I have learned a couple of things this week that relate to my previous daily reports. One is that the name of the band that I heard on Day 7 was The JFJ Band, not the JGJ Band. And I got this interesting note from Louis Black at SXSW about my coverage of “A Mighty Wind” on Day 6 and a few other items:

“Rick (Linklater – Day 3) had been to the dentist but didn't want to make a big deal of it.

“The trailers are Indian/Bollywood Western take offs, not Spanish.

“I work lots of doors, always have.

“The studio wanted the smallest possible audience (for “A Mighty Wind”), originally they wanted to show it at the Alamo. I tried to get them to let us use at least some of the balcony but they wouldn't. Christopher Guest was in town and was supposed to introduce and left. Oddly, Harry Shearer, who we knew was supposed to be coming, and Michael McKean, who we were specifically told wouldn't be coming were both in town but didn't come to the screening.

“Thanks, Louis”

Anyway, here’s my coverage of the Last Day of SXSW 2003 based on my scribbled notes from that day:

I slept late and missed Hobble’s show at Flamingo Cantina which was supposed to happen at about 1:30. I got up about 2 and took my time getting ready for the three movies I planned to see today. First on my list was “Happy Here and Now” at the Westgate at 4pm. I knew I-35 was under construction and traffic would move at a snail’s pace, so I took Lamar.

I had some time to kill before the show so decided to eat at the old style Arby’s restaurant that I’ve seen on the far north side of the parking lot. I’d never eaten there before and it looked pretty run down from the outside. It looked even crummier inside but the food wasn’t too bad.

I came in right about the perfect time. The film was just about to start. The volunteer who introduced “Happy Here and Now” reminded us that it had won a special jury prize for narrative film.

On my way out of the film, I saw my friend Jan sitting in the lobby and stopped to tell her that I agreed with her assessment of “HH&N.” She had told me the guy who played the fireman in it was cute. I knew when she didn’t say she liked the film, that she must not have enjoyed it very much. Neither did I. I asked her what she was going to see and she told me “Dummy.” I couldn’t remember who the star was and she reminded me it was Adrien Brody. I had wanted to see “dummy” and even thought about calling my Lube TV co-host Mark Brauner to accompany me as he loves dummies, which he calls “vent figures,” presumably short for ventriloquist figures and not because ventriloquists often use them to “vent” their frustrations. SXSW had left me too drained to do much of anything like call friends or try to arrange an outing.

I thought about staying to see ”Dummy” but decided instead to stick to my plan and head to the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex to see “Robot Stories.” I had one hour to get there but knew it would take me a while due to I-35 being backed-up. I opted to take the back roads and it still took me 45 minutes. I went from Westgate to Stassney, which turns into Montopolis, then to Riverside. I took the short jaunt over to Pleasant Valley, which crosses the river and then, after 10 blocks or so, allows you to jettison over to MYEC.

Since it took so long to get there, I didn’t have to wait too long to get into the MYEC screening room. It was smaller than I remembered (I saw some stuff here last year). I counted about 140 seats. As the film was about to start, some people came down the aisle and then jumped over seats to the row behind me. How juvenile and irritating.

I had some time to kill after the screening until the last show of the night. I had to choose between “Spun” at Westgate or “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” at the Paramount. Since I knew the Dobie would be getting “Spun” in a few weeks, I opted to see the other. Everyone had been saying it was really good all week, anyway.

While I was home for about 45 minutes or so, I flipped through the channels and caught a cable access show about Liberty Dollar and Liberty Money. Does anyone really think this is real money? The documentary I watched which seemed to be promoting it, also used hidden camera footage of the people involved giving it to clerks who questioned it. When one took it, at the end of the program, it almost seemed like a practical joke.

I wanted to grab a bite and decided to go to Starseeds. Since it was only 8:30, I figured it would be pretty slow and it was, although there were some folks there. I took a booth and Shaun came over and sat down next to me and talked. He said they had been pretty busy during SXSW and that some of the out-of-towners had been impatient and a pain in the ass. We talked about how Austin is on its own timetable and how it sometimes takes quite a while to get used to that.

Shaun said he had seen some shows but had mainly went to Emo’s in the afternoon and hung out with friends. We talked about music and film and stuff before he took my order and waited on some others.

I saw that Jen was working too and said hello. As I was leaving, again I promised her that I would make her a dupe of the Bowie bootleg I have that has “The 1980 Floor Show” audio on it. While I was paying Jen asked Shaun what the CD he was playing was, some customers wanted to know. He joked around before he said it was some band called Neutral Milk Hotel. I told him I thought it sounded like Black Hearts Procession before he told me he thought it sounded like 2 or 3 bands I’d never heard of in my life. Then, for some reason, pop punk came up and he said he liked Smoking Popes and Jawbreaker. I’m going to have to try and download some songs by them to see if I would call it pop punk.

I got the Saturday Chronicle and saw that Greg Beets had written a review of the Trachtenburg Family Slide Show Players. I saw these guys on Conan O’Brien a few months ago and they are phenomenal. The group is only two players, the father on guitar and his nine-year-old daughter on drums. The mother runs a slide projector. What they do is this: They buy old slides from garage sales, estate sales and antique stores and then write songs about the people in the slides usually making some sort of narrative thread out of a series of slides. Beets said they ended their SXSW Lazona Rosa show with a 6 song min-rock-opera “based on slides from a McDonald’s marketing seminar from the 70’s.” Wow. What a show. I will not miss these guys again.

