Built around one of the most prestigious screenwriting competitions in the country, Austin Film Festival and Screenwriters Conference attracts groundbreaking producers, agents, managers, and development execs, as well as countless working screenwriters and filmmakers. Hitting its 20th anniversary this year, the Conference is as devoted as ever to nurturing creativity – a rare oasis in a rough-and-tumble business.  The access and intimacy is unmatched with registrants and speakers under one roof, attending panels, parties and screenings in Austin, a city known for its creative culture, big heart, and zero pretensions.

This October 24-31, join the minds behind such films as THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, BIG FISH, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, DONNIE DARKO, MUD, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, LOOPER, SHREK, BLAZING SADDLES, ZOOLANDER, 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, NOW YOU SEE ME, A TIME TO KILL, ON THE ROAD, BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, LITTLE WOMEN, FIGHT CLUB, and television shows Breaking Bad, Curb Your Enthusiasm, House of Cards, Fargo, Treme, The Wire, John Adams, The Office, and Boardwalk Empire… to name a few!

A sampling of the panels already planned for the Conference…

As part of the continuing “Conversation with” series, join in-depth, one-on-one conversations with top filmmakers as they discuss their experiences in the industry, including: Jonathan Demme, Vince Gilligan, Akiva Goldsman,  Beau Willimon,  Mark Johnson, Robin Swicord, Leslie Dixon, and more!

Staged Script Reading of Vince Gilligan’s 2-FACE

A special staged script reading of Vince Gilligan’s dark comedy script, 2-FACE.

Crowdfunding Case Study: VERONICA MARS movie project with Rob Thomas

As our world becomes more connected and technologically developed, filmmakers are finding numerous avenues and opportunities to get their projects off the ground. Join Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas as he discusses his record-breaking Kickstarter campaign for the upcoming VERONICA MARS movie and how crowdfunding is quickly changing the ways films are getting made.

The Throw with Terry Rossio

Terry Rossio will lead a presentation on “The Throw,” otherwise known as the transition between scenes.  He will discuss very practical, actual writing techniques, and show film clips to demonstrate successful (and not so successful) throws.

Scriptnotes LIVE!

For the second year, veteran filmmakers John August and Craig Mazin will record a live presentation of their incredibly informative screenwriting podcast, Scriptnotes, in which they discuss craft and career, complete with audience questions and other surprises.

The Psychology of Storytelling

Producer Lindsay Doran will explore the secrets of creating a satisfying script and what psychology can teach us about making mood-elevating movies.

Advance Sign-Up Opportunity: This Thursday, May 30^th

Script-to-Screen with Rian Johnson: BRICK*

With script in hand and film clips on the screen, writer/director Rian Johnson will dissect his critically acclaimed film BRICK, discussing his writing process – what worked, what didn’t, what needed to be changed for film production – and why.

*Austin Film Festival will be opening an advance sign-up for current Conference and Producers badgeholders to Rian Johnson’s Script-to-Screen panel on Thursday, May 30^th.  Be sure to look out for the weekly AFF Wednesday newsletter for further instructions!

Don’t miss your opportunity to take part in the 20^th Annual Austin Film Festival and buy your badge before prices go up on June 1^st!  For more information on Badge pricing, and to purchase, click here.

AFF : Where did the inspiration for AMERICAN MILKSHAKE come from, and was there anything that came to you right away that ended up virtually untouched in the final version?

AMERICAN MILKSHAKE was inspired by our collective youth – Mariko and I that is. That time in childhood when it first dawns on you that race, sex, and class play a big role in your life – in the cards you’re dealt. And you’re first starting to realize life’s not fair. It can create rifts in friendships and between children and parents, and in relationships.

AFF: This is a dark, dark comedy.  Were you ever worried about going too far?  How did you give yourself the courage to carry on?

The beauty of indie is that you don’t have to play by the usual Hollywood rules. We weren’t so worried about going too far, but we did want to be very careful to accurately portray the characters. Nothing is dark just to be dark.

AFF: Every writing partnership works differently.  How did you two collaborate on American Milkshake?

In this instance David wrote the first draft, and from then on out we poured over the script together, re-shaping, rewriting, punching up jokes, etc. Really working side by side at the keyboard. On the next project LIBBY AT THE DOOR – a New York Club comedy, Mariko is writing the first draft, and bouncing the pages off David along the way for feedback. In the second pass we’ll probably sit down side by side again.

AFF: Were there ever moments where you two as the ‘director’ were a little frustrated with you two as ‘the writers?’

