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yesterday I saw a couple of movies - When A Man Falls in The Forrest was depressing with not enough payoff, so that's all I want to say about that. Dylan Baker did a good job playing a nebbishy guy though, and Sharon Stone allowed herself to be shown with forehead wrinkles. OK, I'm done & moving on.

I went to some parties, caught up with some folks - saw Joe Swanberg who is here with his film Hannah Takes The Stairs that I plan on seeing later tonight. Went to the frog party and saw the last few people I know that are still there (I started working there nearly 10 years ago, sheesh), went to the Mobile Film School party (I'm on the advisory board), and hooked up with my editor friend Rita Sanders (she cut last year's slam poetry doc Slam Planet that ran at SXSW) to see American Zombie, a fun faux-doc about high level functioning zombies in LA. Are they flesh eating crazies or just a new population to contend with? Silly fun.

Today I went to the Grindhouse 101 panel with Robert Rodriguez and Harry Knowles of AintItCoolNews.com. They started off by reminiscencing about their childhood movie expeirences - yeah yeah move along move along - and finally got to the good stuff - talking about where grindhouse movies came from - they showed some old trailers that were excellent and bizarre. Rodriguez talked about how they intentionally trashed out parts of the movie - intentional bad splice cuts to jump over parts of the movie they don't care about (like how everyone decides Loser is now Leader), or they'll splice cut around MPAA edits.

He talked about how the exploitation films had no quality acting or production value, so it was all built around the concept - which wasn't all that great to start with.

They showed three trailers from the online competition, and Hobo With a Shotgun won, deservedly so. Maiden of Death was pretty good, and I forget the title of the third but it was fun too.

Rodriguez showed a scene from his section of Grindhouse - a group of people in vehicles escaping zombies, shooting them, running over them with a giant truck, etc. Campy silly R rated fun. They've intentionally introduced some "errors" into the film for effect - a red wash that looks like a dye seepage or light leak during printing, dust/scratches/blemishes throughout, accidentally on purpose dropping out the audio, etc.

He also talked about the history of the movie - that he'd come up with the idea of Girl With Gun For Leg a long time ago.

The real gem was one of the fake trailers that will run between Quentin Tarantino's and Rodriguez's movies - Eli Roth did a trailer for an 80s slasher flick. Every major holiday has been done as a horror movie (maybe not Easter) - so he chose Thanksgiving. Deliciously silly and wonderfully violent. You have to have some sex & nudity in a grindhouse flick, so he has the couple having oral sex and the guy gets decapitated. Or the cheerleader stripping on the trampoline, and when she lands (naked) in a split, the killer has a knife stuck up through the trampoline...dead center - that got a huge "OHHHHH!" and full body shudder/grimace out of the entire audience. Then he closes with something classy - a dinner scene with a human body done up as the cooked turkey, and a turkey with a human head stuck in it. Then the killer has sex with the turkey/human head combo in front of the tied up family. Klassy.

But silly fun.

Afterwards, Rodriguez said he'd forgotten to ask if there were any children in the theater, and now he saw a few and was embarassed.....Spy Kids this ain't! And devil bless him because of it - this movie will be FUN.

Scott Kirsner was apparently there too, and he took better notes - CinemaTech: At SXSW: Robert Rodriguez, Harry Knowles, and 'Grindhouse 101'

OK, off for more stuff. It is a rainy afternoon, so I don't want to go stand in line outside.

-mike

Labels: Grindhouse, Rodriguez, SXSW