Eight Days a Week

Austin Film Festival 2002

Fri., Oct. 11, 2002

The first festival in the country to devote itself to the art and artistry of screenwriting kicks off its ninth year this Thursday and runs through the next. That means eight days of wall-to-wall films (not to mention this weekend's screenwriting conference, boasting such celebrated penmen and -women as Darren Star, Jessica Bendinger, and the Weitz Brothers). Eight days, and a lot to choose from, beginning with tonight's doc, Lost in La Mancha, about Terry Gilliam's season in hell trying to adapt Man of La Mancha, and capping off with the much-loved Standing in the Shadows of Motown, about the unsung heroes of Motown, the Funk Brothers (who'll perform at the Paramount). And what a fitting end to a festival devoted to another underappreciated profession -- that of the writer.

Due to time constraints and screener availability, we haven't yet seen everything playing at this year's fest, so take these picks as a list of what we like, and don't take what we've left out as an indicator of what we don't like. We'll get to them, too. We've got eight days. -- Kimberley Jones

For more information, visit www.austinfilmfestival.com. For detailed synopses of every film playing at the fest see www.austinfilmfestival.com/filmfestival.php.

Thursday, Oct. 10

LOST IN LA MANCHA

D: Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe.

Documentary Series

Lost in La Mancha documents the frustrating efforts of one of cinema's wild visionaries, Terry Gilliam, as he is thwarted at every turn while trying to mount his long-fantasized film version of The Man of La Mancha. Weather, actors' schedules, a health crisis, and much more beset this doomed production in a litany that becomes heartbreaking to witness. Few "making of" movies have ever aroused this kind of emotion and sympathy. (10/10, 7pm, Paramount) -- Marjorie Baumgarten

SEE YOU OFF TO THE EDGE OF TOWN

W/D: Ching Ip; with Zhu Xi Juan, K.K. Wong, Yvonne Teoh, Jo Chim.

Competition Film

Take one graduation weekend in Los Angeles. Add one balding Hong Kong salary-man and his brittle wife. Then add their two daughters -- a careerist travel agent with her flip-phone welded to her hand and a punky-haired collegian. Mix and place in a 1953 Cadillac hearse on the highway to the Grand Canyon. It sounds like a "road to wackiness" farce, but the relationships are front-and-center in this smart family drama. The story takes its time getting from place to place, but the journey is rewarding. (10/10, 9:40pm, Westgate; 10/14, 7pm, Westgate) -- Marrit Ingman

Emmet's Mark

Friday, Oct. 11

DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE

W/D: Ted Demme & Richard LaGravenese.

Advance Screening

THE FISHER KING

D: Terry Gilliam/W: Richard LaGravenese; with Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Mercedes Ruehl.

Retrospective Screening

Recipient of AFF's 2002 Distinguished Screenwriter Award Richard LaGravenese (Beloved, The Ref) will be in attendance at this evening's double feature. Beginning the bill is the work-in-progress Decade Under the Influence, a joint venture of co-writers and directors LaGravenese and Ted Demme (who passed away during filming). Demme said the film's goal was to be "a love letter to the artists that made the Seventies the greatest decade in American filmmaking." Also screening is The Fisher King, the terrific 1991 Oscar winner scripted by LaGravenese. (10/11, 6:30pm, Dobie)

-- K.J.

EMMETT'S MARK

W/D: Keith Snyder; with Scott Wolf, Tim Roth, Gabriel Byrne.

Competition Film

A snot-nosed rookie police detective (Wolf) is diagnosed with a painful, terminal disease. So he asks a sympathetic ex-cop he meets in a bar (Byrne) to hire a guy to put him out of his misery. You can see where this is headed, right? Writer/director Keith Snyder rounds up the usual plot twists in this moody policier, but squeezes some sympathetic moments out of his reliable cast, particularly Tim Roth as the reluctant hit man. (10/11, 10:15pm, Dobie; 10/16, 7pm, Westgate) -- Sam Hurwitt

THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS

W/D: Rose Troche; with Glenn Close, Jessica Campbell, Patricia Clarkson, Joshua Jackson, Moira Kelly, Robert Klein, Dermot Mulroney, Timothy Olyphant, Mary Kay Place.

