Opening Act
Complimentary drinks, free Mexican food well into danger zone temperatures, and an onsite art project where you mail a postcard to yourself: SXSW has begun, in earnest this time. The party was for SXSW Eco, the burgeoning environmental group within the ever expanding SX universe. These events cloudy themselves up as sponsor and SX blend into one indecipherable mass of "respectable" consumer culture. The company on the pedestal was Geostellar. What they do, I have no idea, but their CEO, or COO, or whatever it is they are called these days has a band.
All men, 40 plus--not that rock and roll has an age limit--the front man, the CEO/COO, wearing a denim jacket embarrassed with Geostellar stickers, a sax player in a suit looking heroically bombed, a guitar player with a Fender Jaguar--who I'm sure will wax poetic on the Jaguar versus Stratocaster "well the Strat is more famous, but the Jag, that sounds like rock music" issue--a Rickenbacker bass player, and a drummer who seemed genuinely happy to be there.
The show disgorged in a dissonant aural assault, a nightmare sludge of poorly tuned instruments and under rehearsed tracks. The cues are a mess, two people with Geostellar t-shirts tucked into their jeans record the show on their iPhone and hoot, I caught the sound guy making a "Yikes" face. A guitar string broke, another song trudged to merciful termination, it was time for a front man speech.
"The story of Rome. Well the story of the foundation of Rome, is the story of Remus and Romulus. The mythology of the start of Rome is the story of these two brothers..."
Oh, go on. His lecture shuffled its feet around Remus and Romulus until it ambled into a dead end even a CEO's ego can't overlook. He reversed tack with a "long story short," made some nebulous symbolic connection between Remus' death and Romulus' wall as the beginning of mankind's separation with nature. The destruction of Druidic cultures was thrown in for good measure, and then there was a multi century jump to the rape of South America. Did he mention he's also promoting a sustainable energy drink? As unexpectedly as it began, it all dovetailed into a song called "Rockabilly Immigrant."
There are a lot of awful rock shows in this world, but this one gave so generously of its own delusion, it would be unfair to try and forget. And I would give anything to sit in on a Geostellar board meeting.
This could have been a good film, but it wasn't. Someone booed it, and it didn't deserve that. It had all the pieces, but they couldn't be cobbled together. Every frame so love worn and doted on the over shot visuals choke out a fragile narrative. What could have been an interesting meditation on what we do when things go wrong, the film is so clouded by stiff camera movement and hackneyed art house scene blocking any hope of the story ascending beyond third or fourth priority is a vain one.
The film is quiet and meditative, but to a fault. The horror spilled out in the third act doesn't have the fuse burning tension hissing through the rest of the film to truly satiate. It's a shame, because the moments of comprehensive story building and dialogue crack with the sort of intensity the film reaches for in every other manicured frame.
The Fifth Season could be about the economy, it could be about irrational beliefs and the irrational behavior when those beliefs break down, it could have been about the permanent winter of empty, decayed morality, but sometimes movies should just be movies--what is actually committed to film--and this wasn't a particularly good one.
The Full Usual
The bar was a little livelier than usual. It's our bar, well it is since Judson moved away and we stopped going to the Hole in the Wall so much. Tristan already got his "LOCAL" bracelet. Our bar was issuing "LOCAL" bracelets. I felt pangs of superficial jealousy. I thought I'd logged enough hours at our perch to where mine would be issued intuitively. Mark was there, unexpected. A treat, but he and Tristan usually require a middleman of sorts. Mark was loose, squeaking with good cheer. Tristan was lubricated, but he wears his drunks with quite resolve.
"I had my worst Alamo experience the other day!" Mark started. He has good posture, a slight stoop, but nothing like the shoulders draped over gut I don't even catch myself doing any more. He keeps his legs close together, spindles and sinew planted into his signature green and yellow Asics Onitsuka Tigers.
We took a few pulls.
"First off I went to fucking Lake Creek, or whichever Alamo is way up north, and after the dun-dun-dun-dun intro (written words don't have a sound, but his vocal interpretation of the Alamo's no texting or talking promo song was impeccable) a screen comes up that says this is a kid friendly film. On cue, this lady with this fucking kid sits down behind me. And it's coughing! All movie long the baby is coughing and then it pukes and..." maybe he didn't like the timbre of these thoughts out loud, "...I mean, she took it out of there. And, I don't know, Alamo just used to be all about the movies. Now it's all commercials and shit."
"Maybe it's your Opeth hoodie talking, but I don't think I've ever seen you so upset about something," I poked at his cindering conversational fire bomb.
"I love the Alamo! I used to say it was the best theater in the world. That's what I would tell people. And when I said it I believed it..." Mark's whole heart was talking.
