Austin Film Festival: The Photoblog

It's a challenge to take photos during a film festival. You never know which screenings will be the kind where you'll be subjected to a metal detector, purse search and repeated warnings about No Cameras. And if you're attending a big splashy premiere at the Paramount in downtown Austin, you usually have to park pretty far from the theater, so you can't just run back to the car at any time to dump your camera. Despite these limitations, I did manage to snap some pictures from this year's Austin Film Festival, which I thought I'd share.



I love the marquee at the Paramount, so I had to take at least one photo of it all lit up. The Paramount was the venue for AFF's biggest films this year, since it's centrally located and has a pretty large capacity. The TV Set was AFF's opening-night film.


Inside the Paramount on opening night, I ran into Kelly Williams (left), AFF's Film Program Director. I asked to take a picture of these guys before I realized that the guy on the right was Jake Kasdan, who wrote and directed the opening-night film, The TV Set. I'm not sure whether that makes me dumb or lucky (both, I think).



Fellow Austin film writer Brian Miller, who was covering AFF for Dumb Distraction, shows off the weirdest item in the AFF attendee bags this year: a box of uncooked tri-color pasta. A sticker on the box advertised a local Italian restaurant. I'm not sure why a restaurant would give you a box of pasta, unless it's to prove that anything you cook yourself isn't nearly as good as what they serve. Plus, Brian and I just had to drive our pasta boxes to our homes -- would out-of-towners even bother lugging this on a plane? Very odd.



I know people who refuse to see films at The Hideout, the smallest venue for AFF films, but I think they're crazy. First of all, it's in walking distance of the Paramount, so you can plan an evening of big-name movies and low-budget documentaries without having to drive around town. It's not the ritziest theater, but it was an ideal venue for Pirate Radio USA, which I caught there this year. It's a coffeehouse in the front, so you can enjoy yummy treats while you wait to enter the theater in the back.



The Driskill Hotel was the main site for AFF conference activities, with the Stephen F. Austin across the street as a secondary site. AFF's trade show was up on the second floor of the hotel -- it's one of the most gorgeous spots where you'll ever find a trade show.



But the real action at AFF always occurs down here at the Driskill Bar, near the side entrance of the hotel. Austin's bars are currently non-smoking, but that didn't stop conference and festival attendees from congregating in large groups around the bar all weekend long. Panelists and special guests hang out here too, so it's always a great place to catch a glimpse of some writer you've admired from afar ... although I couldn't find any when I wanted to take pictures, unfortunately.



Over at the equally lovely Stephen F. Austin hotel, I found the AFF script room. The room contains copies of all the semifinalist and finalist scripts from AFF's screenwriting competition for the current year. Producers and agents can sit in the room and read scripts -- a couple were in the room when I took the picture, but I shot around them. The room was invitingly comfy, which is good news for the writers whose scripts are in there to be read and considered.



Here's a typical line of AFF attendees at the Paramount -- this line was for Catch and Release, one of the larger screenings on Friday night. It was a long line, but unfortunately, some people seemed to select the movie because Kevin Smith was scheduled to attend the screening and participate in a Q&A afterwards. He cancelled at the last minute, so I suspect a number of fanboys ended up watching a sweet romantic comedy they would not ordinarily have chosen. At least they got to watch Smith onscreen.

The one event that I was prepared to take pictures for, but didn't, was the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum's IMAX theater before the screening of Death of a President. I thought surely someone would be upset that a movie in which George W. Bush is assassinated was being shown at a state-run museum theater (especially one devoted to Texas history), but no. Perhaps Austin's attention was diverted elsewhere, since the film played on the same night as the Rolling Stones concert. The screening was well attended, but nothing photo-worthy happened beforehand, so I rushed over to catch Rescue Dawn instead.