Austin Journal (part 9)

How I Spent My Austin Vacation

by Steve Barr, AFF newbie

Part The Ninth


Okay, so, we have to go back in time to talk about the screening of KISS KISS BANG BANG. Let's step into the Way-Back Machine...

[imagine wavy lines and high-pitched doodooloo-doodooloo music]

... and ... we're here.

Thursday, October 20, 2005 (evening)(again)

After our dinner at The County Line, (and I, for one, being uncomfortably full of meat, beer, and meat), Brian Anderson drove Danny and me back to the Driskill. We didn't even have time to purge like the good bulimics we are before we had to get in line for the advance screening of KISS KISS BANG BANG at the Paramount theater down the street.

I've only ever been to two film festivals, so I don't have much experience to draw on here. Do screenings at festivals typically run late? KKBB was screening after SHOPGIRL, which itself started late, and its Q&A apparently went longer than expected. With those factors at play, we ended up standing in line outside the theater for quite some time.

That was cool, though, because we were hanging with Maria, Bill Martell, Susan Bays, Chris White, Ann Daman, and a few other cool folks. Despite feeling vaguely nauseous because I had crammed roughly one cubic foot of cow into my stomach (which isn't designed to hold such an amount), the time passed quickly.

At one point, some rent-a-cops informed us that cellular phones would not be allowed into the theater. WTF, dude? My cell phone can record maybe 3 minutes of shaky, poor-resolution crap. Even if I were the kind of person who would try to steal someone else's movie, what good would it do me to steal 3 minutes of shaky, poor-resolution crap? Did they think we were going to form a piracy-collective, in which I recorded 3 minutes of shaky, poor-resolution crap, and then tag-teamed Chris White, so he could record 3 minutes of shaky, poor-resolution crap, and then Chris would tag-team Ann Daman, so she could record 3 minutes of shaky, poor-resolution crap, and so on and so on?

(Danny would be exempt from this dastardly band of tag-team pirates, because he refuses to own a cell phone (this is on religious grounds, I believe)((either that, or a cell phone killed his puppy)).)

-- Hey, I just said "...and then Chris would tag-team Ann Daman..." Feel free to create whatever mental image you want for that phrase. --

Susan very kindly gathered up our puppy-killing tools of the devil and took them to her room, and as soon as she returned they started to let us in. (Susan has that kind of pull at Austin.)

Danny likes to sit in the very front row of movie theaters. Sometimes, he likes to have his nose actually touching the movie screen. I don't know why. But, after a tug-of-war between Danny on the one hand and Chris White & Ann Daman on the other (who wanted to sit in the very back row (to "tag-team"? I don't know. I refuse to speculate or spread unfounded rumors)), we ended up in the fifth row or so. Good seats - close enough that the screen fills your range of vision, but not so close that you get a crick in your neck.

I don't recall enjoying any recent movie-going experience quite as much as I enjoyed this screening. KKBB is just the kind of highly-kinetic, funny, gleefully uncouth movie that I've always wanted to make. I got the feeling that this is the sort of screenplay that Shane Black wrote during the 80s & 90s, but that the movies which were made from them (the LETHAL WEAPON series, THE LAST BOY SCOUT, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, etc.) had been watered down by studio weenies who were afraid of being too offensive.

Fuck the studio weenies, I say. I want more movies about people who are trying to get their fingers to stay attached to their hands.

The audience leapt into the movie like it was an Olympic-sized pool full of hookers and Jello. They laughed at all the right places, they giggled at the in-jokes, and they literally *gasped* in shock a few times, amazed and delighted at the audaciousness of the movie.

After the movie was over, Shane Black came out to do a little Q&A. He talked about how difficult it was to get anyone to make the movie, despite having been the closest a writer can get to being a highly-respected man in H'wood. The movie was budgeted for only $15M (though it looks like it cost a lot more), and even then he couldn't get people to say Yes.

Not until Joel Silver stepped up to the plate and put his considerable influence behind it.

Shane talked about being on set and telling people to do things, and being a little shocked at how quickly they would respond. Then he realized that they weren't necessarily scurrying around out of fear of him, they were scurrying around out of fear of Joel Silver, who was metaphorically standing right behind him, holding a heavy wooden club, with the blood of slow-moving employees dripping from his fangs.

Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. are the stars of the movie, and Shane got them for relatively little money because apparently no one in Hollywood wanted to work with them anymore. Robert's chemical issues are well known, and allegedly Val is crazy as a shithouse rat. But Shane said they were both very easy to work with, and their chemistry in the movie is outstanding.

After the screening, about twenty people (including Shane, Cargill from Ain't-It-Cool, and the group I had been standing in line with) tried to go to the Driskill bar for a drink. Fuckin' place was closed, so we ended up across the street at the bar of the Stephen F. Austin.

Drinks were drunk. Congratulations were proffered and accepted. Feet of the Master were sat at.

I started to notice that Shane has two distinct groups of people who hang out with him -- Groupies and Buddies. Groupies won't leave the poor guy alone, and hang on every word he has to say. Buddies (including Brett N and Ann Daman) tend to actually converse with him, as opposed to treating him like a Venerable Master who must be deferred to in all things.

Also, in any big group like that, several conversations naturally go on all the time. The Groupies were ALWAYS focused on Shane, while the Buddies would sometimes be in Shane's conversational circle and sometimes in other conversations.

Keeping to my Master Strategy, I aspired to be a Buddy instead of a Groupie. So, when I was introduced to him, I shook his hand firmly, made eye contact, and said "Hi." (This is only significant because my inner fanboy was raving and gibbering the whole time. Plus, I had already had two "yammering gob" moments in the last couple of days, and I had no desire to shoot for the foot-in-mouth trifecta.) That night I talked to him a little, but mostly conversed with other folks.

See, I was trying to be mysteriously aloof, to show that I wasn't awed by being in the presence of His Shanefic Majesty. That way, he would be intrigued by my cool self-confidence, and he would invite me to his infamous Halloween parties, where we would bond over beer and a shared hooker ... in short, I would become a Buddy instead of a Groupie.

Yeah. Yeah, I know. That strategy didn't work with hot women, either, back when I was dating. I don't know why I thought it would work here.

(Back when I first met Terry Rossio, I tried the same strategy with him. I think that's why he didn't know my name for about a year...)

I bumped into Shane a few more times over the next few days. Each time I'd give him a manly nod and a subdued "Hey." He'd give me a manly nod and a subdued "Hi" in return, and then would turn away to answer some question posed to him by one of the ever-present Groupies.

On my last day in Austin, I saw him in the Driskill bar at about 4:00 in the morning. With about a gallon of beer under my belt, I boldly walked up to him and said, "I've been waiting for the right time to say this, and I don't want to seem like a fanboy, but you're one of the reasons I decided to become a screenwriter, and your new movie is the kind of movie I've always wanted to make. Thanks."

(I was going to follow up with: "And I thought your role as 'Second Patrolman' in DEAD HEAT was outstanding. You were only in the movie for maybe ten seconds, but the way you stood there without saying anything ... the understated expression on your face was sublime." But, luckily, I was able to pour some beer down my yammering gob before that piece of snarky 'comedy' snuck out.)

He graciously smiled, and seemed about to say something in reply (like, maybe, "Hey, I want to direct a sequel to KISS KISS, but now that I'm a director I don't want to be bothered with the drudgery of writing. Do you want to write it for me?"), but right at that moment, some smokin' hot Amazon lingerie model laid her hand on his shoulder and asked him for his autograph or something, and that was the end of my audience.

Despite the tone of the last few paragraphs, I want to be clear that Shane seems like a down-to-earth, friendly guy in general. He was just overextended because everybody who saw KKBB wanted a piece of him. I'm not at all upset at him for not choosing to pay more attention to some average white guy who seemed to be doing his best to ignore him (i.e. me). I would've done the same thing. That Amazon lingerie model was pretty fuckin' hot.

So, that was the Thursday night that I forgot to talk about the first time. Let's hope back in the Way-Back Machine and continue where we left off...

[Wavy lines. Doodooloo-doodooloo. You know the drill.]

NEXT: More meat, and the coolest shirt at the festival

SoCal Film Group | Austin Film Festival | Screenwriting | Digital Filmmaking | Kiss Kiss Bang Bang | Shane Black | Steve Barr