The Circuit

One of the better screenwriter conferences, the Austin Film Festival, has picked up more panelists for its October event:

Phil Rosenthal, writer of "Everybody Loves Raymond"
John August (writer/director The Nines, writer Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie’s Angels)
Bob Fisher (Wedding Crashers)
John Lee Hancock (writer The Alamo, director The Alamo, The Rookie)
Buck Henry (writer To Die For, The Graduate)
Jake Kasdan (Walk Hard, Orange County)
Jeff Nathanson (story credit - Indiana Jones 4, Catch Me if You Can, and writer/director of The Last Shot)
Dan Petrie Jr. (Beverly Hills Cop, The Big Easy)
Eric Red (The Hitcher, Near Dark)
Terry Rossio (writer, The Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy)
Chuck Sklar ("Everybody Hates Chris", "The Chris Rock Show")
Kirsten Smith (writer, Legally Blonde, 10 Things I Hate About You)
Robert Townsend (Phantom Punch, Why we laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy)

In an article for Variety's weekly, I tackle the glut of film festivals:

At the fourth annual Intl. Film Festival Summit in Las Vegas last week, fest honchos huddled together in panel sessions with names like "Creating a Sustainable Festival," showing a sense of camaraderie, friendliness and mutual support.

But then, most attendees there were new to the game. Among veteran fest programmers and execs, it's more a case of strong rivalries, poaching and a secret desire that their compatriots would disappear in a puff of smoke.

Competition among film fests has always been sharp, but it's become cutthroat as fests proliferate, with literally thousands of them vying for world premieres, stars and, crucially, sponsors. If the films are good, it's almost a bonus.

The piece also touches on a growing controversy amoung fest execs - rising distributor and sales agents fees. 

Full piece here.

"Juno" will close the Bahamas International Film Fest as it continues to stomp across the festival circuit like a untouched heavyweight champ, ready for fight night on its December 5 release.  Since Searchlight has been squeezing all it can from "Juno's" success at these fests, it'll be something to see how that translates to the box office.

Not sure if she'll be there, but I think the film's screenwriter, Diablo Cody, needs this Bahamas break, if it turns out to be a break at all.  She sounds tired on her Pussy Ranch blog.  Strange stuff keeps happening on the circuit, which she dutifully reports.  Recently, at the Austin Film Fest, she and "Juno" director Jason Reitman uncover a "mint" pair of boxers next to four packaged Magnum condoms in a hotel room drawer.  They are left to piece together what happened, or "what didn't happen."  Cody's theory:

The Lodger is a UT Austin student with limited sexual experience. He procured a room at the Driskill in the hopes of surprising/seducing his new girlfriend, but he's self-conscious about his somewhat heavyset body. The (hypothetical) postcoital nude trek from bed to bathroom proved daunting, so he stashed a precautionary pair of boxers in the nightstand. That way, he could slide into them immediately after sex and stride to the john in style, modesty intact. Now, the purpose of the condoms is obvious. Unfortunately, none were used. The sex never went down

This is how I unwind, people.

The Bahamas International Film Festival runs December 6-13.

by Marjorie Baumgarten
If there's an imminent screenwriters' strike looming over the film industry, it would be hard to detect any signs of uncertainty hovering over the Austin Film Festival. The Texas conference was held from October 11-14, while the film festival component continues through October 18.

Maybe it was the lure of barbecue and the prolonged Austin summer that lulled out-of-state screenwriters into their overall good spirits. There's nothing like a festival and numerous parties celebrating the art and practices of the screenwriter to escape the gloom that might otherwise darken the mood this frequently overlooked tribe. Perhaps it's the weekend's conviviality of the like-minded, all drawn away from the solitude of their individual writer's rooms, that makes the festival a refreshing shot in the arm for the scribes.

In Austin for the extended weekend, the professional screenwriters are panelists, judges, and honorees: gurus to the festival's rank and file of hopeful nonprofessionals. Some listen to 90-second pitches throughout several panels that winnow out an elite group of competition finalists. Others join festival attendees for casual yet organized "conversations" and "roundtables," including Terry George at the "Reservation Road" screening, and "Juno" director Jason Reitman with the film's writer, Diablo Cody.

Yet, by and large, the panels are customized how-to's, geared toward imparting information and expertise to the inexperienced. Sample panel topics include Common Mistakes Writers Make, Getting the Most Out of Competition, Getting a Writing Job, Writing the Drama, Writing Comedy for TV, and so on. Over the four days, sizable audiences took copious notes, nodded heads, and asked pertinent questions, but there's no escaping the truth of the conference's primary attraction: up-close and personal access to professionals who already have experienced the good fortune of getting their movies made. Tellingly, panels addressing such issues as packaging, copyrights, and contracts were easy to find, but there were none on the more advanced topics of residuals, collective bargaining, and recoupment formulas.

Given the nitty-gritty nature of most of the panels, it's understandable that curiosity was heightened for the star panels featuring conversations with this year's top honorees: recipient of the Outstanding Television Writer Award, Glenn Gordon Caron, the creator of "Moonlighting" and "Medium"; recipient of the Distinguished Screenwriter Award, John Milius, who also presented a screening of his early film "Big Wednesday"; and recipient of the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award, Oliver Stone, who presented a screening of his "Born on the Fourth of July." Naturally, it was the panel titled In the Trenches: Writing a War Film, featuring Stone and Milius à deux, that attracted the greatest audience.