Advance Screening

Based on a book of short stories by A.M. Homes, The Safety of Objects is the third feature from writer/director Rose Troche (Go Fish). The movie examines the world of well-to-do suburbanites, whose unhappiness with their lives is not assuaged by their accumulation of and attachment to physical things. Characters and situations born in the discrete short stories are interwoven in the film to provide a striking portrait of modern dissociation.

(10/11, 9:30pm, Westgate) -- M.B.

SHAG CARPET SUNSET

W/D: Andrew McAllister; with Duke Novak, Robert Dorn, Arlette Del Toro.

Competition Film

Shag Carpet Sunset (directed by recent Austin transplant MacAllister) isn't exactly a great movie -- in particular, its slacker-struggles-with-adulthood scenario has been done to death -- but this fact somehow fails to keep it from being immensely, relentlessly likeable. Blessed with a wry, wise script, talented and photogenic actors, and garishly vibrant photography, Shag Carpet Sunset works best as a shambling series of vignettes, peppered with hipster tableaux and surreal zingers. In its laid-back lyricism and slack poetics, it comes across as a low-rent miniature of Buffalo 66 or The Big Lebowski -- charming because it's all about pleasure, and in no hurry to get anyplace special. (10/11, 11:30pm, Omni; 10/17, 7:30pm, Omni) -- Will Robinson Sheff

Real Women Have Curves

Saturday, Oct. 12

LAVA

W/D: Joe Tucker; with Tucker, James Holmes, Nicola Stapleton, Grahame Fox.

Advance Screening

This Brit-pic is right up there with the best of them in terms of random acts of senseless violence. The first casualty comes two minutes into the film, when a homeless man is offed for sudsing the windshield of the wrong Jamaican gangster. Things progress at a steady clip, and the body count soars, as a mentally retarded man and his obviously deranged friend set out to avenge an unprovoked beating that has left his brother a drooling vegetable. It's the bizarre and unconventional characters that make this shoot-'em-up pic worth watching, even if a variety of outrageously thick accents means you have to work a little harder to understand them. (10/12, 7pm, Paramount) -- Cathy Vaughan

REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES

D: Patricia Cardoso/W: George LaVoo, Josefina Lopez; with America Ferrera, Lupe Ontiveros, Ingrid Oliu, George Lopez.

Advance Screening

This movie cleanses the spirit with the purity of a refreshing summer rain. Although its storyline is fairly familiar, the movie's depiction of the lives of unconventional movie characters and cultures is most original. Real Women Have Curves tells the story of one Latina high school graduate who is determined to break out of the traditional female life cycle of marriage and sweatshops. The film earned the Audience Award when it played at Sundance earlier this year. (10/12, 9:40pm, Westgate) -- M.B.

STANDARD TIME

D: Robert Cary/W: Isabel Rose; with Rose, Cameron Bancroft, Andrew McCarthy.

Competition Film

Any film that features former Bat-fling Eartha Kitt already has a lot going for it in our book. This comic meditation on the hapless pursuit of dreams and love by the eternally hopeful airport lounge chanteuse Billie Golden (writer Isabel Rose) and the two men in her life -- musician McCarthy and former schoolmate Bancroft -- manages to be both charmingly old-fashioned in its idealized hopefulness and borderline goofy in its humor. Rose is a whip-smart comedienne, and her idolatry of Audrey H. does her (and the film) no harm. (10/12, 7:15pm, Westgate; 10/16, 7:15pm, Westgate) -- M.S.

Roger Dodger

Sunday, Oct. 13

ROGER DODGER

W/D: Dylan Kidd; with Campbell Scott, Jesse Eisenberg, Elizabeth Berkeley, Jennifer Beals.