It’s always a process. There’s always room for improvement in rehearsal and shooting. But in comedy, when the writing is very tight and particular it almost always works best if actors stick to the page. We were very happy with the script.

AFF: Our film competition accepts entries until July 15th.  As a veteran of the film festival circuit, what advice can you give filmmakers about getting the most out of their festival experiences?

Have a good time. Meet people you want to work with in the future, and enjoy learning from others who have gone through it. It’s all a blast.

AMERICAN MILKSHAKE plays Monday, May 20th at 7 pm in the Texas Spirit Theater at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.

May 15, 2013: New On Story Podcast: A Conversation with Shane Black, AFF Staff Spotlight: Stacy Brick – Young Filmmakers Program Director, New On Story Season 3 Episode 5: Constructing Comic Book Movies, Upcoming Austin Film Festival Year-Round Events, & AFF 2012 Official Selection FREE SAMPLES gets U.S. Release!

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May 8, 2013: AFF Interview: David Magee on Breaking In and Taking Chances, New On Story Episode 4: Elements of Horror, Austin Youth Film Festival, Face Off – Movies vs. Television: AFF & ATX Festival Co-Present Panel, AFF Director of Programming Awarded at Hill Country Film Festival, & AFF 2012 Comedy Vanguard Selection THE EXQUISITE CORPSE PROJECT Returns to Austin!

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Austin Film Festival is excited to partner with ATX Television Festival for “Season Two” of the TV centric celebration this June. In addition to offering AFF followers 15% off any badge level (use code ATXAFF15), we will be co-presenting panels at each festival! First up, AFF presents “Face Off: Movies vs. TV, Presented by Austin Film Festival” on Saturday, June 8th with AFF alums Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars and the upcoming offshoot film of the series) and Kyle Killen (Awake, THE BEAVER) to be joined by ATX panelist Jonathan Prince (creator of American Dreams and director of the beloved ’90′s Camp Nowhere).

The panel will focus on the demands and benefits of writing both for film and television, the differences between the two mediums, and how to navigate transitioning from one to the other. Feature film screenwriters and successful showrunners will discuss the art, craft and business of their diverse careers, with a special focus on how they have been affected by the changing landscape of television. For more information on panelists and events at ATX, click here.

Wednesday, May 22nd, join Austin Film Festival for A Conversation with David Magee, writer of LIFE OF PI and FINDING NEVERLAND. The conversation will focus on adaptation, writing for imaginative worlds, and using language to articulate enchanting stories that have been so beautifully translated to the screen. Following the conversation will be a retrospective screening of FINDING NEVERLAND and post-screening Q&A. We sat down with Magee beforehand for a pre-interview about how he broke into the industry and his advice to screenwriting students. To hear more from David Magee and to join us May 22nd, click here.

AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL (AFF):  What did you do professionally before you became a screenwriter and how did you break into the film industry?

MAGEE: I started as a theatre actor, having a great time and earning no money, and I supported myself by doing voiceover. I narrated several audiobooks, which are usually recorded in full length and abridged versions. One day I went in to a recording studio with an abridgment of a novel that was horribly done – it was unfair to the original writer to record it – and I said to the producer offhandedly that I could have done a better job abridging it. She asked if I wanted to give it a try. It turned out that abridging was a perfect job for an actor who needed time to go to auditions and to regional theatres, and in the next five years I wrote abridgments of 85 books. Without intending it, I got incredible training in story structure. Toward the end of that period I began writing for the stage, which led to my opportunity to write FINDING NEVERLAND.

AFF:  How does your experience as a theatre actor influence your writing style?

 MAGEE:  When I write dialogue, I am essentially performing the characters in my head, and thanks to my acting background, I know when a bit of dialogue gives an actor something they can sink their teeth into and when something sounds good on paper but can’t be said with a straight face.

AFF: On LIFE OF PI, what was your collaboration with Ang Lee like? How closely was he involved in the adaptation/writing process?

 MAGEE:  I worked very closely with Ang throughout the writing process. In the initial stages, I would write notes, sketch scenes, and so on. Once a week or so send what I had over to Ang and then join him in New York for lunch and an afternoon of throwing ideas around, then I’d head back home for another week of writing. Once we had a first draft, Ang began working with computer animators to plan out the filming of the sea adventure, essentially designing the film shot by shot. As I watched his visual ideas unfold, I revised the script to reflect what he was doing, and he changed the animation as the script evolved as well. I was in Taiwan for all of pre-production. Once the filming began I headed home – the script didn’t change at all during filming, which was a highly technical process that took place primarily in a wave tank – but when the editing process began, Ang invited me back regularly to tweak voiceovers and throw in my two cents worth on the process.

