Letter from South by Southwest...

My man Aaron Hillis is kicking back down in Austin for South by Southwest, or SXSW, or Southby, or whatever you wanna call it. He's been kind enough to offer his ace reporting and critiquing; this, his first dispatch, should have gone up yesterday but got caught in an e-mail snafu. It's still as fresh as a just-cut-open avocado, so enjoy...

SXSW 2008: "In All My 21 Years…"

Howdy and a fresh basket of tortilla chips and green salsa to you all from Longhorn Country. It's Tuesday, technically Day 5 of the 2008 South by Southwest festival, Austin's annual showcase of independent film (what you, dear readers, are likely most concerned about), music, and the "interactive" (think designers, bloggers, gamers, other iHipsters and notorious panel hecklers). Nevertheless, my adventure as Premiere's fest correspondent only began a couple days ago. The quote up top refers not to the 21 years that SXSW has been in existence, nor to the opening-night feature 21, but to the captain of my flight from JFK to Austin-Bergstrom last Thursday, a trip that was cancelled due to snowstorms while mid-air, just shy of Dallas. The rest of my pilot's intercom message, as we turned back towards JFK, goes something like: "…I have never experienced anything as frustrating as this. Sorry, folks." With my own apologies for tardiness to Glenn, who has asked me to write about some of the cinematic gems and buzzy-buzz within this king of the truly indie festivals, it's time to play catch-up.

Full disclosure comes first, I suppose. As vice-president of the homegrown DVD label Benten Films, I've distributed films from SXSW mainstays Joe Swanberg and Aaron Katz, both in town with Nights and Weekends and Let's Get Down to Brass Tacks, respectively. I won't be writing about either film, but I bring up their names only because of their association to that unfortunately perennial label that is not a movement, genre, aesthetic, identity, nor a word anyone much likes beyond those journalists who use it as a lazy hook about a loose social circle of American low-budget filmmakers who occasionally collaborate: Mmmmm…. mumb… do I really need to say it? The interconnected gang branches out this year with filmmaker Josh Safdie's feature debut, The Pleasure of Being Robbed, a slight but sweet comedy that wanders around New York with a flighty kleptomaniac named Elaine (Eléonore Hendricks). She's a peculiar girl and somehow quite charming for such a self-centered, unconscionable thief who steals—purses, grapes, cars, even kittens!—not for money nor even kicks, but to satisfy her devious curiosities. Like an extended version of one of his many clever shorts, Safdie's aspirations aren't much loftier than amusing us with Elaine's vignetted escapades, but his breezy flavor of analog Gondry-esque inventiveness (including a full-size, homemade polar bear!) and early-Truffaut breeziness make him one to watch.

Written, produced, directed, edited by and co-starring Frank V. Ross (whose Hohokam and Quietly On By screened at the IFC Center's "Generation DIY" fest last year), Present Company—before you even try to dismiss its M-word association based on its Swanberg cameo—replaces any predicted mumbling with a substantial, well-enunciated dialogue about social scruples and adult obligations. Suburban plumber's apprentice and young dad Buddy (Ross) lives with his baby mama Christy (Tamara Fana) in her parents' basement, a depressing co-habitation built more on convenience than love or even mutual respect. Passively disguising the fact that he's in a relationship, Buddy flirts around, hangs with his buddies, and keeps an entirely different schedule as if he were younger and living care-free; poor Christy, however—responsibly rebuking another man's relentless if awkward come-ons—gets the short end of the stick for simply taking her grown-up life seriously. Ross' first two films have their admirers, and while I think both have merit, neither have stuck with me like this mature, moving and naturalistically funny drama, which mines a behavioral study from its nuanced small talk alone (a brief argument over littering speaks volumes about Buddy's cavalier selfishness, and most every conversation between he and Christy proves their relationship has little depth). I worry that the past year's mumble-backlash will hurt Ross' chances to gain altitude above the radar, especially as a trailer won't be able to hide the film's only glaring weakness: over-zoomed, auto-focused, unevenly lit, YouTube-gen lensing (credited to five different people, including Ross, Swanberg, and co-star Anthony Baker). I wouldn't call the film uncaring about aesthetics, but a more skilled cinematographer might've granted its astuteness some needed potency.

Unlike your Sundances and Torontos, the high-profile, bigger-budget films at SXSW are often the filler to the kinds of films I've just discussed, but I'd like to leave for now on an anecdote from Monday night: Ten minutes into the single, sold-out screening of Morgan Spurlock's severely disappointing pop-doc, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?—a grossly oversimplified, crassly humored, first-person martyr's account on Muslim extremism and the handlebar-mustachioed wit's impending fatherhood—the stormy weather caused a brownout at the Alamo Drafthouse theater, part of a beloved Austin chain where filmgoers may order food and drinks to their seats. The moment the screen went black, a back-row funnyman yelled, "Conspiracy!" I'd wager 30, maybe 45 minutes passed before the dedicated Alamo crew could reboot the digital projector, but deep in the heart of Texas, patience is indeed a virtue. To reward the entire everyone for staying put, The Weinstein Company—which will be releasing the film in April—bought every last one of us a can or bottle of beer. Thanks, Harvey!

