Austin Journal (part 2)

How I Spent My Austin Vacation

by Steve Barr, AFF newbie

Part The Second

Okay, I've decided to try this chronologically, though there are a few memories that I can't place specifically in the timeline, given my inebriated and sleep-deprived state through most of the festival. I may insert those memories randomly, or put them all at the end. I dunno. I'm still hung over.

First, the background...

I should mention that my beautiful wife and I just bought a new condo, and for a while we behaved like we had all the money in the world (from the sale of our old condo). However, it has recently struck us that we have run out of that money and now have a bigger monthly mortgage to pay than we had before. So, saving money = good. Spending money = bad.

With that in mind, I hadn't planned on going to Austin. Danny Grossman and I had a script get to the top 10% tier in the screenplay contest (GRAXX THE MERCILESS: A ROMANTIC COMEDY), which would have given us significant discounts on festival passes, but the price of admission was still pretty steep.

Then, maybe two weeks before the festival was scheduled to begin, Danny got word that one of our short films had been accepted to the festival itself. As far as we could tell, we were the only people who had both a flick in the festival and a top-10% script in the screenplay contest, so that was kinda cool.

What was cooler was that we could now get Producer Passes for free. So Danny and I decided to drag our skinny white and big hairy (respectively) asses out to the Great State of Tejas.

Wait, let me go back a little bit. [Like Robert Downey Jr.'s character does in KISS KISS BANG BANG, which you should go see.

Now.

It's okay; I'll wait.

See, wasn't that the coolest, most gleefully vulgar movie EVER? Don't you want to see it again, like, immediately? I know I do. Let's go.

Okay, now, back to my stor-- Yeah, it was fucking AWESOME, wasn’t it? I'm glad I suggested it to you too. Oh, no, no, you're too kind. Yes, okay, I love you too. Thanks. No, please, I'm married, and, well, also, I don't swing that way. But thanks.

(I had no idea KKBB would have that effect on you. (Well, actually, yeah, I kinda did.))

Where were we? Right - our short flick got accepted to the festival, and we decided to go. But first I have to tell you about the SCFG.]

Danny and I are in a filmmaking collective called SoCal Film Group. It's a sweat-equity thing, where we all help each other make short films. (I'll put a link at the bottom of this post.) Our group got a small discount by submitting several short films to the festival at the same time.

Lots of the films we've made in the past are pretty bad, but that's okay - the group is like film school for many of us, and most of us give ourselves permission to suck. The shorts we submitted to Austin were among our best, though, but the only SCFG short to be accepted to Austin was the one Danny and I made (WHO'S ON FIRST? - THE MOVIE).

It's also the only SCFG short that wasn't written by a member of the group (which is composed mostly of people who say they are writers), which maybe should tell us something...

No, actually, I have a pretty good idea why WoF made it in, beating out several hundred others. It's funny, it's very short (under 5 minutes), and it is about movies. It's like the Platonic ideal of film-festival submissions (except for the regrettable lack of lesbians, breasts, or lesbian breasts).

(We found the script for WoF on McSweeneys.net. You can read it at That dude Chris is a funny funny guy.)

So, anyway, our short film made it in, and we decided to go. The festival arranged for discount room rates at the Driskill Hotel (which, along with the Stephen F. Austin Hotel, hosts all of the panels and round tables (and most of the drunken debauchery) for the festival). Danny and I decided to share a room to save costs, and we also tried to find a way to get to Austin without single-handedly saving the airline industry from bankruptcy.

Luckily, we have a friend of a friend who is a stewardess. Or maybe a Flight Attendant. "Hospitality Director Of The Sky"? Whatever they're called. She's also a hot woman, who I'm sure gets regular invitations to renew her membership to the Mile High Club.

But of course she's too classy (and smart and sweet and nice) for that sort of thing.

(Did I mention she got us a big discount on airfare? I love hot women, in uniform, who save me money.)

((Usually I have to pay *extra* for a hot woman to put on a uniform. But that's neither here nor there.))

So, okay. That is, as we say in screenwriting circles, the backstory. Now we go to the first day of my trip:

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

The upside to having a friend-of-a-friend who is a hottie Hospitality Director of the Sky is that you can fly on a Buddy Pass for a big discount. The downside is that you have to fly standby. And, given the fact that airlines tend to overbook like, well, people who overbook things a whole lot, you have to resign yourself to missing a flight or two before you get on board. So I got to the airport very early, with a couple of scripts I had promised to read for friends,* and prepared to wait a while.

