Short Cuts

Black-Eyed Archers at Your Beck and Call, or, Gee, Your Hair Smells Like Juanes Dept.: What would you do if you were an Austin-based artist/filmmaker duo and you came home one day to find an answering machine message from Alejandro González Iñárritu, all in Spanish, and you didn't speak a word of Spanish? If you were Jason Archer and Paul Beck (and chances are good that you are not), you'd dial up the Academy Award-nominated director of Amores Perros and 21 Grams and would discover, in what would surely be a Fellini-esque nonconversation jam-packed with grammatical dwarves and circus folk and a near-complete inability to speak one another's language, that he was requesting your demo reel. What this all means is anyone's guess, says Archer, who at the time of this writing was "working on a buzz," but it's apparently safe to assume that one of the most talented young directors in the world right now has Beck and Archer on the brain, which, trust us, is better than having them in your fridge, noshing on tangelos and Tecate in the middle of the night. In more substantial Beck and Archer news, the former Waking Life artists just last weekend completed a video for the Black Eyed Peas remix of Mexican superstar Juanes' track, "La Paga," featuring Juanes, Taboo, and Will.I.Am. The pair was flown up to Toronto back around Easter, where they shot "basically just a couple of hours" of DigiBeta footage of the band at the MuchMusic studios. "I had been up in Dallas," says Archer, "and when I got home that Sunday, there was a message from the band's label saying they wanted us to do this shoot the next Saturday. So we went up there and did it – it was basically just us shooting them performing, breakdancing, and moving around – and with the help of our editors Erik Horn and Gates Bradley, we wrapped it up this weekend." So where will Austinites be able to catch the remix video? "Germany," says Archer. "Germany and Italy. They might have to take a vacation. Although they might broadcast it in Latin America, too. And if we get a copy to the Austin Music Network, I'm sure they'll probably do something with it."

Free Jason Patric Dept.: The Travis County District Attorney's Office has officially dropped charges against The Alamo's Jim Bowie, who had been charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest after a post-premiere party at Antone's in early April. The class A misdemeanor charges could have forced Patric to return to Austin for trial and/or some serious partying, which, of course, in Austin can be a trial on the best of nights. Our suggestion: Next time, don't stand your ground when your ground happens to be in the middle of an intersection.