AFF:  Initially you thought the novel was not filmmable. How did you make it work and how much research did you do?

 MAGEE:  Well, all of us made it work. Ten years ago, when the book came out, I couldn’t imagine how you could possibly film a real tiger and animals in a boat with a teenager, and the technology to create such amazing visual effects simply didn’t exist. I also didn’t imagine a studio would have had the guts to take on what I knew would have been an expensive and difficult film to make with no stars and an ambiguous ending. And if Ang hadn’t been directing, I don’t think I would have ever taken on the project myself four years ago – without a director of his caliber I don’t think it would have mattered what I wrote. My challenge was to tell a story about religious and philosophical issues that took place primarily in the mind of a teenage boy as he floated across the ocean in a lifeboat, and finding the actions that made his internal struggle visible onscreen, and the short answer to how I made my part of the process work was through a lot of trial and error, constant rewrites and input from a team of incredibly talented filmmakers.

Research was an essential part of the writing process. When I began I knew next to nothing about India, Hinduism, and even lifeboats for that matter. Early on, Ang and I met with Steven Callahan, a sailor who wrote a book called “Adrift” about his real life experience floating across the Atlantic in a five-foot round inflatable lifeboat. His stories about the ways in which the journey changed him physically and emotionally became an essential part of the story, and in fact Steve became our Survival Expert on the film, charting the exact journey through the ocean Pi would have taken, where he would have landed on the beach, where the island would have been located and so on. We also traveled through India to all the locations in the book before I had begun writing, and one of our associate producers, Jean Castelli, became our research expert on religious issues, prayers, different forms of Indian dance and the like. In a film with so many wondrous elements, you have to fully ground your story in the real to make the journey believable.

AFF:  How did you decide what went into the film’s interpretation of the open-ended conclusion?

 MAGEE:  From the very beginning of the writing process, Ang and I saw this film not so much about religion as being about how different narratives help us get through the ordeals of our lives. A Hindu, a Christian, and an atheist can watch the same events unfold and come to different conclusions about the hidden forces at work beneath it all – but they all rely on a narrative to understand what they’ve witnessed. We didn’t want to force any one conclusion upon our audience, we simply wanted them to see the ways in which different views of the same story can add up to a larger view of our journey through life. Ideally, you own interpretation of what really happened to Pi on that boat says more about your world view than it says about what conclusions we wanted you to take from the ending.

AFF:  Who are some of your favorite playwrights or screenwriters?

MAGEE:  I’m going to stick with dead writers, because while I love a lot of writers working today, I also know a lot of them, and I don’t want to forget anyone or offend someone by not mentioning them. So… Shakespeare, Harold Pinter, Arthur Miller, Joe Mankiewicz, Billy Wilder, Ernest Lehman, Preston Sturges, Philip Barry, Tennessee Williams, Frank Capra, Frank Pierson and while he wasn’t a screenwriter, exactly, Buster Keaton. And I still feel bad that I left dozens of others off the list.

AFF:  What do you find yourself telling your screenwriting students most?  Any advice for up-and-coming writers?

MAGEE:  The number one bit of advice I have is that if you keep showing up, if you keep working at your craft, if you always do just a little more than you’re asked and take your work far more seriously than you take yourself, eventually you will get your chance. It may be a small chance, and it may take many more chances along the way to get to your ultimate goal, but a door will crack open somewhere, and all that matters then is whether or not you’re prepared to step through it.

 

Austin Film Festival’s “Conversations in Film” program was created in 2007 and is sponsored by The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences®.  It is a year-round series of film seminars and script readings that provide the public with the unique experience to meet and work with local and visiting filmmakers.

May 2, 2013: On Story Season 3 Episode: Re-Imagining the Classics, AFF Interview, Joseph Levy Writer/Director of SPINNING PLATES, AFF Guest Blog: Alex Holdridge on the Making of his 2001 film WRONG NUMBERS, New On Story Podcast: A Conversation with Brian Helgeland, & AFF’s Upcoming Events!