"The best life lesson I've ever learned: nothing gold can stay. Embrace it. It really makes everything better"
Our conversation lumbered on like the bodies churning through the crush. Last call came. We went in and saw our bartender.
"Hey!" she said. This is our two step. She'll say, "Hey", unwrap her eyes up smile slotted with imperfect teeth, and we'll order drinks like slack jawed teenagers sauntering up to a kissing booth.
She has tattoos and a boyfriend with a cringe worthy name, but he's not me and Tristan, regulars, which is probably the first of many qualities he has over us. We give too much credence to going there to see her--we'll take any place with the drink--but she is one of those bartender's cut from the star lined cloak of whatever patron Saint is big enough to prop up the bar.
"The full usual." we replied in chorus. We've even added a hand motion similar to an ump signaling a home run. She grabbed the bottle of T.W. Samuels, two shot glasses, and two 16 oz Lone Star Beers. We turned to walk away, she called me back to the bar, and issued my LOCAL bracelet.
People crowd the lobby before the 10 o'clock premiere of Yellow. Like a full color rendering of my naïve idea of "industry people" they're all there, skinny and pretty, not regular attractive, but silver screen good looking. Cellphones and cocktails are swung around like master leading gestures. A guy in converse and a sport coat kisses cozies up to a salt and pepper dude wearing a backward black and white Washington Nationals hat, a t-shirt, baggy jeans, and a pair of J's. Salt and Pepper has a woman flitting around him, a brunette with personal trainer muscles and some doctor made pretty stretched on her tawny frame. They seem to be everywhere. Gray hair has a procession of people talking to him and brunette is servicing and glad handing and filming things on her phone. What sort of LA bungalow do they call home?
As the film intro began, the director was brought on stage, and his backwards Washington Nationals hat stared me down. Nick Cassavetes, director of The Notebook and John Q, dresses like a fifteen year old whose mom dropped him off at the mall. When the film rolled, I realized the lead was the plasticine brunette. Glutted on superficialities, my mind became a black hole from which hope for this film could not escape. I'm glad I ordered the 22 ounce beer.
But this film had a secret, it's good. Really good. Not great, but bold and the work of a director who took his cache of creative capital and splurged it on HIS project. The story of a woman, a troubled woman, desiccated from years of being beautiful and medicated and broke her only feeling left is not feeling anything. The film unravels and re-spools like her manic psyche. There are lush stylistic digressions where Cassavetes tackles the specters of mental illness and anxiety with fearless gusto.
It doesn't always work, there is a scene near the beginning where an interoffice conflict plays out a'la Pennies From Heaven that almost put me off beyond redemption, but when Yellow works it is pure cinema--the sumptuous movie magic you want to cleave from the screen and squeeze into your mouth. Heather Whalquist, our brunette, gives a performance that could only be described as her own. No matter where her career goes, she has this naked, raw, soul-split-wide-open performance to claim as her moment, the thing she can point to and tell all the assholes back in Oklahoma, this is what it was all for.
The film is outrageous, and frustrating, and at times absurd, but if you could crack open the mind of a person suffering from this kind of internal tempest, it would spill out in a tumultuous Technicolor swirl of fractured reality. And Cassavetes, with the maturity of seasoned film maker, dips into this unpredictable medium and comes back from the void with something well worth the effort.
These two films, both documentaries, are an interesting profile of the weight of our ambitions versus the cost of our ambitions. There is a colossal fulcrum between our aims and the realization of those dreams. Moving this vision from one side to the other is seen as success, but once the change has occurred, the unforeseen consequences of achievement can be harder to handle than the push to the top. It's a rather common narrative, especially within the documentary world, but to see the two sides explored in such separate ways was an incisive refresher into these familiar themes.
William, a young man from Malawi with limited education, built a windmill with nothing to go on except a picture in a textbook. With his ingenuity, he saved his family from the brink, became a TED sensation, and was jettisoned into a world of intelligentsia, book tours, and higher education. William is quickly torn between his duties to his family, plans for himself, and the obligations of an inspirational figure complete with benefactors. His relationship with his most ardent supporter and advisor, TED regular Tom Rielly, is one of the central elements of the film. Tom truly puts William at the forefront of his concern, but at times the line blurs between what Tom thinks William's ambitions should be versus what William wants.
The subject is fascinating, but the documentary is not exceptionally well made. Scenes drag on, and there is a lot of fat on the jowls of several sequences, but as with any documenting eye, director Ben Nabors captures a few moments of excruciating truth. Grown up outside of the craving-instant-fame culture and with searing exposure suddenly focused on his endeavors William is reticent and often seems displaced in this sea of admiration. In a reveling moment, the off camera filmmaker asks William, "Are you humble?" In a wonderful, stinging rebuke of self-appointed humility, William responds with a flat, "If people say I'm humble, then I am humble." William embraces the many opportunities presented with gratitude and hard work, but the struggle remains: how to be The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, and how to still be William.
