South-by-Southwest first round music and film lineups are out in the public arena. It will be interesting this year, b/c for the first time in a long time I am going to bail before the main weekend of the music fest. Anyone who knows me knows that SXSW is my favorite time of the year. I get to binge on cutting edge music and film. It’s weird…when the festival comes to an end I actually go through post-partum. So this year I am chasing the dollar-bill on the end of the fishhook and going to do a dog-and-pony show in Atlanta on Saturday, March 21 (meaning I gotta fly out on Friday and miss the Friday night fun too). But here is what’s interesting, there is still five times too much stuff to do in the eight days I am going to be in town…
Not to get all Cliff Claven on you, but if you’re keeping score at home, SXSW starts on a Friday the 13th. Day before last was also a Friday the 13th, making the first time in 12 years since we’ve had Friday The 13ths in consecutive months. Is that a signpost of the apocalypse? You think that has anything to do with the opening of that new Friday The 13th movie?
Not to get all Film Criticky on you, but yesterday I watched a screener of Ry Russo-Young’s new film You Won’t Miss Me. What a triumph! If you follow the show, you know that I’ve been intrigued with this school of filmmaking which has hamhandedly been dubbed “mumblecore” (a term that doesn’t do its subject any justice). At the heart of this quote-unquote, non-movement is a focus on unscripted, natural performances (the worst of which are the ones that are the most mumbly, ironically). In the end, it’s a huge hit and miss proposition, and some of the filmmakers have been the first to admit that to me. Many of these films implode under the weight of scatterbrain narrative and low production values. But like I said, I’m a big fan, and we’ve featured a lot of the filmmakers on Chillville, going back to our first visit from the Duplass Brothers two years ago (making this arguably all their fault). Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig came on Chillville last year for SXSW. Another term I hate is “incestuous,” but I can’t come up with less perjorative way to quickly convey that fact that these filmmakers all seem to end in each other’s films (Russo co-starred along with Gerwig and Mark Duplass in Swanberg’s Hannah Takes The Stairs…Swanberg and Gerwig make third-act cameos here in YWWM), making it harder to not call it a movement, I s’spose. So, like I said, there are a lot of misses and those precious, few, transcendent “hits.” You Won’t Miss Me is one of those. Hits I mean. Right up there with Hannah and The Duplass’s Puffy Chair and Bryan Poyser’s Dear Pillow and Mutual Appreciation and a handful of others. It’s a sublime, fully-realized vision where it all comes together. There’s a lot going on in that big brain of Ry’s, and she gets it on the screen. And I guess I’d be remiss not include a mention of star/co-writer Stella Schnabel who obviously is a big part of the process here (and for your tabliod update, she’s the “Diving Bell” director’s daughter and was/is RHCP guitarist John Frusciante’s girlfriend). I was moved. Ry’s confirmed to be our guest on Chillville on 3/15.
Other people we’re stalking for South-By: Jason Lytle (Grandaddy), Meiko, M. Ward, blogger Stephanie Klein, Swanberg, The Yes Men (I’m a HUGE fan), Aqualung, Kraak and Smaak, Ian McCulloch…I dunno…we’ll probably get some of these and a bunch of other folks we haven’t even thought to start harassing yet.
How awesome was Radiohead with the USC marching band on the Grammys last Sunday?
Not to get all Sigmund Freud on you, but my five-year old, Raydog Jr., went to a sleepover yesterday as I was on a plane back from Sucramento. And when I got home from my trip , there was a basket of treats for me and Mrs. Raydog to enjoy for our Valentine’s Movie Night. Included was a money jar so I could just pay for whatever I ate (although I’m pretty sure I already bought all this stuff at the store in the first place). Anyway, point being, it reminded me of when I used to go to see my MeeMaw and PawPaw when I was, no kidding, five years old. I’d make a menu of whatever was in their kitchen, bring it into their bedroom…and then they’d pay me to serve them their own food. My MeeMaw died before I turned 7, so it’s a very specific time frame. I hadn’t thought those days in ages. Ages. The passing of time is the great eraser of memory, but then we stumble onto those little flashes that trigger stuff. Life’s crazy and circular and circuituous like that, I guess.
