AUSTIN, Texas -- South By Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Festival is part trendy business conference, part art-damaged Spring Break blow-out, part war zone. The 29-year-old, 14-day event draws more than 100,000 people to downtown Austin annually, not counting the tens of thousands who participate in hundreds of "unofficial" (often free) parties and music showcases hosted by corporations and record labels.
A SXSW-funded impact study claims Austin benefited from 2014's conference to the tune of $315 million. But the lingering headline of 2014 is more tragic. After a drunk driver plowed into a downtown crowd, killing four and injuring more than 20, the city heeded festival organizers' call for a cap on unofficial parties and passed codes governing large events.
Statistics aren't in for SXSW 2015, which ran March 13-22, but the event seems to have wrapped without major trauma and the film portion, at least, had plenty of industry clout. Sally Field, Judd Apatow, Kevin Hart, Ryan Gosling, Robert Rodriguez, Adrien Brody, Will Ferrell and Elijah Wood were all spotted around town, supporting various independent efforts as directors, producers and actors.
OUR EXPERIENCE: EIGHT FILMS, FOUR DAYS
This year SXSW programmed 155 feature films, many of which were chosen from 2,390 cold submissions. Here are the (regrettably few) films we saw:
The narrative feature, Babysitter, is a Los Angeles-style family drama. A producer and his wife, a washed-up actress, are in the midst of an ugly divorce. Anjelika (Daniele Watts of Weeds), the 18-year-old daughter of a deceased, drug-addicted pop star, works for the family as a live-in baby sitter, and she and Ray, a manipulative 14-year-old (Max Burkholder of Parenthood) develop romantic feelings. While the unremarkable portrayal of their interracial relationship is Babysitter's key strength, the movie doesn't deal as thoughtfully with race elsewhere, employing unwarranted tropes. When the Texas grandparents visit, Anjelika must wear a uniform and serve the family, and the school's biggest drug dealer is Hispanic, supporting his family because the adult men are in jail.
Another film, Quitters, explores similar themes (coming-of-age, familial dysfunction) in a more polished manner. Clark (Ben Konigsberg) is a crafty teenager in the hyper-sexual pressure cooker of a wealthy San Francisco high school. His mother is in rehab for prescription drugs, and his father can't be bothered. So Clark pretends to fall for a girl with a more functional family, convinces her family to let him move in, and remains a generally disturbing and unsympathetic character for the duration of this claustrophobic, unrelenting film.
It's a slice-of-life nightmare, seemingly too dark to work, but somehow it does. Maybe it works because certain scenes are eviscerating, well-played enough to make the audience physically uncomfortable. Or maybe it's because some situations are simply stated rather than resolved, such as a punk-loving, rookie English teacher (Kieran Culkin) initiating a sexual relationship with his student (Kara Hayward of Moonrise Kingdom). Quitters is more frightening in its plausibility than any gore-fueled horror flick could aspire to be.
The Frontier is pulpy '70s-style noir, short on character development and big on dreamy pans. It's Twin Peaks meets early Tarantino, shot in the style of early Coen brothers. The premise is straightforward: a woman on the lam lands at a shabby desert motel where a heist is slated to occur; mayhem ensues. But the characters never progress beyond charming sketches, and as a result, The Frontier keeps the audience more interested than invested. It's vibe-y rather than thrilling, beautifully shot on 16-millimeter film.
Hello, My Name Is Doris -- a quirky, tender dramedy co-written and directed by Michael Showalter (Wet, Hot American Summer) and starring Sally Field -- won this year's audience award and spearheaded a bidding fight among distributors. Field plays Doris, a 60-something office worker who falls for her much younger co-worker and bumbles through hipster Brooklyn in pursuit.
In a SXSW panel, Field described her character as having "an odd inability to see herself in the world. I think in a way she sees herself in her interior, and she kind of forgot how old she is. So she sees this cute guy, and she thinks, this is just what I want. And I'm going to go after it, and I'm going to get it."
One of the more experimental offerings, the narrative feature God Bless the Child intimately chronicles a childhood summer day. It's every child's fear and fantasy -- five siblings must fend for themselves when their mother disappears. This mother seems prone to disappearing, so 13-year-old Harper takes over with a practiced air. But God Bless the Child isn't about the absent mother -- it's about the unstructured nature of childhood, the poetry of quietly captured rambunctiousness, and the myriad of daily, tiny adventures. The children (real siblings and the progeny of co-director Robert Machoian) cuddle in sleep, bound off each other in play, eat Popsicles, make a production out of bathing the dog and name-check superheroes in a way that's so unstudied it's hard to believe most scenes were scripted. (According to the directors, they were.)