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Austin Film Festival is happy to announce the winners of the 7th annual “Make a Movie, Make a Difference’ video PSA competition. Congratulations to:

Asia Walker of Manor Tech High School and Keren Rico of Del Valle High School

Austin Film Festival & The Travis County Sheriff’s Office invited local teens to participate in the 7th Annual “Make A Movie, Make A Difference” video competition. Travis County high school students were encouraged to create either a 30 sec. commercial or a 2-5 min. short film that addresses the theme “How Your Choices Affect The World Around You.” Students could creatively express the theme by raising awareness on issues such as Bullying, Dating Violence, Drugs & Alcohol, Gangs, Teen Pregnancy or Suicide.

For today’s Throwback Thursday Staff Pick TV Pilot post we reached out to former Development Director Rachel Malish because of her famed love for Veronica Mars. Currently Rachel is the Austin Media and Community Relations Coordinator for Whole Foods Market.

The Pilot episode of Veronica Mars – they don’t get much better than this, folks! It’s a pilot episode and it does what it has to do: introduces you to your main players, fills you in on what you’ve missed (after all, these characters didn’t just start living and breathing when you came along), and sets the tone for the entire show – this will determine if and why you’ll continue to watch.

I’ll preface this by saying that I am a huge fan of Veronica Mars. I’m elated at the success of the Kickstarter campaign started by Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell. In the beginning, it was the Pilot episode that got me hooked. What I learned about the show in that short amount of time was a structure – the structure – that maintained throughout multiple seasons.

Every episode of Veronica Mars has legs and can stand alone. You don’t need to have watched every episode to enjoy one, but you enjoy them even more as an entire season. That’s when you put the puzzle pieces together and witness that master plan. Rob Thomas gives you a beginning, middle, and end in every episode. A viewer never feels cheated at the end of an episode. Viewers aren’t concerned that they didn’t get a 10 minute catch-up with each character in each episode; they’re leaving fulfilled every time. Each episode becomes its own mini-movie with its own problem to be solved, all while there looms, however subtly, a haunting backstory – a key driver of the overarching plot. While you can’t necessarily tell from a pilot episode what the structure for an entire season will look like, you can with Veronica Mars.

When you’re watching Veronica Mars for the first time, you may not appreciate the structure as much as you will eventually through 3 seasons. What you will appreciate is the show’s namesake: Veronica Mars. She’s the show, and here’s what Rob Thomas tells you about her in the first episode that gets you hooked:

She’s a pessimist. As she sits outside the Camelot Hotel waiting to snap a picture of a nameless adulterer for one of her father’s clients, she shares her shattered views of love. You realize in this first scene that she’s not your average teen scorned by one too many jocks, she’s got some very adult views of the world and is balancing a very adult career with high school calculus exams.

She’s an underdog. She hasn’t always been the low man on the totem pole, but she’s there now and so is her dad. Her hometown of Neptune is made up of “haves” and “have-nots” and once her dad’s Sheriff title is stripped, her billionaire boyfriend dumps her, and rumors of a promiscuous lifestyle fly, her former friends aren’t exactly banging down the door.

She’s distant. Veronica is lost in thought throughout much of her day. This is how we get to know her. She reflects on her life before the murder of her best friend, Lily (the sister of her billionaire ex-boyfriend), and her dad’s failure on the case follows her in her daily activities. As she falls asleep in class or zones out while gazing as a table full of old friends, we get a peek into the life of a more carefree Veronica, a less jaded version of her present day self, and a glimpse at how much change has taken place in less than a year of her life.

She’s got a cool dad. They’re in this together. Keith Mars is now a private investigator of Mar’s Investigation, and when he’s not on the case, Veronica is. He trusts her. He leaves her home alone for days at a time while he’s chasing bail dodgers. They have great banter. Like all father-daughter relationships, she thinks he’s a dork, but also finds it endearing. She’s hurt in this first episode by her father lying about a case involving Lily’s father and her own mother who left Veronica months before (no one said it wasn’t complicated). Even with her confusion about this, she admits that he must be protecting her. We can all tell he’s loving and kind. Dear old dad.

She’s got a conscience, and connections. She’s so smart! She uses her street smarts in the very first episode. We get to see Veronica at work. Not the kind of work she does specifically for Mars Investigation, the work we’ll see her do the rest of the season: helping out her peers at Neptune High. New kid Wallace is introduced and quickly becomes Veronica’s only friend. She uses her friends in high places (the fire chief still loves her dad) and low places (the pot head in pottery class) to get a new friend out of trouble. While she claims this is for self-serving reasons, Wallace knows she needs a friend. A beautiful friendship blooms right before your eyes, as well as a few new allies and enemies…

There’s more! She’s tough (and she’s got Backup!), she’s sharp tongued (her comments are biting, Kristen Bell says she’s not a comedic actress, but her delivery of the Veronica zingers are right on target), and she’s on a mission (she’s getting to the bottom of her families break up, and she’s scratching the surface on her dad’s secret investigation of Lily’s murder).

