Film News

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Friday Night Idaho Lights?

Peter Berg, director of Friday Night Lights, the big-screen version of H.G. Bissinger's famed true story of Eighties Odessa Permian High School football, has signed on to write and direct a pilot for an NBC television series of the same name. The story is expected to be set at a modern-day, small-town high school, but will it remain a Texas story? That decision has yet to be made, Berg said through his agent. The film was shot partially in Austin, primarily at Westlake High, and local film folk would love for the pilot to also shoot here.

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Oscar for "Estrada'?

Tommy Lee Jones scored during the Toronto International Film Festival, with Sony Pictures Classics snapping up his Texas-shot The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Guillermo Arriaga's story of a Texas cowboy (Jones) who forces the border patrol agent who accidentally kills the cowboy's buddy to bring the body back to Mexico for burial. Word is Sony wants a late-year release with an Oscar push. The script and Jones' performance took honors at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered. Variety says first-time big-screen director Jones cut the deal with Sony on the stipulation that no changes be made to the pic, so the clunky title appears to be a keeper.

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They Stole Our Fad

The A&E television series Roller Girls, about the Austin-born female Roller Derby revival, isn't set for the small screen for a few months yet, but already Hollywood recyclers have latched onto the idea. Paramount has purchased rights to an untitled Roller Derby comedy that is being compared in tone to Dodgeball. We'll forgive them, if they shoot it in Austin and hire Lonestar Rollergirls' announcer Mike "Three Degrees of Separation" Whiteley and his fab polyester suit. But this means Bob Ray better hurry and get his Roller Derby documentary Hell on Wheels – now in postproduction – out into the marketplace, pronto.

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Here Comes the Judge

And the winner is ... Mike Judge, who rates the Outstanding Television Writer Award from the fast-approaching Austin Film Festival, set for Oct. 20-27. Hey, the Austin resident gave us Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill, which is about to close out a 10-year run of obscure references that only Central Texans get. Now if we could just get his Austin-shot feature film Idiocracy into theatres already. More about the fest at www.austinfilmfestival.com. Did I mention Jason Schwartzman and Claire Danes will attend?

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No Questions – Just Be There

Cash only is the policy as the just wrapped How to Eat Fried Worms sells off its stuff at a garage sale from 8am to 3pm Saturday at Austin Studios, 1901 E. 51st. Get props and children's clothing galore from New Line's adaptation of Thomas Rockwell's young adult book... Football fans and wannabe thespians might want to drive to Dallas on Saturday for Disney's extras call for Invincible, the true tale of a nobody who walked on for a pro team and made it. If that sounds like Austin-shot The Rookie, it's no coincidence. The film is produced by Mark Ciardi, the former major league pitcher who became a Hollywood golden boy with the Dennis Quaid comeback vehicle. Invincible is about Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg), a teacher who walked on for the Philadelphia Eagles, and the team's teary-eyed coach Dick Vermeil (Greg Kinnear). Different sport, same plot. Casting call is 11am to 5pm at KD Studios, 2600 N. Stemmons Freeway #117. Bring your IDs. The brief Texas shoot is re-creating a 1975 Dallas Cowboys game.

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