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck was executive-produced by Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, and will air on HBO on May 4. It investigates the singer's childhood, interviews his parents and former girlfriend, and uses animation to illustrate voice recordings made when, pre-stardom, Cobain spent long days alone.
Much of the film is familiar territory, with animated bits of "new" notebooks coming alongside clips of long-published journals. But some stories become public for the first time here, such as Cobain's (disgraceful) loss of virginity. Home videos offer a glimpse into drug-addled domestic life, punctuated by Cobain and wife Courtney Love's shared sense of humor and surprising warmth toward each other.
On a lighter note -- what if you were adopted from South Korea by an American family 25 years ago, then found someone on the Internet who shared your birth date and looked just like you? That's what happened to Samantha Futerman, an LA-based actress who began a Skype-friendship with Anais Bordier after the French fashion design student contacted Futerman wondering if they were long-lost twins. Because the women's relationship is developed online, much of Twinsters consists of screen shots. Even so, the documentary is an engaging exploration of cross-cultural adoption, nature versus nurture and the expansive nature of family.
The Jones Family Will Make a Way is a documentary about a hard-scrabble Texas gospel group championed by Michael Corcoran, an atheist rock critic who ultimately ushers them into a recording studio owned by Jim Eno of the band Spoon. The Joneses are a Pentecostal bishop, his wife, seven kids and, now, a host of grandchildren. The family performs in churches and occasionally in bars, refusing to back away from the "message" of their music, even for the sake of commercial appeal. The movie offers a glimpse (it would have been better served with a hard look) at social and economic disenfranchisement, of what it's like to have family, faith and little else. There's an interesting (albeit polite) culture clash in the studio, as the white, somewhat "hipster" producers try to rein in and strip down the Joneses' sound, so that it might pass (and sell) as trendier "roots" music. When the film ends, we still have no idea (nor do the Joneses) of where they are heading. The group lands a gig at Lincoln Center and has a new album to promote, but at a record store show, they sell a single CD.
HITS AND MISSES
Stellar moments: When the Jones family crowded the stage of the Alamo Ritz to sing a cappella. Sally Field and Michael Showalter bantered about smelly vintage costumes, how to keep nail polish consistent when a film is shot out of order and how clapping loudly between takes helps Field stay in character during a tough scene.
We missed: The grand jury and documentary audience choice award winner, Peace Officer, examines the militarization of police through the story of a sheriff and his family. The sheriff founded Utah's first SWAT team in 1975, and in 2008, that team killed his son-in-law.
Sailing a Sinking Sea, a documentary made by the 32-year-old LA-based Arkansan and Mount St. Mary Academy alumna Olivia Wyatt, captures the nomadic sea culture of a small southeast Asian ethnic group. Wyatt spent about 16 weeks with the Mokens after learning that an ability to "read" the sea helped them escape the devastating 2004 tsunami. She and a friend comprised the crew, capturing impressionistic, often underwater footage, overlaid with Moken music and voice-overs from translated interviews.
HOW TO DO SXSW
Save on hotels (and ensure you get a room) by booking as soon as 2016's festival dates are announced. In 2015, a film badge bought in September cost $525, versus the $695 it cost in March.
Badges offer priority access to all screenings and film panels and a few music showcases. Leftover tickets are sold to the general public at individual screenings ($10), but getting a seat this way is likely only at one of two satellite venues (accessible by car rather than festival shuttle) or during the last few days of films.
Give yourself a buffer of an hour and a half between films. These films start on time, and there will be travel time and a line.
Don't drive. Traffic never lets up (particularly between 4 and 8 p.m.), parking runs $20-$40, and pedestrians and bikers are rampant. Many hotels offer free shuttles downtown. If you do drive, arrive before noon, park on neighborhood streets on the east side of Interstate 35, and walk the 10 or so blocks downtown.
Finally, realize that you'll miss more than you'll see. SXSW is exhausting, overwhelming and expensive. But it does offer the incredible energy of an entire downtown thrumming with singular purpose, and it places near the top of nearly every media-generated "best festival list," keeping company with Sundance Film Festival -- and nothing else in the United States. And it's much easier to actually see a film at SXSW than at Sundance. Plus, Texas in March is shorts-weather. Utah in January is parkas.
MovieStyle on 04/03/2015