SXSW: The Highlights

What a week.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the annual HOLYFUCK-a-thon that is SXSW, I'm going to do my best to describe it before plunging into my list of my top 11 highlights from the festival (one per day of craziness + a bonus because I just flat ran out of things to cut).

For 10 days, the sleepy little villa of Austin Texas is utterly overwhelmed by an insane conflagration centered on the infamous Sixth Street but extending in every direction into every bar, movie theatre, convention center, park, and restaurant in the city. Basically, the city throws three enormous festivals simultaneously: a top rate film festival that draws hundreds of Hollywood celebrities and premieres dozens of movies, an interactive business conference/festival that is renowned for debuting twitter three years ago, and what has to be the world's largest music festival, with more than 2,000 official performing acts, most of whom play seven or eight shows over the course of the week.

Did I mention that you can attend virtually everything at the festival for free if you know your way around? And that every event is chock full of free drinks, ranging from Texas's ubiquitous Lone Star to fully stocked open bars? And that half the events double up on the free drinks with buffet lines of free food, ranging from simple fare like tacos and ice cream all the way up to full 5 star buffets?

And did I mention that I took the entire week off from work, secured a film badge, and basically spent every hour of all ten days at the festival?

The highlights follow.

#11 The Intersteller Transmissions Bus

My honorable mention, since I never quite ended up on the bus. It was still a nice reminder of the Austin flavor to the festival. One of my favorite bands in town, Intersteller Transmissions, sets up their band on top of a white bus and drives around the city playing music and inviting anyone who'll fit onto the bus. I never hitched a ride (this time), but they brought a smile to my face every time I saw them drive by.

#10 21 Jump Street

A film that turned out way better than I expected. I saw 20 films over the course of the festival, and most of them could be on the list (and several more will follow. 21 Jump Street stood out, however, not just because of the film itself, but because of the raucous crowd, laughing and applauding nearly throughout the film, and the amazing panel that followed, with Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, and Rob Riggle trading jokes with other members of the cast and crew who I'm totally blanking on and feel badly about forgetting.

It also had the best moment of pure overreaction of the festival, when Jonah Hill, clearly giddy from the crowd reaction to a project he had clearly been putting together for a long, long time, burst out, nearly in tears: "No matter what else fucking happens, we'll always have tonight!" to a full auditorium of over 2,000 moviegoers.

#9 The One Panel I Went To

Normally at film festivals, I am all about panels, almost at the expense of the films themselves. Not this time: I only made it into one panel all festival, but it was a particularly good one. (I'm not counting the presentation on new online stock markets that I sat through merely because the fully stocked open bar wouldn't serve drinks until they stopped talking...gin and tonics are so much better when they come from top shelf liquor, don't you agree?)

The panel I *DID* enjoy was one with higher ups from a variety of mid range independent film studios, including the folks behind Drive, Blue Valentine, and Machete. (Or, as the Machete guy put it, the 'Goss' panel). Given that my eventual goal is to make/produce films at that level of production, I found every insight on making the budget vs. payoff of those films work completely fascinating, whether it was how to convince top level stars to take the pay shave or the ins and outs of marketing Henry Winkler to Romania. Ok, this is all about business stuff, and I can already tell you're bored. Let's move on.

#8 The Interactive Trade Floor

I didn't see much of the interactive fest, but the parts I did see I approved of. The highlight was the actual trade floor, where hundreds of hopeful future googles and twitters and netflixes set up booths and plied their hip new websites and services. I can't wait to unsubscribe to all these new services, but in the meantime, it was impressive to see so many awesome ideas in one place. A few that particularly stood out: Squarespace, who will soon be hosting this blog, and a service whose name I forget that allows you to set up any film screening at any theatre if you can get the attendance to 'tip', a la groupon or kickstarter (which, at least 45 people in indiegogo shirts informed me over the course of the week, is a totally inferior service).

#7 March Madness

It was easy to forget in the midst of the madness, the rest of the country was having their own breed of madness: the type that takes place in March as well. In any year, this would be worthy of a mention, but this particular year, my alma mater Michigan State happened to be dominating life. After winning the Big Ten tournament and securing a one seed, the Green and White took care of business, reached the Sweet Sixteen, and got Dre-Dre a second NCAA tourney triple double, a feat only the Big O and another Spartan great, Magic Johnson, have accomplished. Oh, and I almost got into a bar fight in the Third Base bathroom with a guy who was loudly exclaiming Tom Izzo didn't know how to coach. In hindsight, I'm glad that didn't happen because he was at least sixty pounds heavier than me and had a knife tattooed on his forearm, but some things just won't stand.

Oh, and Michigan lost to a #13 seed, which was fucking awesome too.

#6 The Tent by the Paramount

I forget who hosted this amazing extravaganza (so I suppose from their perspective, it failed), but I owe them about $75 dollars for the free beer, ice cream, 100th anniversary oreos, massages, mac&cheese, music, and hammocks they provided me between screenings. If I ever remember their name, I'll at least hop on their website a couple of times. It all balances out, right? (close runners up for this category: the Bing tent, with its open bar, foozeball tables, and free kimchi tacos, and the British Music Embassy, with its also open bar, and lamb and whitefish buffet line, with kick ass bands to boot).