There was also an “After a Fashion” column by my new hero, Stephen MacMillan Moser, about taking super-groupie Pamela Des Barres out antiqueing in Austin. He’s so cool.

I went to Paramount and ended up parking near the Capitol Building. My friend Ben Kobbs had told me that he would be working at a film shoot in an alley near the capitol building and I saw some lights in an alley when I was looking for a parking place but didn’t have time to walk over there and say hello.

At the Paramount, there were long lines to buy tickets to “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” but the passes line and badges lines were relatively short. I was pretty early, so I waited to get in. Several people asked me where to buy tickets and I directed them to the other side of the block. A lady and her two daughters came and stood behind me and when she asked me if this was where she should stand while her husband was buying tickets, I told her no and informed her she should go to the other side of the block. She didn’t want to believe me and told me she would wait for her husband. He came and got her about five minutes later and they went to the other side of the block. Must have been untrusting out-of-towners.

While I was waiting, some folks came by and handed out flyers for Greg Palast and then The Eyeshadows. Described on the flyer as an “all girl punk band,” The Eyeshadows were doing a free show at Trophy’s at midnight. The flyer was pretty cool looking but I didn’t think I’d have time to get over there after the movie. This was the last movie of SXSW and I was just beat.

There was a young 20-something couple behind me and we started talking about the film as well as “Lilya,” “Deprivation,” “Sexless", “Melvin goes to Dinner” (which they liked), as well as some documentary about a “weather underground” during the Vietnam war. We also talked about how the films seemed more political in nature than the typical music-oriented documentaries that SXSW usually puts out. We were talking about how awesome the film “The Trials of Henry Kissinger” was when the line began to go in and we said our goodbyes.

Once inside, I realized the film was supposed to start at 10:30 and not 10:15 as I had thought. There were so many individual ticket buyers that they didn’t get it started until after 10:45. I had lots of time to look over the crowd, eavesdrop and take notes.

There was a huge college-aged, anti-war crowd in attendance. There was an old barefoot hippie selling “No Iraq War” bumper stickers for a dollar. I should have asked if I could take his picture for a dollar. There were lots of cute anti-war boys but the place smelled horrible. Apparently hippies don’t bathe. The place stunk to high heaven. Plus it was crowded and wall to wall again as they didn’t seem to want to open the damn balcony.

The group of college aged Hispanics behind me talked about what they had done during Spring Break and then one of the girls went into this long dialogue about a professor and how she had argued with him about Marxism and the Zapatistas. She said she was having trouble understanding all of it and I must admit that I didn’t quite understand it all myself.

I found the film very biased and was concerned that the anti-war kids were just as myopic as so-called American “patriots.”

After the film I hurried outside so that I could take pictures of the discussion groups but the lighting was bad and it was too hard to take pictures without bothering anyone. I took a few anyway. Most of the people were talking in English but a few were discussing passionately in Spanish. I saw Jan’s friend Quida there and her and I jockeyed a bit to listen in to the discussions. The basic idea of the Venezuelans was that the film was one-sided and not everyone in Venezuela was on the side of the government.

I saw the film reviewer for the Austin-American Statesman, Chris Garcia, waiting out front. He was apparently there to pick someone up. He had parked right in front of the building and had to move a few people to get his car out. I laughed when I realized that his car was shittier than mine.

I walked down Congress towards my car. I noticed that someone had written “Impeach Bush” in black magic marker on some construction boards over a window. Then I came upon the majesty of the Capitol building, all lit up at night. I remembered how when I first moved to Austin, when Bush was Governor, the Capitol building parking lot was open all night and anyone could walk up to the building at anytime and enjoy it. Now, it is locked up and Police cars stand guard outside it.

I wondered what the world might be like today if Gore had won.

A final note:

All in all, SXSW2003 was far better and far more exhausting than I thought it would be. In 9 days, I had seen 19 films, 2 shorts and two rock shows all for about $59.50. ($51.50 for the film pass and $8 cover at one of the shows.) Filmwise, that’s about $2.70 per admission, a bargain really.

Best Film: Sexless

Best Comedy: Sexless

Best Austin Film: Sexless

Best Film that will get a national release: Raising Victor Vargas

Worst Film: Deprivation

Best Actor: Victor Rasuk in “Raising Victor Vargas”

Best Actress: Wai Ching Ho in “Robot Stories”

Best Documentary Subject: Timothy Speed Levitch in “Live from Shiva’s Dancefloor”

Most Promising Director: Greg Pak (Robot Stories)

Most Promising Screenwriter: Alex Holdridge (Sexless)

Most Promising Documentarian: Christopher Wilcha (Second Hand Stories – Day 3)

Most Amazing Moment: The Kissinger Show (Day 7)

Most Favored Rock Star: Oriah (Day 6 and Day 7)

I already can’t wait for the next film festivals this year, Agliff in August and AFF in October. Austin rocks.

Lodger2003@SXSW2003