Badges in hand, we then moved to a different, much shorter line to pick up our festival bags. We all stood in a very long line to pick up our press badges, a line so long that when we finally reached the front, it was actually the 2008 film festival. That is more than any other outlet, print or online, period. In case you weren’t counting: (and its sister site, HollywoodB****) has seven writers covering SXSW. We went to the convention center, where SXSW headquarters are, and there met up with Chicago’s Erik Childress (a SXSW veteran) and Eugene Novikov, a buddy of Scott’s from Philadelphia who has recently joined the EFC team and is making his first trip to Austin. Why Jason and I had to go with him to do that, and thereafter to pick up Laura Kyle, another Austin-resident EFC writer, was not sufficiently explained to me.īut the important thing was, we were all together! Well, almost. Weinberg had a van for some reason - Weinberg is the type of person who might occasionally have a van for some reason - and he used it to take us to the airport to pick up fellow EFC’er Will Goss of Florida. Jason Whyte, an eFilmCritic writer from Canada making his first trip to SXSW, was also on hand. Bleh.Īt the screening with me was Scott Weinberg, longtime friend and now a proud resident of Austin after living his entire life in Philadelphia. The finale is fairly suspenseful, but the whole thing’s just so derivative. And then the interviews were canceled for some reason, but the screening remained, and apparently any member of the press who happened to know about it was allowed to attend.Īnyway, it’s a not-very-good “Rear Window” rip-off (and I mean close enough to where royalties should be paid) starring Shia LeBeouf as a kid on house arrest who comes to believe his neighbor is a murderer. But an interview session with the cast of “Disturbia” was planned, and thus a press screening was set up for the press who were to be involved. It’s public screenings only, to which your press pass will grant you admittance. As a general rule, and unlike most major film festivals, SXSW doesn’t do press screenings. It was a press screening of “Disturbia,” which opens nationwide in April. The important thing is, I did not miss the screening. The details of this story would bore and frustrate you, so they are omitted.
NIFTY GAY URINE I DELIVWRED FLIERS FULL
Today began in an unfortunate manner, with botched transportation arrangements, a bus ride, an aborted cab ride, a different cab ride brought to full term, and an almost-missed 11 a.m. I readily accepted because, as you know if you know me, I’ll sleep anywhere, with anyone. He is volunteering again this year, and he was awesome enough to offer his apartment to me as a place to stay, complete with an air mattress laid out on the living-room floor. I arrived late last night and was collected at the airport by Greg the Festival Volunteer, a local guy whom several of us made friends with last year and with whom we’ve kept in touch since then.
In fact, apart from the heat and humidity and the unfortunate plight of being surrounded on all sides by Texas, Austin is very much like Portland, where I live. It’s home to hipsters, musicians, college kids, and normal people, as opposed to cowboys, rednecks, and oil tycoons. Yee-haw! Throw a saddle on your cousin and paint a fence post! It’s time for Austin’s South by Southwest, the rootin’-est, tootin’-est film festival this side of the Mississippi!Īctually, as I discovered last year - and as the locals are quick to remind you - Austin is the least Texas-y city in Texas.