Scott Prendergast Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Eric Snider and I spent this past weekend in lovely Oxford, Mississippi with our friend Jen Yamato from Rotten Tomatoes, where the three of us participated in a panel on Film and New Media for the Oxford Film Festival. I also served on the documentary features jury for the fest. Scott Weinberg was supposed to have been here with me and Jen, but a serious tooth issue kept him home in Philly. Scott still pulled duty on the dramatic features jury for the fest, and Eric very kindly dropped things on a moment's notice the other day to fly to Oxford in Scott's stead.

The three of us had an absolute blast in Oxford. I love these small town film festivals ... everyone is so nice, the pace is laid-back and mellow -- a nice change coming off the craziness of Sundance. We got into Memphis on Thursday, and Jen and I had some yummy BBQ at Corky's -- Memphis-style "dry" ribs and brisket that was to die for. Mmmm. After Eric got in, we drove the hour or so trip to Oxford.

When I first met director Scott Prendergast, he had just crammed a huge gumball into his mouth, and was struggling to speak and couldn't touch anything, due to the fact that he had sticky gumball residue all over his hands. He gave the universally renown sign for "Uhhh, I need one second" and went to the bathroom to wash his hands and masticate that gum a bit more.

Once he was back, with clean hands and a jaw working like a well-oiled piston, we talked about his film Kabluey, which I had just seen. The film is set in Austin, although according to Prendergast that's only because the Texas Film Commission had a pretty lucrative "shoot your film here!" program that he took advantage of, and the setting in Kabluey is meant to be Anytown, U.S.A. We'll have an interview with Prendergast soon, and I'll let him wax poetic about making the film then. For now, I'll let you know what I thought about it, and how it made me want to go out and get a big blue costume as well.