Lunarcy is a sprawling profile of the Moon and the men whose fantastic designs rest on her luminous shoulders. There is the man who wants to be the first colonizer sent to the moon with no intention of coming back. There is the elderly Milwaukeean who has a regular newsletter about the various elements of moon colonization ranging from how to build shelter, to how we will make art and music on the moon. There is the man who is selling plots of real estate on the moon for $24 a parcel. The film is saturated with these elaborate rationales for Moon colonization, and as the documentary progresses, there are more and more moments when these arguments sound sort of correct, and make just enough sense to become emotionally invested. These men are misfits, and outcasts, and appropriately delusional--as with all men of such singular vision--and their stories are told with rejection and isolation coloring the background.
The film itself is overly cute at times, very title card heavy with some title cards dictating dialogue direct from on screen interviews. The font chosen is Wes Anderson's favored Futura. Along with the jaunty Mark Mothersbaugh-esque score, this doc--if it sees the light of wide(r) release--will often get the, "like it was made by Wes Anderson," comparison. It does keep the film moving at a brisk pace, but the nuggets are so digestible, the movie is plagued with several scenes which look and feel like the end. When the film arrives at it its rather satisfying conclusion, some tedium has already taken hold. During the duration of the film, there is no hope for the subjects to achieve this dream, but independent of the Moon, there is a consuming ambition these men have surrendered to which makes for compelling human drama on this celestial body, or any other.
But seriously, getting to the moon with no plan of coming back has to be when the real problems begin.
Some People
Perpetual gridlock has taken. Horns and brakes in need of replacing grind across the girder, concrete, glass skin of Austin's downtown façade. Energy chokes the atmosphere. People here to party, people here to build the brand, people here to get discovered, people who are mercenaries wrangling all the drunk idiots in various customer service capacities, and all the innocents caught in the fray who it's-just-another-work-week-can-I-please-go-the-fuck-home. Good and bad feelings, rendered with extreme prejudice, vibrate through the air.
I like to walk fast after work. It's still a time in the week when I can keep pace. Traffic hits a dead halt at 9th and San Jacinto. I see a young lady, dye job in need of replacing, storm into the middle of the street. Into the teeth of three lane traffic? A brand new Cadillac sedan, resplendent in steel grey and chrome accents with luster undercoat, sits in the middle lane of the street, hazard lights flashing, with no one inside. She spins back toward the sidewalk.
"I CAN'T PARK IT FROM HERE!"
Maybe she belts it out to force it above the din, maybe she screams it because she's already screamed it five times. How will it all end? This seems like a good place to cross the street. At her behest, a man saunters off the sidewalk and into traffic. Denim jacket, crisp snapback, fatigues as military industrial chic, tortoise shell wayfarers, Jordan's, all boutique purchased, maybe by a stylist, an icon of arrogant insouciance. Traffic is swollen to cloud burst proportions. Behind him, a young man in an old white truck filled with tools bears the look of trauma previously unknown. Slack jawed, flushed, caught in a flash point of ego explosion, he's shell shocked. Rage can't even find root, wide eyed incredulity is the only emotion made for this fever dream. I can see the Caddy owner's friends on the curb trying to look like they aren't with him, but doing nothing to say, "You exquisite piece of human garbage, life is not a valet service."
He stood by his open car door, flashers smoldering like the brazen obscenity of his existence. He casually checked his phone, and we caught eyes for a second. He smiled.
Festival films have a unique advantage over wide release films in that it's easier to walk in clean. Viewers haven't been inundated with months of media push and reviews and trailers, and the film gets a much better chance of being judged by what's on the reels versus filtering through expectations. Good Vibrations, with nothing more to go on than a blurb, is one of those films, unburdened on the festival circuit, whose treasure trove of delights hit with full impact.
Good Vibrations is a delightful BBC film about Terri Hooley, a man with the audacity to open a record shop in Belfast at the height of "The Troubles," who became an unlikely champion of the burgeoning Northern Ireland punk scene. Made straight from the heart with high style and a wonderful sense of humor, this is a film about loving music almost to the point of damaging obsession. For those who still believe a handful of records can do more for peace than all the guns and bombs in Northern Ireland, and those who find their memories bookended with more songs than names and dates, it's less about falling head over heels for this film, and more about finding a way to keep all of those massive feelings music's supernatural powers evoke under control for 90 minutes. And Terri Hooley loves reggae? Knock me over with a feather.