#5 Mumford and Sons + Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros with Big East Express screening

The line for this wrapped around the law center twice, zig zagged through the lawn, and took about forty five minutes to pass through, but it was totally worth it. The tableau: to our left, UT stadium. To our right, a giant inflatable screen showing Big Easy Express, the crazy cross country train tour the above bands took that put the entirety of their third accompaniments, Old Crow Medicine Show, into rehab.

And dead center, with the sun setting behind the UT clock tower as the back drop, a giant festival stage where Edward Sharpe, Mumford and Sons, and the one member of Old Crow who could make it traded off on their sets, with guest appearances from each band on each other's sets. At one point, the entire Austin High marching band joined them on stage to play along. It all wrapped up with a combined cover with everyone on stage of Old Crow's Wagon Wheel, with the vocalist reading the lyrics off his iphone while singing.

Perfect.

#4 Raid: Redemption

Without a doubt, both the best action movie I've ever seen and the best film audience I've ever been a part of. Words fail to convey the transcendent glee that this movie created in me. It's simply the best action film since Die Hard. Except no other argument. The premise is simple: a team of cops attempt to fight their way up a 30 story apartment complex to capture the most notorious crime lord in Indonesia. The catch: every apartment is filled with the scum of the world, allowed to live for free in the complex in exchange for one task: defend the crime lord if and when an army of police start marching up the stairwells. And defend they do, in the most insane series of action sequences I've ever seen. The film elicited at least twelve ovations from the audience, culminating in a final martial arts fight scene between what was just about the last three characters left alive in the entire fucking movie, a fight scene that lasted for over six minutes and drew three separate rounds of applause from the blood frenzied crowd.

See this movie. Just do it.

#3 The people in line

A big part of SXSW is standing in line for things. There was a war going on for what the most impressive and absurd line would be, and though I don't know if anything will ever top the line to pick up the badges, which wrapped around the convention center twice and took nearly two hours to clear, the lines for 21 Jump Street (wrapped all the way around the block, doubled back on itself, and extended down a neighboring street, like a totally doomed later level Snake in that old calculator game) and Mumford and Sons (see above) about did it. The side effect of spending so much time standing in lines is networking happens naturally, and I met all sorts of awesome people while waiting to get in. It was totally natural to reach the theatre and grab seats with whoever you had been standing chatting with for the last hour outside. From film buffs to interactive ceos, directors to writers, actors to producers, bloggers to students, the number of awesome conversations and single serving friends I made were too numerous to be counted. Hell, I even met the coproducer of Tree of Life and got some inside deets on Malick's next film. Turns out seeing Pavilion wasn't a complete waste of time after all.

#2 Silent Disco

One of the most novel party concepts I've ever experience. The set up: a few blocks from my house, one of the most truly creative independent living co ops sits completely innocuously behind a wall of sheet metal fences, at the corner of two major crossroads in South Austin, Lamar and Oltorf. Behind these sheet metal walls, which give off the vibe of a down on the luck trailer park hiding from the world, is a giant forest, with stages, tents, and on this particular night, thousands of partygoers. The Enchanted Forest, as it's called, is a really amazing space, and throughout Southby, it combined with Silent Frisco, an operation out of San Fran (where else?) to throw Silent Discos (hah! it's a pun!).

Basically how it works is this: two DJs set up at a stage in the center of the forest. Everyone who comes in gets a pair of wireless headphones, the really nice $200 kind. The headphones can be tuned to either DJ frequency, and glow either green or blue based on what frequency you're listening to. The result is magical (could I say...enchanted?): no matter where you wander to in the forest, you have full control over the music volume. Want to rage to it? Crank it on full. Chill next to the river or watch a performance dance piece at another stage? Turn it down to low. Talk to your friends? Take them off, and the low murmurs of conversation replace the wild party you were at two seconds ago.

The best part: because the party is silent, it never violates noise regulations. In the heart of a commercial and residential district, the Silent Disco raged throughout the forest until the sun came up. No cops, no problems, full volume.

Technology, art, music, and nature: coming together to innovate how you rock out. If that doesn't scream South-by-Soutwest and Austin Motherfucking Texas, I don't know what does.

#1 Opening Night

Throughout all that (and much, much more), nothing still quite matched up to opening night. The wild crowd for Cabin in the Woods, seeing Joss motherfucking Whedon in person, the amazing midnight screening of Girls Against Boys, the best chicks on a rampage movie since Kill Bill, the first of the opening film teasers which were fucking BRILLIANT this year (and chock full of the talented Mr. Zach Anner), and the full anticipation and excitement of the entire week still sitting in front of you like an unwrapped Christmas present: it's a night I'll likely never forget, the opening stanza to a week that crossed the pale. That feeling, leaving work and knowing I wouldn't be back in a cube until, well, today, where I'm writing this for you right now...that feeling is one that can't quite be replicated by anything by the first day of a vacation you've been anticipating for a full on year.

Except, when you live in Austin, Texas, that vacation is a staycation, one that makes you wonder why you'd ever want to leave.

See y'all next year! I'll try to make it to more concerts this time.