The rest of the day reads like one of Bill Martell's action scenes ("Oh, yeah!" "Oh, shit!" "Oh, yeah!" "Oh, shit!" Oh, YEAH!"), albeit in slow motion.

((Oddly enough, I've heard that Bill's sex scenes usually follow the same pattern. His *real life* sex scenes, that is. But that's neither here nor there.))

Wordplayer Brett N had offered to pick me up at Austin airport and drive me to the Driskill. ("Oh, yeah!")

Even better, I got on both the first L.A.-to-Houston flight and the first Houston-to-Austin flight I signed up for. ("Oh, yeah!")

But someone had told Brett there was no way I was going to get on both of my first-choice flights ("Oh, shit!") and so he was still a couple hours away by the time I landed in Austin ("Oh, shit!").

But that meant I got to people-watch outside baggage claim, which is always fun ("Oh, yeah!"), especially since Austin seems to have a hottness gravity well that attracts many of the hottest young women in Texas. ("Oh ... YEAH!").

Just as my ass started to go to sleep ("Oh, shit!") Brett arrived to chauffer my almost-sleeping ass to the hotel ("Oh, yeah!").

And ... scene.

Let me tell you a bit about Brett. He's a big ruddy-faced Texan, a few inches over six feet tall, and he gives this impression of being, well, solid. Like that theoretical Immovable Object, Brett appears to have been here forever, and I'm fairly sure he will exist until the End of All Stuff. He's not really *imposing* despite his size; he doesn't puff up or try to intimidate anyone. He's just ... sturdy.

This shows in his personality too. While his wit is fast and sharp, his delivery is unhurried and understated. He has a clever comment for just about everything, but he only shares it with the people next to him, as opposed to broadcasting it to anyone who will listen.

(Alas, he wasn't wearing his Viking horned hat, but that was only a minor disappointment.)

Brett dropped me off at the Driskill, and I checked in. The Driskill Hotel is not at all what I was expecting. For some reason I thought it would be a big corporate highrise deal, lots of glass and chrome, but it has more of an old-world exclusive retreat type feel to it. Lots of cowboy crap on the walls, mixed in with oil paintings of wealthy old gentlemen cavorting with beautiful young women. I think at some point it was a high-class brothel.

I got lost looking for my elevator, but I found the AFF registration office on the way, so I wheeled my unwieldy rolling suitcase into the cramped office and got my sign-in packet.

The week before, Danny and I had an email correspondence with one of the AFF staffers, wondering if we could have both our film's acceptance and our script's second-rounder status on our ID badges. This wasn't because we're galloping megalomaniacs (well, Danny isn't, anyway), but rather that each of those designations gave us access to some cool opportunities that weren't afforded to the Teeming Masses, and we didn't want to miss any opportunities to make asses of ourselves in front of People Who Matter. The AFF lady said she'd see what she could do, but that she wasn't sure they could both fit on the same placard.

Well, when I signed in, they only had the movie on the placard. I promptly dropped to the floor and started screaming and kicking my feet, after which they promised to try to redo my badge if I would just shut up and go away. I was told it would take maybe 20 minutes, so I dried my tears and went to find my room.

The architecture of the Driskill lobby is a little weird, and I certainly wouldn't want to "direct on the page," so let's just say that there is a short, easy way to get to my elevator from the AFF registration office, and there is a long, arduous way. Being a Man (and therefore not needing directions), I chose the latter. I hoisted my unwieldy rolling suitcase and staggered up a tall marble staircase, to find a big room full of sample tables and people trying to sell me stuff. I knew that every dollar I spent on them would be a dollar I couldn't spend on beer, so I declined.

I made my way around to the other side of the room, more lost now than I had been to begin with, and finally asked a nice bartender for a shot and some directions. He said I had to go back down another long flight of marble stairs, and end up right around the corner from the AFF registration office. So much for my masculine skills of direction. I tipped my hat, my glass, and the bartender, and was on my way.

After dropping off my stuff in my room, I returned to the registration office to get my placard. Wasn't ready. Instead of holding my breath until I turned blue, I finally got to say the words I had been waiting to say all day:

"I think I'll go get a beer."

More to come...

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* Did those scripts get read? Nope. Not even cracked. Sorry, John and Caroline.

SoCal Film Group | Austin Film Festival | Screenwriting | Digital Filmmaking | Steve Barr | Chris Gavaler