Watch the Pilot episode of Veronica Mars and prepare to keep watching.  And don’t be intimidated by her harsh exterior. You know what the fans say: “Veronica Mars, she’s a marshmallow.”

 

Interested in checking out our staff picks for yourself? Head over to Vulcan Video where you can find all of our picks labeled as AFF Staff Picks. Go to vulcanvideo.com for location and catalogue information.

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This week AFF has been bringing you our favorite TV pilots and how they’ve impacted our love for television. In today’s AFF Interview, we sit down with AFF Alum Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy to discuss their new Netflix Original Series Hemlock Grove and the shift they see in the future of television.

AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL (AFF): What was your relationship before you started working on this project? When did you start collaborating?  What is your process like as writing partners?

SHIPMAN: Brian and I started writing together after meeting in graduate school in Austin in 2004 and discovering we shared the same peculiar, often downright deviant, sensibilities. Finding the right writing partner is as difficult and rare as finding the right romantic partner, especially one into all that dirty business.

MCGREEVY: We were in the same graduate program (the Michener Center for Writers) and fast friends. We became screenwriting partners out of both mutual respect and mutual laziness: it was half the work!

 AFF:  Brian, the show is based on your novel. Did you always intend to turn it into a script, and if so, how did this affect the writing style in your novel? How did you both approach the adaption process and how much does the show diverge from the novel?

MCGREEVY: The novel, during the writing, was its own beast. Naturally I would daydream to some extent what an adaptation would look like, but as someone who works in different media I’m an advocate of focus: concentrate on the step you’re currently taking, not the one five down the line.

AFF:  What makes Hemlock Grove different from other supernatural shows?

SHIPMAN:  As much as we love the genre, we consider ourselves drama writers not horror writers. There is a supernatural element to our show, but to quote Joseph Conrad, “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; Man alone is quite capable of every wickedness.” It’s a theme that runs through a lot of our work: the more civilized we think we are, the more we forget we’re all just animals — and will be grimly reminded of that.

Preparatory to shooting, our producing-director Deran Sarafian hosted weekly screenings of our favorites in the genre, and invariably they fell under the largely gore-free sub-genre of Psychological Horror: Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy, etc. It’s what we’re interested in and the only real way to sustain a series like this. That said, we don’t give a fuck who we kill.

AFF: How did Eli Roth become involved with this project?  What was it like working with him?

MCGREEVY: We interviewed potential producers in the spring of 2011, and really connected with Eric Newman, who is Eli’s producing partner. Everyone agreed on the best direction to take the material, and by the end of the year the deal was in place.

AFF: All 13 episodes will be released at once on Netflix.  Did this affect the way you designed/organized your first season? Does it make the writing process more exciting or frustrating?  How do you anticipate this release platform affecting the future of television?

MCGREEVY: It is the future of television.

SHIPMAN:  One of the more remarkable and atypical advantages of the full series order and our schedule of production was that we were able to write almost the entire season before we shot a single frame. Rather than scrambling week to week, we had the rare opportunity to take our time and craft this story into what can almost be looked at as a 13 hour movie. For two guys coming out of the features world, it was an intuitive model and quite forward-thinking on the part of Netflix.

I think what they’re doing is the future of TV. Just as we were looking to get into that world we saw the House of Cards announcement and knew immediately we wanted to jump in bed with them.

AFF:  What are some advantages with Netflix releasing all 13 episodes all at once?  Disadvantages?

MCGREEVY: I see no disadvantages, frankly. Traditional television holds no interest for me, and the direction things are going is being dictated by the audience, myself included. I haven’t personally owned a TV since 2008.

SHIPMAN: I haven’t had a TV in a while, so almost exclusively binge watch on a laptop. The traditional model will only continue to fracture and evolve, and as both a writer and viewer I toast it.

Watch the latest trailer for Hemlock Grove here: (warning, NSFW)

 

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Continuing our week of Staff Picks is Conference Director Erin Hallagan’s take on Friday Night Lights and how it helped reshape her image of Texas from a land of cowboy hats and red meat to a place she now calls home.

I first made the announcement that I was moving to Texas at a random family dinner – mostly to just say it out loud – to convince myself it was the right thing to do – to gage reaction – to be set in motion.  I was as shocked as my parents when I heard the words escape my lips.  But then, all of a sudden it was reality.