Advance Screening

What do women want? Certainly, we can only hope, not Manhattan bachelor-cum-center-of-the-universe Roger (Scott), the sort of insufferable lothario that gives all mankind a bad name in the name of gettin' it on, baby. A night on the town spent in the company of young virgin nephew Nick ends badly for Roger, but opens up all sort of doors for the sensitive Nick. Berkeley and Beals are a pair of nightbirds drawn to the kid's wide-eyed innocence and simultaneously repelled by Roger's oozy sleaze. Compared to most "New York movies," not a lot happens here, but the film is as charming as its young star, and has crackly dialogue smarts to burn. (10/13, 7pm, Paramount) -- M.S.

SECRETARY

D: Steven Shainberg/W: Erin Cressida Wilson; with Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Spader, Jeremy Davies, Lesley Ann Warren.

Advance Screening

Who knew S&M could be so poignant? Steven Shainberg is the man to thank for fashioning this modern love story between two sad souls who bond in the most unusual (yet literal) of ways. Gyllenhaal is a wonder as Spader's mousy young secretary, who blooms under her boss' frequent spankings. It sounds weird -- and it is -- but it's also funny and tender and always surprising. Spank you very much, indeed, Mr. Shainberg. (10/13/9:30pm, Westgate) -- K.J.

Monday, Oct. 14

FILM COMPETITION WINNERS

Festival favorites will get a reprise screening this evening. (10/14, 5pm, Dobie)

THE PRINCESS BLADE

W/D: Shinsuke Sato; with Hideaki Ito, Shiro Sano.

Advance Screening

Rivaling Tsui Hark's slice 'n' dice epic The Blade for sheer exuberance in swordplay, this futuristic samurai drama merges the apocalyptic malaise of Blade Runner with the honor and duty themes of Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo (minus the anthropomorphic bunnies, of course). Actually, Princess Blade is almost traditionalist in its depiction of samurai life -- it ain't all seppuko and flying heads -- and Princess Yuki (Ito) manages to find time amid the plotting and bloodshed for something approximating a normal (albeit action-packed) samurai lifestyle. This is Sato's debut film, which bodes well for the future of Japan's moribund samurai genre. (10/14, 7:30pm, Paramount) -- M.S.

Tuesday, Oct. 15

EASY LISTENING

W/D: Pamela Corkey.

Competition Film

Things are going bad for Burt. He can't even kill himself right. He plays easy listening while his heart longs for jazz; his ex-wife offers bile when all he really needs is, well, love. That comes in the form of Linda, one of those fabulously carefree girls who roll down hills and blindly pursue middle-aged burnouts. Using a quirky tone and Sixties-inspired visual riffs, writer/director Pamela Corkey turns this predictable number into a charming romantic fable. (10/13, 7:15pm, Dobie; 10/15; 9:30pm, Omni) -- Sarah Hepola

Manfast

Wednesday, Oct. 16

MANFAST

W/D: Tara Judelle; with Lala Stoatman, Jeremy Sisto, Klea Scott, Bruce Davison, Ethan Embry.

Competition Film

When the feministas of Florida-based zine Beotch can't make next month's rent or make a dent in paying back a $20,000 loan, they raise funds by taking on an intriguing bet: Go 100 days without men (meaning no sex, no flirting, hell, not even a harmless cup of joe); in return they'll land $25,000 in grant cash. First-time writer/director Judelle and her likable cast fuse feminism and an ultra-girly girliness in this amiable sex comedy (sans, of course, the sex). (10/12, 11:45pm, Dobie; 10/16, 7pm, Dobie) -- K.J.

TENDER MERCIES

D: Bruce Beresford/W: Horton Foote; with Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Ellen Barkin, Wilford Brimley.

