SXSW in 60 Seconds: Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Wednesday was a transition day at SXSW. To quote Eric D. Snider: "You can tell the SXSW music fest is starting and the film fest is ending because everyone's skinny and bearded instead of fat and bearded."

SXSW Scene. With so many things happening, I forgot to mention my Spike Lee sighting. While riding a shuttle bus late Tuesday afternoon, my eagle-eyed colleague Jette Kernion spied Lee walking with John Pierson, an original investor in Lee's She's Gotta Have It, now arguably best known as the husband of SXSW Producer Janet Pierson. Our shuttle bus instantly transformed into a Hollywood Stars Tour Bus, as we all stood up and gawked. Lee was in town for a special screening of Passing Strange, about the Broadway rock musical.

Cinematical Coverage. The last title in the SXSW Presents Fantastic Fest at Midnight section to premiere, The Haunting in Connecticut, struck William Goss as "a run-of-the-mill spooker." Virginia Madsen, Martin Donovan, and Elias Koteas star. Lionsgate will release the film on March 27. The Snake, a comedy about "an entirely unlikable character," is "hilarious from the outset," says Kevin Kelly. Adam Goldstein stars as a man who is willing to do anything to bed a bulimic woman (Nina Braddock); Golden co-wrote and directed with Eric Kutner. The film is seeking distribution.

Ben Steinbauer's Winnebago Man "touches on issues of privacy, frustration, friendship, and loneliness ... but what I found most interesting was the theme of simple respect," wrote Scott Weinberg. The filmmaker tracks down a man whose profane tirade was caught on tape.

Ever wonder what director Tobe Hooper did before his seminal shocker The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? Me neither, but his first feature, the long-lost Eggshells, has been found and Jette Kernion attended a special screening at SXSW with Hooper in attendance. "It's very much a film of the late 1960s," she says, "with some eye-popping psychedelic sequences."

You can check out all our 2009 SXSW coverage by clicking right here.

Blog Talk. If you're tired of reading about SXSW, check out the photos Matt Dentler has posted. Dentler left his post at SXSW Producer last year to take up residence in New York and has put Cinetic Media's digital rights management unit on the map (e.g. launching We Are Wizards, The Lost Coast, and Yeast, from last year's fest, on Hulu this week). He also has brief thoughts on seven films.

For The Wrap, Eric Kohn caught both "secret" screenings earlier this week involving Richard Linklater. The director presented his latest film, Me and Orson Welles, at the Paramount Theater, talked with Todd Haynes in a public conversation at the Austin Convention Center, and then introduced Haynes' legendary Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story at the Alamo Ritz. ""The good thing is you have a body of work that people can refer to," Linklater said, in reference to the two directors' careers. "The bad thing is you have a body of work."