Austin was always an obvious fit for me, but definitely not the rest of the Lone Star state. In my mind, Texas was a desert of cowboy hats, come-to-Jesus churches, red meat, red blood, and of course football.

This is precisely the reason I did not want to watch Friday Night Lights. That, and I am absolutely, positively NOT a sports person.  I’m repeatedly corrected on how it’s not “the second act” but second quarter of the game, how they’re not “characters” but players, it’s not “intermission” but halftime.  Can you tell I’m more of a theatre person?

It started when I was just a girl, growing up in – to put it kindly – a rough part of Maryland.  My father was outraged there were no girl sports in our county.  Teams were only just beginning to accept co-ed rosters.  So I was signed up for soccer.

Luckily for me, even though I didn’t have an athletic bone in my body, the other players found creative ways to welcome me aboard.  My dad would repeatedly find me on the sidelines after practice, out-of-commission with a bloody nose. Apparently it was a running joke to see how many times my teammates could kick the ball square between my eyes.  I remember laughing real hard after I had to get surgery years later to fix the broken vessels in my nose.  On second thought, perhaps that was the laughing gas….

Then there was basketball.  After finally being put into the game, and thrilled by the sudden attention the coach was giving me, I stopped in my tracks – ball in hand – to ask him if he liked my new shoes.  He and my father ended up in the parking lot to exchange a bit more than words.

Baseball was my own damn fault.  There are some lessons you only need to learn once.  For instance, throwing the ball into the air, looking up to catch it only to find the blinding sun staring back, and then going home two-teeth-shorter than you arrived.

Needless to say, I went into the arts and never looked back.  That is, until I moved here.

I chose to give Friday Night Lights a chance with the same enthusiasm I gave soccer and basketball.  I thoroughly expressed my distaste for sports shows, and for angsty high school shows, and especially for the combination of the two.

Boy, was I surprised when the first episode came to an end that I had tears in my eyes and remote-in-hand, already going in for seconds.  Even though the show was absolutely about football and teenagers, there were things that were even more absolute: it was raw, honest, painful, spiritual, hopeful, confrontational and I CONNECTED to it…

It was damn good writing, is what it was.

A pilot episode – or rather, a GOOD pilot  – is a form of art.  Opposed to establishing a laundry list of who and what we need to know, it will create a world-in-motion through unobtrusive introductions that need to immediately spark an audience’s interest, a narrative that immediately engages an audience’s attention, and a level of anticipation that immediately asks the audience to stay along for the journey.

At first glance, everything about Friday Night Lights screamed cliché.  Yet, all in the sum of 45 minutes, the pilot locked me in for the remaining five seasons.  Beyond that, I overcame some of my own stereotypes.  Gradually, Texas was more than just cowboy hats, come-to-Jesus churches, red meat and red blood.  It was a vast new world that was home to those with the same vulnerabilities I had out there on the soccer field.  The same life-changing decisions I made at my family’s dinner table.  The same pivotal feelings of community, humanity, acceptance, victory and loss that I finally felt in the arts.  All of a sudden, Texas was home to me.  Texas was about cowboy hats and mohawks, barbeque joints and vegan paradises, Sunday church bells and Sunday Chicken Shit Bingo.

That, and of course football.

Interested in checking out our staff picks for yourself? Head over to Vulcan Video where you can find all of our picks labeled as AFF Staff Picks. Go to vulcanvideo.com for location and catalogue information.

To keep up with the latest AFF News and all Staff Picks blogs, subscribe to our RSS Feed.

April 17, 2013: On Story Season 3 Premieres Saturday April 20th, Staff Picks: TV Pilots, AFF’s Interview: Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman on Hemlock Grove, AFF 2012 Official Selection IT’S A DISASTER opens Friday, & AFF’s Upcoming Events!

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For today’s staff pick, producer, editor, and voice of Austin Film Festival’s On Story Podcast, Brian Ramos talks about his introduction to The Sopranos and how it taught him that it was the little things that made life worth living. For more information on our On Story Podcasts, click here.