Retrospective Screening

Robert Duvall's amazing performance in this film as a washed-up country singer earned him an Oscar. Duvall wrote his own tunes as well. Horton Foote's touching story also earned the screenwriter an Oscar. Foote will be in attendance at the Paramount screening; one wonders if Duvall -- in town shooting Tim McCanlies' Secondhand Lions -- might pop in for the retrospective as well. (10/16, 7:15pm, Paramount) -- M.B.

MASTER OF THE GAME

D: Jeff Stolhand/W: Uygar Aktan, with Aktan, Garry Peters, Steven Prince, David Stokey.

Austin Showcase

If you can believe -- or suspend your disbelief -- that a bored group of Nazi officers would on a dare submit their lives and authority to a captured American Jew, this claustrophobic excursion into the nature of power and identity is intelligent, suspenseful, and an actor's tour de force. The engaging script is by Uygar Aktan, also the lead, a nameless soldier who challenges his captors to assume the roles of condemned prisoners for the purpose of a metaphysical question: Is authority natural, or socially constructed? Remarkably, Aktan, director Jeff Stolhand, and a strong cast dramatize that problem in a manner always interesting and often gripping in this locally made production. (10/16, 9:30pm, Westgate) -- Michael King

Thursday, Oct. 17

FABLED

W/D: Ari Kirschenbaum; with Desmond Askew, J. Richey Nash, Coleen Sexton.

Competition Film

Absorbingly self-conscious and nearly crackling with visual distortion, short takes, long shots, and jump cuts, Kirschenbaum's first feature is one that capitalizes on its own confusion, leaving one scared shitless and wondering about one's sanity. It pulleys back and forth along that most wobbly of plot lines: the fable, this one about a wolf and a crow. Askew (Go) is Joseph Fable, a rich but working stiff who suspects that his former girlfriend is "cheating" on him. Nash is his buddy Alex, always around with a shoulder to cry on. But when Joseph's alcoholism and absolute mental and emotional breakdowns consume him, it's hard for anyone -- including his psychiatrist (Panes) -- to believe what they're seeing. (10/11, 10:15pm, Dobie; 10/17, 7pm, Dobie) -- Shawn Badgley

STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN

D: Paul Justman/W: Walter Dallas, Ntozake Shange.

Documentary Series

Based on the book by Allan Slutsky, Standing in the Shadows of Motown is a rousing documentary that shines light on the unsung source of the Motown sound: the Funk Brothers. These faceless -- until now -- studio musicians laid down the tracks that played behind every Motown hit until 1972 and, as this documentary makes clear, the rhythms and hooks of these session players are the reason the Motown sound has enjoyed such enduring popularity. The Funk Brothers and Allan Slutsky will be in attendance at the Paramount premiere. (10/17, 7pm, Paramount) -- M.B.

Sex and the City

Lucky (Darren) Star: 2002 Outstanding Television writer award

Darren Star could have been a one-hit wonder. Nobody would have blamed him. He whacked the ball right out of the park with his first television effort, Beverly Hills, 90210, a show that defined a decade, templated the teen-drama format (now a primetime staple), and continues to live on in syndication and in the fond memory of that whole "I Hate Brenda" movement. Darren Star could have just rested on his laurels -- and royalty checks -- but then, the Austin Film Festival's Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference doesn't give out awards to one-hit wonders.

After 90210 came Melrose Place, another long-running and much-loved series. The show netted the writer/creator/producer even greater commercial success, but the critics wrote it off as a guilty pleasure (an attack countered memorably in Reality Bites with Winona Ryder's solemn defense: "Melrose Place is a really good show"). But then -- then came Sex and the City, the HBO comedy Star created in 1998 (based on the sex column by Candace Bushnell). With its bawdy, bracing look at female professionals in Manhattan, Sex and the City sparked a national dialogue about sex, inspired a Cosmopolitan frenzy, and garnered both a rabidly devoted fan base and critical favor. The series has racked up a dozen-plus Emmy nominations and several wins, including the 2001 award for Outstanding Comedy Series -- the first time a cable TV show has ever nabbed top honors for best series.

