AFI Dallas Dispatch #3: Jette Does Dallas

Kim Voynar has posted some excellent dispatch reports this week from AFI Dallas. However, she neglected to mention one thing -- that I was there too! And no, I was not so embarrassing that she couldn't mention me, I did not misbehave at the hotel bar, and that story about me in the sushi restaurant is vastly exaggerated. Nor did I attempt to flirt with the Men in Black at the Beings screening. However, I think it's time for me to share my side of the story. I was only in Dallas from Saturday through Tuesday morning, but I got a good taste of the inaugural AFI Dallas film festival.

I've lived in Austin for 15 years, and Austinites harbor stereotypes about Dallas. We've been known to protest certain developments or events in town because "what is this, Dallas? No way!" If Austin has a secret lust for turning into Berkeley, we think Dallas has a secret lust for turning into Los Angeles. I had trouble packing for this trip because I thought I'd look underdressed in my usual t-shirts and jeans ... I was right, but I decided not to care. Fortunately for me, the festival occurred at the perfect time of year for the Austin-Dallas drive; the sides of the highways were lined with bluebonnets and other wildflowers.

Since I was in Dallas just for an extended weekend, I had to limit myself to the two main AFI Dallas venues: the Angelika and the Magnolia. By a happy coincidence, our hotel was across the street from the Angelika, although crossing that street was practically life-threatening. It was obviously not a pedestrian-friendly part of town. Here's a picture of the Angelika from the outside, all decked out for the festival:



Inside, the theater included a coffee bar on the first floor, which is exactly the kind of gathering place that I feel theaters need to have these days to thrive. (Also, the coffee bar had some locally baked cookies that were to die for.) The AFI Dallas screenings were on the second floor, which gave me the opportunity to marvel repeatedly at the wonderful chandelier. I love our Austin theaters, but even the Paramount doesn't have decor like this:



The first movie I caught at the Angelika was Cake: A Wedding Story. The theater was packed full with a lively audience, the best audience I encountered all weekend. Afterwards, all the cast and crew who were at the screening stepped up to the front of the theater. Even the Hannah Takes the Stairs Q&A at SXSW didn't have this many people involved. I wish I could name everyone for you, but there were so many! I know that's Burton Gilliam on the far left in the red shirt.



Kim and I spent the weekend with one of us at the Angelika and the other at the Magnolia, but we were able to attend one movie together: the midnight screening of Beings. While in line, we saw a lot of people leaving the earlier screenings who were dressed formally for very fancy after-parties. And I don't mean the Austin concept of formal, which is socks and pants without holes. Dallas people take their film-festival partying very seriously. Beings was an appropriate midnight movie but I really loved the short shown beforehand, Coming to Town. In an ideal world, a good theater would show this short at Christmastime before Bad Santa. I had to do that peeking-through-fingers thing a lot during Beings; I'm somewhat squeamish about watching experimental surgery performed on abducted humans by aliens. (Kim had to peek too! I notice she didn't mention that.)

I headed over to the Magnolia on Sunday to catch several films. The Magnolia is a smaller theater than the Angelika, so it was a little more challenging to accommodate film-festival crowds. While near the end of a line for Who Loves the Sun, I spent some time with a line of people in an unairconditioned stairwell. However, the theaters themselves were quite comfortable. The Magnolia has a bar -- the alcoholic kind, not the coffee kind -- with its own TV, very cozy. The Magnolia is in the middle of a big shopping-and-restaurant area so there are always people around, and always somewhere to grab a bite to eat or some coffee between movies. (I did wish for free wireless, but I think that's an Austin mania ... even the Dairy Queen by my house has free wireless.)



During the week, the festival screenings mainly took place in the late afternoons and evenings. On Monday afternoon before the movies started, Kim and I took a trip to the AFI office, which you can see in the photo at the top of this article. We also planned to stop by Victory Park, where the festival was showing classic movies from the AFI Top 100 list outside on a big screen in the middle of an open public square. Unfortunately, heavy rains prevented us from doing more than driving by and craning our necks, so I couldn't get a good photo. I could see a black-and-white movie on the screen but couldn't identify it. I love outdoor venues of all kinds, so I was sorry to miss the experience. I'll just have to return to Dallas next year and try again.

AFI Dallas turned out to be a fun festival to attend, although I wish it weren't so close to SXSW. As Kim has noted in her own dispatches, this year's festival was a little light on documentaries, which are my favorite kind of festival movie, but that's not unusual for a first-year regional festival. The documentaries I did see were all very good. I'd like to return to AFI Dallas next year for a longer visit and to enjoy the opening or closing night festivities. And perhaps next year I'll pack some formal-for-Dallas clothes, just in case.