It's important to not say too much. The longer the film resonates in memory parts of the story--as with any love note--overstate the importance of the central character and the influence of his actions. Some elements are a little hokey, lots of sizzle, but make no mistake, the film sticks like good cooked food. In the ensuing months as this movie makes its rounds and more and more reviews spill out with lines like, "A stand up and cheer film!" (which, at the end, the entire theater literally stood up and cheered) ignore the hype, purge your memory of hearing Teenage Kicks a million times over, and let the film stand on its own merits. This write up clearly goes against the very notion, but Good Vibrations goes such a long way toward reinvigorating music's unique power, it would be criminal to say nothing. Yeah...forget I said anything.
New Friends
I went to the Paramount to see a film I didn't really want to see, but in a bit of kismet, it was full. I saw another line with a shorter line of badged assholes next to it and thought, "Hey! I'm an asshole with a badge, too." As I rounded the building, I did a quick case of the joint, and this thing was gonna be packed full of gross free booze you'd never normally drink, and apps. I'd wager a king's ransom on some kind of slider being omnipresent.
As I stood in line waiting, one of my strongest skills, I was bombarded. Two strangers, a man and a woman, were on either side of me with tactical precision. These were expert line cutters, and they even had my festival going mode pegged: loner weirdo. They started with this mock getting to know you routine like the joke was lost on me, but I'm a real prick and wasn't soon to be out bantered by these two. I hated myself for looking like a mark. The guy wore glasses and sported one of those jackets Teddy Roosevelt would have worn into the bush via Banana Republic. It was army green. The girl was one of those inverted triangle Mexican girls with hips and legs so narrow you wonder how they support the width of her shoulders and the chesty girth draped from them. She has one of those orthodonture free grins filled with manic, slow charm. We waited in line and bullshitted, and in fumbling for a cigarette, she said something beautiful.
"The only thing I have in my purse is a lighter and a rosary."
My wannabe writer brain was sated. I'd found a nugget I could jam into some made up narrative rich with phony portent, and I was out of there. Once the line gave, I hit the crease and shook them with impunity. I wandered the cavernous Austin Museum of Art painted up like a strumpet in colored lights, DJ Music, and corporate logo posters. It was a Jansport/Samsung/USA Networks television series Graceland sponsored soiree.
I roamed around, saw them again, ducked away, went to the roof, ordered a beer, the bartender emptied the bottle into a plastic cup, I asked her if I could just have the bottle, she said no. On the first night someone threw a bottle off the roof. They found me again, and I acquiesced. It wasn't long until my movie, so I might as well talk to someone. We chatted a little more comfortably this go round, less talking at and more talking to, and something happened. In my painful getting to know you conversation, my hometown invariably came up. Us West Texas boys can hardly talk about anything else.
"We have a really good friend from there!"
Wonderful. I love to play the who do they know from my hometown game.
"His name is Chris S."
Holy shit, it's not a person I think I might have maybe had high school chemistry with, it is one of my very best friends. We reveled in the talking point. They knew him from work and as it all came into focus, I realized I was in the presence of his work best friends. We're through the looking glass.
We had a competition to see who he would write back if we all sent texts at the same time, and when mine came back (1st place, not a huge) it dripped with sincere awkward. He felt exposed. The button down, khaki clad nerd who he--who we all keep hidden from the world was outed.
They knew his family, and his wife. Work husband had a nickname for him, Squidwort, which if you knew the letters hidden behind the "S" in Chris S., it is--oh goodness--what a peach. They had heard of me, or some disc golf playing approximation Chris occasionally conjures in the office as disc is a solid 65% of our time spent together. They even knew to make fun of me for how my name is pronounced, an ongoing boondoggle hampered by those who were around during my younger days.
Chris became the centerpiece of our conversation, because what else do we have to talk about? Spurs basketball and Battlestar Galactica. Game of Thrones and Dallas Cowboys football. They laid out their threads of work Chris as best they understood them. Chris could only text unable to shunt me off from this conversation I was lapping up like it was in a dog bowl. A guy I know, a guy they know, and they are two different people. I liked their version, he seemed helpful and like the guy you miss the most when he's out of the office. My version is a much better cook, but he's a little pushier with the bottle of Jameson at 4 am.
Devastated--I could have rolled around in the mud pit of Chris' discomfort until dawn broke--I had to pull up stakes to make my movie on time. Who are these people? In my world, they don't exist, completely made up outside of the human shaped shell I see in front of me. There is another world, a world right next to mine where they are convincing back story and animus. A world, as with so many of my own little worlds hidden from view, I'm not supposed to know is out there. I sent him a text on my way out.
"Like a little Laura Palmer. Just all full up of secrets."
He replied: "Well it's like I always say 'loose lips sink ships'...so ya gotta keepum close to the chest."
Nobody knows anybody. Not that well, anyway.
[Ed Note: Part 2 tomorrow. Did you really want to read all 9K words at once? Ugh, me neither.]
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