And yet, still no resting on the laurels. Star -- who will receive this year's AFF Outstanding Television Writer Award and headline two panels at this weekend's conference -- is busy developing a pilot for NBC and penning two screenplays (Star's first foray into film in a decade), as well as keeping a watchful eye on Sex and the City.

Austin Chronicle: You created Sex and the City and wrote a number of the scripts. What's your relationship with the show now?

Darren Star: I don't do any writing, but I'm kind of overseeing it. All the writers that I hired originally are now writing the show. For me, that's sort of a natural transition.

AC: That must be difficult, letting your baby go.

DS: I wouldn't say I've completely let it go -- I'm still looking over their shoulders (laughs). But at the same time, my own sort of creative hunger to do other things motivates me to not have to feel like, "okay, this is going to be it for the next seven or eight years." It's great to have a hit -- it's fantastic -- but it's nice to do other things.

Darren Star

AC: Tell me about the new NBC deal.

DS: It's a show that I'm doing with a guy named Jeff Rake. It's based on this woman [who is] sort of a high-end matchmaker in New York, although we're setting the show in L.A. What I found really interesting about her is that she's also a matrimonial lawyer; she deals with divorces and prenups, but she has kind of a romantic streak and has found herself always fixing up her friends and ended up being responsible for a lot of marriages and kind of turned it into a business. ... It's a pilot. It's not a series yet. At this point, we're developing the script and hopefully we'll go to pilot and then at that point we'll see if it's a series.

AC: After the kind of crazy success you've had creating shows that have been era-defining, it must be awfully daunting for you to have to start over again. Is there a lot of pressure to continually top yourself?

DS: For me, the way to get around that is to keep pushing forward and doing new things. I haven't gone into any of these shows assuming they would achieve this kind of success or notoriety, [and] I try not to put any expectations on anything I'm doing. When I did Sex and the City, the idea was to do a small, under-the-radar show for HBO. I'd had a lot of commercial success, and I wanted to do something more personal and more [with] my sensibilities, thinking, this is something which may not be a big hit, but at least it'll be something I like doing.

AC: As far as doing something more personal, I'm curious why, as a gay man, you haven't centered any shows around the experiences of a gay man. You've written some terrific gay characters, but they're never in the foreground. Is that because of resistance from the networks, or ...

DS: No, I don't think it's resistance. I've always wanted to work in gay characters in terms of basically everything I've done. ... In 90210, we had a kid in the first or second season who was confused about his sexuality, and he was dating Jennie Garth but it wasn't going anywhere. Eleven years ago, that was a big deal. And on Melrose Place, the conceit was this sort of ensemble of twentysomething characters in West Hollywood -- you can't do that without having a gay character. It wouldn't be feasible. So that came naturally there. And with Sex and the City, even in the column, there was this character Stanford Blatch. Again, he wasn't the center of the show, but there was definitely a great place for him. None of these shows were conceived as "gay" shows -- shows that were about the gay experience, with leading gay characters. If the right thing came along, then yeah, certainly -- but at this point, we wouldn't be breaking any new ground. It's almost like, what story are you going to do featuring gay characters that hasn't been told?

AC: Yeah, but what story, period, hasn't already been told on television?

DS: Yeah. I think, for me, it's not about doing something about a "gay" character, but rather doing something about an interesting character whose sexuality is part of his life. I wouldn't make that [sexuality] the agenda behind a show or a movie.

AC: Your shows have been referred to as "groundbreaking." Did you sense that while you were developing them?

DS: Sex and the City did strike me as something -- in the same way that 90210 did -- that nobody was really doing. It was a new look at something. With 90210, there had never been this kind of show about teenagers. And with Sex and the City, I felt like, well, nobody's really done a comedy like this about sex. -- Most of the comedies on network TV [are] about sex in a euphemistic kind of way. And I wanted to do a comedy about sex that was very much about sex. I feel like a lot of the comedy on the network television in terms of sex is about getting around saying something naughty. I was like, okay, we're not going to get our jokes from that. We're going to get the comedy from the reality of the situation and how people really speak. And also I thought a comedy about sex from the female point of view was new ground.