Life’s simple pleasures link the divine to the mundane, offering up comforting magic tricks in the face of every semi-conscious minute we spend marching toward our own inevitable oblivion. Through technology we’ve gifted ourselves with every convenience and pastime in order to take our minds off of our own mortality. Although I was raised Catholic, the closest thing to God in my upbringing was television. When The Sopranos premiered in January 1999, I had lost my faith. TV was out and obscure foreign cinema at the Dobie Theatre was in. The majority of my fellow Gen Xers, at least those in my immediate circle of friends, didn’t even own television sets. Too broke for cable. No Internet at home. No smart phones because they hadn’t been invented yet, and few, if any, cell phones. To settle a bet you had to go to the library…and I don’t mean the one in your Macbook that contains all of your mp3’s…I mean the one with the books in it. So it wasn’t a blog, Netflix streaming, or Itunes that hipped me to Tony Soprano and crew. My source for good new TV then and, I confess, even now?

My mother.

After catching up for a few hours on a weekend visit with mom a few months before the turn of the millennium, she looked at me and said:

“Mi’jito, I know you don’t like to watch TV anymore, but there’s a show that I think you’ll reeeeealy like….”

My father cracked the seal on a can of Coca-Cola Classic, and looked down at his shoes while nodding his head in affirmation. In went the VHS dub, on went the massive stereo my father had hooked up to the TV, and out went my high-minded sensibilities.

From the title sequence with its unforgettable Woke Up This Morning soundtrack, to the opening scene where we were introduced to Tony Soprano’s iconic heavy breathing juxtaposed against the stormy calm of Lorraine Brocco’s portrayal of Dr. Melfi, I was all at once lost in the bridge and tunnel universe of the show.

We all seem to have a quiet obsession with the charming violence depicted in mobster narratives. David Chase’s The Sopranos handled the tropes made famous by Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese in such a way as to make them even more irresistible. We might not see ourselves in the shoes of these anti-heroes, but somehow we can relate. Tony and his crew are constantly looking to the past, and the pilot explores the feelings of lament at the loss of tradition that these baby boomers experience as they come to affluent middle age.

David Chase offers insight into the creation of the show, and especially the pilot, in episode 1304 of the On Story Podcast, describing it more as a semi-biographical portrait about his mother who had a notoriously difficult personality. A week before shooting the pilot, and after seeing hundreds of women for the part, “Nancy Marchand came up to the casting office, all out of breath…this waspy, regal woman…and just channeled that thing, and there was no discussion.”

The question of casting The Sopranos comes up whenever my friends and I discuss the characters. Although many of these actors popped up in other mob stories on the big screen and small, the contrast between typecast actors and fresh faces gave the show a sweet familiarity while keeping it from feeling recycled in the way of other films of the era, (I’m looking at you, A Bronx Tale).

Any show that – in it’s first few minutes – depicts its protagonist running down a terrified debtor with his nephew’s car and then punching the man in his broken leg while Dion and the Belmonts plays in the background would have to qualify as junk food for the mind. But the production value, outstanding writing and terrific performances made this groundbreaking cable TV serial into junk food of the very highest quality.

Drama, violence, comedy and ducks…for me, this was a show about weathering the storm and holding on to the little things that make life worth living.

Thanks mom.

Interested in checking out our staff picks for yourself? Head over to Vulcan Video where you can find all of our picks labeled as AFF Staff Picks. Go to vulcanvideo.com for location and catalogue information.

The dust has settled and the massive influx of cool hip trendsetters have returned to their various blogs across America (and Europe); SXSW has finished another year of putting Austin at the heart of the entertainment convergence of music, interactive, and film.  I’ve been an avid SXSW Music attendee for years, so really diving into SXSW Film for the first time was a blast.  I got a late start, as I was at the Taos Shortz Film Festival the opening weekend, but by Sunday I threw myself full force at the packed schedule.  There are so many films playing, in so many groupings, it can be hard to really master the SXSW schedule.  I decided to focus on a few areas, the Midnighters, because they rarely played against the other films, the Shorts, because they were easily accessible in the giant Vimeo theatre, and the films with Austin/Texas connections.  Of course, I made time to see AFF regular James Franco’s new film SPRING BREAKERS (he steals the film) and the film I had most wanted to see at Sundance but got closed out, THE SPECTACULAR NOW.  James Ponsoldt, an AFF Alum (2004’s JUNEBUG AND HURRICANE), really shines with SPECTACULAR, a simple film about love and growing up that could have felt cliché if it had not been so full of deep characters and heart.

