Shopgirl" the other night, but I've never seen him seem so scatterbrained and stammering so much. It was really annoying. The guy ahead of me even shouted, "You talk too much," which was true but also quite disrespectful.

Rian (pronounced Ryan) Johnson mentioned Dashiell Hammett as an inspiration and freely admitted his affinity for Lynch when answering questions from the audience. I liked him much more than I liked his film and he was quite kind to everyone who asked questions, including the meandering Scanlan.

After the show, Johnny and I headed to Pluckers and ate a late dinner. There were lots and lots of cute college hottie boys there as is usually the case. I noticed on one of the many TV's on a sport station in the place that the Astros had lost the first game of the World Series. I had forgotten about the game and still feel bad about the Series taking place during the same week as AFF.

We had a really good time at Pluckers and took our time eating. One of our favorite waitresses, Kristen, came out and was talking to us. She's really pretty, blonde college girl, sweet and always says hello to us if she is there. We mentioned that they were out of onion rings when we ordered and John was pretty disappointed about that and, when we were about to leave, she brought us a to go order of them. She said that had just finished making them. I thought that was really sweet of her.

Oh! I forgot to tell you about our waiter... um... wait person. It's name was Grizzly and I am sure it was a guy but he was rather rotund and had stuffed his large frame into a shirt a bit too tight for him. He looked like an overstuffed sausage. He wore the oddest glasses, quite feminine looking and silver. He reminded us of Julia Sweeny's old "SNL" character, so we called him "Pat" behind his back all night. We such nice guys.

Lodger @ AFF2005