SXSW Diary

Day One

First night of SXSW, film division. I'll spare you the harrowing details of trying to park anywhere near the convention center in order to pick up my badge. Suffice it to say that I missed the first screening of the night, so I killed some time in the Driskill hotel bar, where I was able to eavesdrop on the most pathetic attempts of 50-somethings to pick each other up imaginable. (I nearly withered away from embarrassment when one guy asked the loungy piano entertainer if he knew "Subterranean Homesick Blues.")

Did manage to catch the official kickoff film, the new Winterbottom, Code 46. For the first twenty minutes, I was convinced I was going to love it. Alas, no. It's sort of a cross between Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, yet not anywhere near as good as either. It's the kind of movie where you get the impression that most of it is locked away in the director's head, and he didn't really find a way to let you in on it.

Then went to the kickoff party, where I had a peculiar Six Degrees of Separation moment and couldn't burn through my drink tickets fast enough. Hopefully tomorrow will bring better things.

Day Two

A bit more fruitful. There's an emphasis on political documentaries this time (apparently it's an election year or something), a couple of which I saw today. The Hunting of the President is Harry Thomason's adaptation of the Conason/Lyons book. It's done in a hyperkinetic tabloid style reminiscent of JFK, which is off-putting at first, and it makes no bones about its bias (Thomason is, of course, an old Clinton crony). But it is a concise primer on the whole Clinton smear campaign, from the Little Rock hillbillies to R.M. Scaife to Kenneth Starr, and when it gets to the Whitewater stuff involving Susan MacDougal, it's actually quite moving.

The other political doc was Bush's Brain, which oughtta be required viewing for anyone voting in this year's presidential election. It's a hot-off-the-presses adaptation of the book by Wayne Slater and James Moore, the whole sordid tale of Karl Rove and his long history of dirty tricks. By the end of it, I'd say everyone in the Paramount Theater was ready to march on the White House and leave with Rove's head on a stick. This guy is the scumbaggest scumbag who ever scumbagged.

Also saw I Love Your Work, Adam Goldberg's second feature, which had sort of a clever premise - a movie star who becomes a stalker of an ordinary couple - but was a bit on the pretentious side. And meant to see Super Size Me, the doc by the guy who ate nothing but McDonald's for a month, but by then, I was movied out. Which kind of sucks, because there's really nothing I want to see tomorrow - they should have saved it for then, dammit. But no one consulted me.