it may seem like a cliché of sorts, but i fell in love with austin the first time i saw the movie slacker. let me just explain though, i come from a "big" city, you may have heard of it, philadelphia. well i honestly have never felt at home here. for college i headed for the amish countryside, near the infamous hershey, pa (you know, chocolate!). but that did not appeal to me either. don't get me wrong, it was nice to get away from the city, but i did not have a car and public transportation has not really developed around there yet.

so i got off track a little, but i tend to do that. so slacker seemed like my utopia of sorts. set in a slow paced town with a bunch of 20 something's talking about philosophy, conspiracy theories (before this subject exploded into what it is today), and other things i would like people like that to talk to me about. austin appealed to me like no other city ever had. that was a while ago, it took a while to seep in, but i finally convinced myself to move there. one problem, i have never been there. being an aspiring filmmaker, i have heard a lot about austin as the independent film capital and all that, and i heard about what a great film program ut austin has. plus linklater, rodriguez, you know the rest, everyone great has come from austin.

so then there is sxsw. every year i have always tried to make my way down to sxsw (music and or film) and it just never happened for one reason or another. but this year i was making it happen, despite blowing all my savings on a trip to europe in january and working as a temp for the past year not making enough money to live on with this grand life style i had adopted. i bought my pass and my plane ticket, reserved a bed at the austin youth hostel and was on my way, with no time to talk myself out of this.

i like going places that i've never been all by myself. though i am inherently shy in some ways, i somehow meet a lot of people travelling alone. and oh the people i meet (no offense to anyone recognizing who i am from sxsw, i did meet a lot of great people who gave me rides home, ate meals with me, bought me beers, all of which never happens in this land of hate, philadelphia). two people i met, pointed out harry to me and asked if i knew of his web-page (knowing #1 i was fascinated with austin and #2 my love for the cinema), which i had not. that is how this whole thing started. the first thing i did when i got home, with my journal of notes i took from sxsw, i emailed harry and asked him politely if i could send him some stuff from the festivals for him to post. hopefully he is not too sorry, and hopefully at least some of my rantings and ravings will be read (like by you).

after the 4 some hour flight first to dallas then to austin, i was pretty much beat. but i was motivated enough to investigate my new surroundings, register, meet up with a friend from fort worth, find my hostel (including a drive down i-35 during 5:00 rush hour traffic on a friday in my friend's truck, not knowing where we were going), and then heading back to town to grab my first meal of the day (this is 6:30 by now) and see the first film (of many, 30 to be exact) for the week.

so do you know how hard it is to pick a film at a festival where the only stuff you know is michael moore, richard linklater, bill plympton, john sayles and jonathon and ted demme? i don't like knowing about the film before i go see it, which is why, as you see the reviews i write are completely ambiguous. so i just pick the one that the guy next to me on the flight from dallas told me about. one of those, my friend's friend's dog's mother's ex-owner's uncle worked on the film sort of things. but it turned out being a very exciting opening to a great week, along with being a great tourism piece for a state i have never been to.