03.12.08
SXSW
Don’t get too excited, I didn’t go there. Maybe next year. But I was just reading about it in this LA Times article, with the oh-so-clever headline “Like its well-fed folks, the Austin, Texas, gathering is swelling” (aren’t there too many commas in there?).
I wanted to go to SXSW (I don’t get a lot of pleasure out of that acronym - I think because it’s purely visual. No one says “Ess Ex Ess Double U”) last year, but because of Bob Dylan, not because of the burgeoning film festival*. And now I learn that Knocked Up premiered there last year and this year Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay did.
So I don’t get it. What are film festivals for anymore? Neither of those movies need to form some kind of fan base before their wide release. Does a SXSW (ugh) premiere make them cooler because it takes place in “Texas’ quintessential college town and its alternative hipster mecca”? (Also, wtf is an ‘alternative hipster’? Is that a nice way of saying ‘nerd’?) I always thought that film festivals were for small independent movies that didn’t have distribution to be seen by industry people and possibly hopefully maybe picked up. But now all these festivals are just bastions of namedropping, networking and ephemeral ‘cred.’ Quintesentially ‘hip’ without being at all independent of anything. Nike contracts. Hands-on studio involvement. Red carpets. A sponsorship from Yaris? WTF? It’s icky.
Take this quote from John Cooper, director of programming for the Sundance festival who attended SXSW to do “reconnaissance”:
Here, it’s where Internet meets film. I’m here to try to learn how to try to reach that audience. It’s amazing. It’s like they imported all the interactive people from Williamsburg, Silver Lake and San Francisco’s SoMa district.
He may as well have said:
Here, it’s where Internet meets film. I’m here to try to learn how to pander to a new generation of hipsters. It’s amazing being me. It’s like they imported all these cool people that I know from all these cool places that I know about and I get to hang out with them. Do you like my glasses?
At a glance, other movies screening at SXSW this year:
- Stop-Loss (MTV Films is super-excited to be producing this, judging from the font size on the posters)
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Another Apatow comedy that might as well be called Forgetting What The Hell Your Movie is Called)
- Joy Division (Yes, it’s about exactly what you think it’s about.)
- A four minute short called I Slammed My Dick in a Drawer (I actually want to see this one. I’m kind of sick.)
*I just realized that it was Austin City Limits I wanted to go to, not SXSW. Whatever, the rest of my commentary is still relevant.