Comments

[don lewis]

Nice writeup, Aaron...and even nicer work getting QUIET CITY out into the world!

I'm still here at SXSW...supposedly until Sunday but I may bail early. The sheer number of hipster douchebags in this town starting today has my last nerve fried.

I also wanted to pimp an article I wrote for FILM THREAT touching on the mumblecore fraternity that has sprung up here over the years. You kinda touched on it and I actually asked fest programmer Matt Dentler and Joe Swanberg about the confluence of m-core filmmakers and if there's any conflicts of interest. I thought they answered the questions well...
http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=2147

Maybe I'll see you around town....I'll be at Hooters in a few hours....

[Peter Debruge]

If you ask me, the filmmakers aren't the ones who get to decide whether they represent a movement, aesthetic or identity. Maybe "mumblecore" isn't the best label for 'em, but the fact that you have a simultaneous outpouring of semi-autobiographical work from a group of similarly inclined filmmakers who, by virtue of the availability of equipment and new means of distribution, are suddenly able to share their personal responses to/reactions against the type of films they grew up watching, I think it's fair for those of us on the outside to call it a movement.

Pretty soon, it all reduces to semantics, but the label benefits those it describes in that it connects films that, on an individual basis, would be too small to register on most people's radar. Would Hannah Takes the Stairs or Quiet City or Mutual Appreciation have warranted a NY Times piece on their own? (Then again, is the NYT even the right forum to discuss such films, which seem to do just fine with the more selective audience of the blogosphere?)

I think it's a mistake to get sidelined in discussions about what is or isn't "mumblecore" or whether the label even applies. I entertained those questions when reporting a story for Variety last week (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117981680) about the fact that SXSW, which was the festival that introduced Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg, the Duplass brothers and -- in subsequent years -- additional filmmakers, serves as reunion territory for these guys, but the important thing is that digital cameras, home editing software and the internet have enabled a new wave of filmmakers, many of whom have become very close friends, sharing equipment, ideas, cast and crew.

If that's not a movement, I don't know what is. (After all, it's not like Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and Rivette were making identical movies, but they were all liberated by a common spirit, and their creativity catalyzed at a specific moment in time.) As Mark Duplass told me, "For us, little movies have a tough time in the world, and any time someone wants to take the time to write about our little movies, I’m totally happy to have our movies being talked about." By extension, if the M-word (as Aaron calls it) allows me to cover a handful of filmmakers I might otherwise never get to discuss in the pages of Variety, I'll take it.

[Bordeaux]

Wow, back in 1999-2001 Roger Avary had a blog on his website. It was a wonderful blog and had a great group of commenters. The discussions were always impassioned and enlightening w/ Roger frequently throwing in his 4 cents. One of the regular commenters there was a young filmmaker from Chicago named Joe Swanberg. At that time he was working on a film called "Kissing on the Mouth" and wanted everyone's opinion on the trailer and some scenes. He was trying to get it into festivals. He and Roger would often have arguments on the relative merits of film vs. digital, Joe obviously being a big proponent of the latter.
Anywho, one day Roger just shut the blog down, maybe in 2002 or 2003? because he thought it had played its course, and by then blogs were becoming quite ubiquitous and I guess it was no longer fun for him.
That was a long way of saying that I had forgotten all about Joe Swanberg and somehow the whole mumblecore movement had escaped my notice until reading this, but it's great to see that Joe pulled it off and got his movies out there.

[Bleeb]

I remember Joe quite well from that board and must admit his subsequent success impressed me, because most of the people there were not very supportive of him and Roger never missed an opportunity to tell him he was talking sideways out his rearend. My only interaction with him was recommending he shorten a paraphraph in a press release down to three words, which I think he actually did, so I figured he was more honest in his solicitation of criticism and advice than most gave him credit for. Anyway, viva Swanberg!

[mumble bumble]

http://blog.spout.com/2008/03/13/in-defense-of-the-m-word-as-offense/

[don lewis]

Not to double whore my work BUT...

I was on the Avary board back then too (it's back up by the way) and mentioned what you guys were talking about in an interview Joe and I did a few years back:
http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=interviews&Id=1105

Wait till you see NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS...it's really something.

[Anonymous]

Has Peter Debruge forgotten that the NYTimes already wrote a feature about Andrew Bujalski over a year before anyone in the mainstream media was buzzing about any of this "mumblecore" business?

All this talk of a "movement" has really diluted discussion about the substantial talents some of these filmmakers possess; talents that many others lumped alongside them simply do not have, or in the very least, have yet to display. The filmmakers who have capitalized most off the notion of "mumblecore" are, to my mind, also the least deserving of the additional media coverage. It's unfair that the backlash against some lame films from summer '07 has dragged the names of some good films from summer '06 into this mess.

[oakling]

I want a purse full of stolen grapes and kittens....

[don lewis]

Can you be more vague, anonymous?

I also do agree the m-core term is silly, but in the interest of journalistic brevity it sure comes in handy.