This year SXSW really showcased an excellent selection of Local or Texas films.  Some of them had played Sundance (PRINCE AVALANCHE, UPSTREAM COLOR, MUD, A TEACHER – which I loved) so what I was really looking forward to catching was the new ones, and they certainly didn’t disappoint.  Chris Eska’s THE RETRIEVAL really transports the viewer to another time and pace, slowly creeping through a tension-filled battlefield until it all unravels at the end.  The film features some phenomenal performances from the entire ensemble, although Tishuan Scott brought home the Special Jury Award for Acting as a former slave and fugitive murderer.  The interplay between his character and the Uncle and Nephew team sent behind Union lines to fetch him back really drive the drama.  It was great to see an independent film with limited resources pull off a period (and war) piece.  Another favorite, the beautiful heart-warming documentary BEFORE YOU KNOW IT follows three elderly gay men as they discover their place in the world during the golden years of life.   With three subjects that couldn’t have been more cinematic if they had been written in a script, PJ Ravel’s film acknowledges that you don’t loose your sexuality with age, even if your drive becomes refocused.  Another great film with local roots was Brian Poyser’s THE BOUNCEBACK, a sort of anti-rom com about a guy who returns to Austin to stalk his ex and ends up meeting someone else.  A hilarious film that features an extensive Air-Sex sequence and shot all over Austin, THE BOUNCEBACK is the kind of film that could have been made with someone from the Twilight franchise but thankfully was not.  It should have a nice long run on the festival circuit.  My favorite local film was ZERO CHARISMA, a comedy about a DND Gamemaster whose three-year long campaign gets hijacked when a hipster invades his gaming group and charms his nerdy friends.  Equally funny and touching, Sam Eidson dominates the film with his desperate attempt to remain on the throne of his own carefully crafted world.  This is the kind of quirky comedy that really, despite being made in Austin, could play anywhere and really find an audience.

Looking at the shorts program, a lot of my favorites from SXSW were ones I had already seen at Sundance including SOCIAL BUTTERFLY, SKIN and BLACK METAL.  NECRONOMICA played as sort of the comic side to BLACK METAL and really stood out for its levity in a rather bleak program (Shorts 2).  In sort of an extreme version of Bill and Ted’s, NECRONOMICA finds a band fraught to find a way to be the most evil band in the world (hint: it involves a goat head).  In Shorts 1, SEQUIN RAZE gave the viewer an inside look into the questionable morality of reality television and really stood out.  My favorite new short played during Shorts Program 3, IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S ME, a disturbing and hilarious tale of things going from bad to worse when a girl tries to break up with her boyfriend and ends up killing him instead (and that’s just the first two minutes).  Although most of the Midnight Shorts were a little un-narrative for me, I loved the fake trailer HELL NO, a series of horror films where smart characters make rational decisions deflating any attempt at typical horror scenarios.  I also loved the music video of a teddy bear killing every other toy in sight in VENGEANCE RHYTHM.

And while I am thinking about staying up late, the Midnighters Section offered some of SXSW’s most consistently entertaining features including the return of YOU’RE NEXT which has become sort of an Austin legend after wowing audiences at its original screening at Fantastic Fest and then being pulled for its final two screenings.  It’s the kind of film that gets people cheering along with each kill and featured a great cameo from (SXSW Midnighter and Sundance director – THE RAMBLER) Calvin Lee Reeder at the end.  My favorite Midnighter was the aptly named BIG ASS SPIDER! (I actually heard someone ask the director what the film about).  A monster movie in the old fashioned sense of the art from director Mike Mendez, BIG ASS SPIDER! isn’t afraid to laugh at itself and ethnic stereotypes.  It was some of the most enjoyable minutes I had in a theater in a long time.  Yeah, it’s silly, but it works.  It even had classic three act structure.

However, my favorite film overall was a documentary A BAND CALLED DEATH.  A perfect example of what SXSW does best, the film was a music doc, about a seldom heard proto-punk band from Detroit.  The band was in attendance, and played shows at SXSW Music.  They also signed merch after the screening.  Formed in 1971 by three African-American brothers who wanted to sound like The Who and MC5, Death recorded a legendary lost album that was rediscovered in a blaze of online mp3 trading.  The band, now reformed although missing one of the original brothers who has sadly since passed, infamously refused to change their name when offered a record contract.  The lost brother told his kin that someday someone was going to come looking for their music, and he turned out to be right.  A BAND OF DEATH was picked up in February by Drafthouse Films so I suspect you will be able to see it shortly at an Alamo near you.

SX is just the first festival in a full year here in Austin, with Cine Las Americas coming up in April, Fantastic Fest in September, and Polari Film Festival and our own Austin Film Festival in October, to name a few.  Austin really is a great town in which to be a filmmaker or film lover.

- Bears Fonte
Austin Film Festival Director of Programming

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