I am soooo very very sad... You see the beautiful... the enchanting... the sexually delicious Tom Joad is still here in Austin, while those old bags (Annette Kellerman and Cora Smith) are living up the high life in Oklahoma... If you are getting your teeth fixed today, and your dental hyginist is wearing a one piece bathing suit... run... The amount of pure wood alcohol she consumed is... astounding. And if Cora Smith should be giving you a suppository... as a Joke... Joad and I replaced her lubricant with a special burning substance... So... beware... They'll be grumpy and angry as.. they left their studs in Austin for the life of debauchery... But before they left... they both sat down and wrote with Joad the following report on the shorts program....
Tom, Annette, and Cora Smith with another report on the ongoings of SXSW ’99……
Still here and doing our best to survive the onslaught of coolness that is South by Southwest. We are joined now by Annette’s friend from the North, the sultry vixen Cora Smith…
As we mentioned before, with so many films and panels, we part from Harry and the crew from time to time, to bring you coverage on some of those films that we can’t all make.
We pulled ourselves out of bed Thurday morning, after a late night of fun. Yes, we were inexplicably blessed by the movie gods Wednesday night when we procured not only tickets to the Edtv premiere, but the all star after-party as well. And on that note, we must give a shout out to one of the coolest humans on earth: Louis Black, editor of the Austin Chronicle. You see, we’re just normal, everyday Joes, standing in the crowd out front Antone’s trying to use the Force to get into the after-party… when Louis mysteriously appears in front of us, with tickets in hand. A night that otherwise would have entailed getting caught up on reviewing instead was filled with open bar, free food, Jimmy Vaughn, and the entire panel of stars in town for the premiere. Thank you again, Louis. Yes, we could go on and on about the coolness of that night and all the conversations that ensued (including the kiss on the cheek Annette got from Martin Landau), BUT instead we’ll delve directly into the fantastic SHORTS program we were able to catch (with our well deserved hang-overs) the following afternoon.
SHORTS
GOFER- directed by Joe Hamersky, and starring Aasif Mandvi this fourteen minute short, shot on 16mm, revolves around a construction site and the immigrant laborer who serves as the crew’s gofer. The “story” follows Aasif as he bumbles around his co-workers, taking their coffee and sandwich orders. The cast is great all around and the production value is good. We weren’t blown away by GOFER, but it’s a well done effort that will not be a waste of your time if you ever have the chance to check it out.
HAPPY ARE THE HAPPY: YOUR BEST JOKE PLEASE This was an interesting twenty minutes. This short was shot on 16mm in black and white and featured various interviews with survivors from Auschwitz and Sarajevo telling anecdotes and jokes while sitting in a surreal, chair-filled, darkened room. While each story was amusing in it’s own way, the real substance of the subject matter was the obvious realization that the horrors of the holocaust still resonate in the world around us. Directors Sarah Jane Lapp and Jenny Perlin did a great job conveying this bleakness with a subtle sense of humor.
ZOLTAR FROM ZORON- This one had us smiling from frame one. The short features a kid who, in effort to escape his VERY undesirable home life, has created his own alternate reality where he is convinced he is ZOLTAR, a superior alien lifeform from ZORON. The production design on this one is terrific. Zoltar wears full homemade space gear complete with an oversized space helmet fashioned from plastic gallon milk containers, metallic air-duct arm sleeves and mismatched BBQ grill grates taped to the bottoms on his sneakers. The walls of his room are a complete hodgepodge of disembodied computer keyboards, circuit boards, and flashing lights. Shot on beautiful 35mm by director Erik Paesel, this is a film that you DEFINITELY want to try and seek out.
LOVE HANDLES- Let’s just say that this was your typical experimental short. Chock full of funky music, flashing visuals, and peppered with bizarre existential poetry. Don’t get us wrong, this was a great effort by director Brian Ford. The voice-over poetry layered with echoes and whispers had a fantastic effect, and the quality of the video it was shot on was very deceiving. We find most experimental shorts fairly unbearable, but this one at least had plenty of humor and ingenuity behind it.
BABY DOLL – Directed by Brian Kirk, and starring the young Jeni Courtney, the film centered around a blossoming Irish lass circa 1970 and her weekend trip to the beach with her best friend’s family. The story deals with the girl’s premature desire to act like a woman and the realization that she’s young and needs to enjoy it. It is short, to the point and features an outstanding soundtrack leaving you anticipating the potential in Kirk’s next project. We like this one a lot. And so will you.
CHIMP RESCUE – Directed by Richard M. Lewis and shot on video for National Geographic, this one documented Dr. James Mahoney’s outstanding efforts to find desirable homes for the research chimps to which he had devoted the last twenty-five years of his work. When his facility lost it’s funding, he was faced with the terrifying realization that his chimps were to be sent to a facility with the worst conditions in the world. He then jeopardized both his career and his health working night and day to establish homes for over one hundred of his former subjects. Incredibly moving, unbelievably insightful, this is one you’re sure to see on PBS one day soon. Really great stuff.
We’ve more shorts to see and we’ll be sending reports soon thereafter, so until then, everybody be cool.
Annette, Tom & Cora