Darren Star will receive AFF's 2002 Outstanding Television Writer Award this weekend. He'll also appear on two conference panels on Saturday, Oct. 12: "Apples and Oranges: TV vs. Film" and "Up Close and Personal: Darren Star." The festival conference is open to badge holders only. For more details, see www.austinfilmfestival.com.

Local Movie Geeks Make Good: 'My Name Is Buttons'

First-time filmmakers John Merriman and Courtney Davis loved American Pie. "Not in an ironic way," Davis says. "It made us feel good." And maybe that worried them. Like any good movie geeks, they knew what they were supposed to like (American Beauty) and what they were supposed to shun (American Pie). Or was that the week they were supposed to shun American Beauty and embrace American Pie? It's hard to remember now. The Tastemakers work overtime dictating what cinema and literature and television shows any Thinking Person appreciates, while the Guiltmakers make sure we know what coffee shops and grocery stores any Decent Citizen patronizes. It's exhausting. "We started thinking that our lives would be really great if we could feel good about all the dumb stuff in American culture," continues Davis (who is the AFF's former film programmer). "There's so many things that you worry about as a socially conscious person -- wouldn't it be easier to just love everything about American pop culture? Just be a total McDonald's-loving, Gap-shopping, TV-watching consumer?"

The film that grew out of that is My Name Is Buttons, shot for under $10,000 over 22 days in Austin. Played by co-writer and co-director Merriman, Hunter is your typical anti-corporate overthinker, who reads Noam Chomsky and chases cuties away with rants about the world's injustice. After getting canned from a chain bookstore, Hunter and his friends (including Davis) seek quick cash at a psychiatric clinic called Pharmakhem, where Hunter turns guinea pig for Dr. Williams, who treats chronically ill children by wearing his wacky clown nose and juggling. Dr. Williams pumps Hunter full of mind-numbing drugs -- because the dumber he gets, the happier he'll be! -- until Hunter is so droolingly disoriented that he renames himself Buttons. "My name is Buttons. People call me Buttons 'cause that's my name," he says. Sound familiar? Structuring itself as a kind of "reverse Flowers for Algernon," My Name Is Buttons pokes fun at Forrest Gump, The Other Sister, and, as director of photography David Layton says, "any movie where Robin Williams has a beard."

But there's a cultural critique in there too. "We have huge companies marketing antidepressants on TV directly to the public," says Merriman (who spent five years working in various psychiatric facilities), "which I find weird and maybe inappropriate. You have drug companies convincing consumers that if you take a certain pill, you can be out sailing with a hot date enjoying life. If you're shy, worried, tired, whatever, we've got a pill for you. It becomes a pick-your-personality deal."

As satire, My Name Is Buttons is slight but affable, buoyed by the filmmakers' goofy tongue-in-cheek humor. What it lacks in polish and pocketbook is at least partially obscured by Layton's camerawork, editing by J. Kevin Smith, and strong performances by local theatre fixture Lowell Bartholomee as Dr. Williams and former Austinite Jennifer Bryan as his well-meaning assistant. In-the-know filmgoers can name-check such locations such as BookPeople, Huston-Tillotson, and Fresh Plus as well as original music from the Sexy Finger Champs and the Kiss Offs. More than anything, though, My Name Is Buttons is a triumph of creativity over cash, a testament to the filmmakers' willpower and the loyalty of their friends. "Every single person we know is in it," says Davis (including, in one fleeting crowd scene, this writer herself). While the rest of us toss out our big ideas with the empty beer cans, Davis and Merriman followed through. Now that's what any good movie geek is really supposed to do.

My Name Is Buttons screens Saturday, Oct. 12, 9:45pm, and Wednesday, Oct. 16, 7:15pm. Both screenings take place at the Omni. The filmmakers will be in attendance.