Despite one heckler whose beef with Milius was never fully elucidated (although it had something to do with a desire to get Milius to retract his expression of discontent with "The Deer Hunter"), the mood was civil and utterly fascinating. Milius declared his favorite war movie to be "Battleground," while Stone cited his as "Dr. Strangelove." Both men love Malick's "The Thin Red Line" and agree that every American should have to serve his or her country, especially in the armed forces. Stone said the difference between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq is the modern absence of a "citizen army." Volunteers "remain loyal to the military" and don't "bitch and moan" when things go wrong like drafted citizens do.

We can be certain that a lot of these ideas are going into Stone's current preparation of his next film "Pinkville," about the My Lai massacre. Milius argued that "everyone should have to have their lives interrupted" so that no one could avoid the problem. Although Stone would wince when Milius would express his love for "the Bomb," Milius explained his feeling that war is part of existence and to make "an anti-war film would be like making an anti-rain film." Both men loved the opening of "Saving Private Ryan" and strongly disliked the rest of the film, found "Hamburger Hill" too pro-American, and "Black Hawk Down" too muddled. Stone called "Starship Troopers" one of the best war films of recent years, and Milius cited "The Seven Samurai" as one of the best war films ever created. The session was a true master class.

Marjorie Baumgarten covers film for the Austin Chronicle.

All photos by Jack Plunkett/Austin Film Festival.

Local Austin filmmaker Jeff Nichols' "Shotgun Stories" won the Austin Film Festival's top narrative prize, while Alexandre Fuchs' "Children of the War" (Hijos de la Guerra) won for best doc, pictured.

The complete list:

AFF 2007 Screenplay/Teleplay Competition Winners

Sitcom Teleplay Winner - Scrubs: My Hot Mess written by Ashley Lyele

Drama Teleplay Winner - Grey's Anatomy: Reality Bites written by Scott Richter

Latitude Productions Winner - Flower of Fire written by Patrick Hegarty

Sci-Fi Winner - Keys to the Kingdom written by Geof Miller and Troy Hunter

Comedy Winner - Pocket Protector written by Severiano Canales

Adult/Family Winner - Slugger written by Jimmy Miller

AFF 2007 Film Competition Winners

Narrative Feature Jury Award Winner "Shotgun Stories"
Written and Directed by Jeff Nichols

Special Jury Mention for Dash Mihok's performance in "Superheroes"

Special Jury Mention for Comic Vision in Mike O'Connell and Peter Kline's script for "The Living Wake"

Narrative Short Jury Award Winner "Deface"
Written and Directed by John Arlotto

Special Jury Mention for "Emily Cries"

Special Jury Mention for Samantha Weinstein's performance in "Ninth Street Chronicles"

Narrative Student Short Jury Award Winner
"Salt Kiss"
Written and Directed by Fellipe Barbosa

Animated Short Jury Award Winner
"Over the Hill"
Directed by Peter Baynton

Special Jury Mention for "The Chestnut Tree"

Documentary Feature Winner
"Hijos de la Guerra" (Children of the War)
Directed by Alexandre Fuchs

Special Jury Mention for "First Saturday in May"

Documentary Short Winner "Absolute Zero"
Directed by Alan Woodruff

Lineups from Austin (whose hub is the beautiful Driskill Hotel, pictured) and London were announced today as the flicks from Telluride, Venice, and Toronto start drifting over the globe. London already announced “Eastern Promises” and “The Darjeeling Limited” will bookend.  Between them a bunch of world cinema screens like “The Band’s Visit,” “Lust, Caution,” “Glory to the Filmmaker!”  Full program here.

Austin’s a different beast.  It’ll open with the Sundance 2007 opener “Chicago 10,” picked up at Cannes by Roadside and set for release sometime in February 2008.  The film reportedly has been tightened since Cannes.  Closing will be “Juno,” which is having a marathon fest run.  Sandwiched inside is a competition lineup of premieres including “On the Doll” about childhood abuse and Noah Buschel’s “Neal Cassady,” about Jack Kerouac’s friend and inspiration.  Full program here.

I wish it weren’t true, but a world premiere at many fests caught between Toronto and Sundance means trouble.  The optimism for these films may look good in the program and to sponsors, but I wonder if it’s still worth it after the film “world premieres” to negative reviews and bad word-of-mouth.  In my experience, they usually do.

More interesting about these fests is the side programs, where trends are “curated,” not “premiered.”  In their “Viet Film Wave,” Austin picked films from a tight knit filmmaking community in Orange County about being Vietnamese in America post-Vietnam War. 

Similarly, London has “Romanian Cinema: The Next Wave,” a not-altogether new but still interesting idea of films like “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days” and “California Dreamin’ (Endless)” that mark that country’s emergence.  Programs like these give a historical sense of definition, and if done correctly, the films feed each other and sometimes create a major/minor movement.  Mumblecore is a recent example. 

(Now the test will be how a movement can survive the praise and backlash.)

Oliver Stone will receive the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the upcoming Austin Film Festival. Stone will get the award along with screenwriter John Milius (Distinguished Screenwriter Award) at the Awards Luncheon on October 13. AFF is worth the travel for screenwriters. Don’t be fooled by the title. The best action is at the conference panels, which take over the beautiful Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin.  Among those confirmed this year: William Broyles Jr., Scott Alexander ("1408"), Terry George, Jon Hurwitz (of "Harold and Kumar" fame), Aline Brosh McKenna, Terry Rossio, and Bill Wittliff.

Check out this good one-on-one with Scott Alexander: "We came on 1408 as a 3-week rewrite, and stayed for almost 2 years!"  (Mike Jones)