Our Whole Future Is Ahead of Us
Dispatches from PajiBacon SXSW -- Monday /
Brian Prisco
Trade News | March 17, 2009 | Comments (32)
Today was my turn to be woken from a fitful slumber by Dustin (he’s a cuddler). Dustin, Frylock and myself rolled over to the Paramount for the “Super Secret Screening.” Dan Carlson already scooped the world on what the movie was: Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles. Which in hindsight makes perfect fucking sense. Rumor had it that Dan “The Santorum Gurgle” Fogler was due to play Welles in an upcoming biopic, which caused me to twitch in abject horror with the potential High School Musical/Balls of Fury combo platter. Fortunately, a quick IMDB search quelled my fears, and we were only due to be subjected to a day with that plastic fairy Zac Efron.
Linklater was present for the screening (as were the Carlson twins: Sarah and Daniel, arch nemesii to The Hardy Boys and Chang and Eng) and it was fun. He said, “We premiered this at TIFF and I’m not really supposed to screen this until it comes out in October, but I’ll be damned if I don’t bring this to Austin.” And my heart grows three sizes larger. Me and Orson Welles was pretty fucking outstanding. It was a truly character driven pace that was just absolutely charming. The actor who plays Welles, Christian McKay (pronounced Mick-KAI so you sound edcumacated), will snatch up one of the Academy Award nominations this year guaranteed. He’s so good that when he’s not on screen, you sort of spend the time waiting for him to show up. Perennial hategarners Zac Efron and Claire Danes round out the cast of mostly also-rans, but here they’re goddamn decent. I’ve been cutting old Twinkletoes a break since his kinda-okay turn in Hairspray, which is thankfully the only flick I’ve ever seen him in. He’s a little runover by the rest of the cast, particularly McKay, who fucking owns the film as well he should, but that kind of works for the character. And my heart will always go on for Claire Danes, but she mostly played — to borrow a phrase from today’s champion Sarah Carlson — a solipsistic whore. All right, she was talking about the curly-haired writer that everybody else fucking hates but me, but goddammit that’s a good phrase and I will cram it in wherever I can fucking fit it. That’s what she said. Quoteth Seth Frylock.
The rest of the day was spent in quiet retrospective. We suddenly realized that we were going to lose half the staff tomorrow morning. Boozehound, Dustin, Frylock, and TK are all due to sail off into the great blue yonder, leaving PStep, Stacey, Shep, myself, and the Mighty Carlsons to hold the fort. We kept pondering what films to check out: Best Worst Movie — the Troll 2 documentary which Dan’s been raving about; Breaking Upwards — a polyamoratta staring Dustin’s ladycrush Olivia Thirlby; Broken Lizard’s latest shameful effort, The Slammin’ Salmon; Observe and Report, perhaps even some Lesbian Vampire Killers. Instead, we ended up drinking together most of the day, spreading our sinfulness across 9 hours through the same three places: Toulouse — home of the $5 Long Island Iced Tea Mason Jars and my horrible mistake of a Michilada (two Coronas, Tabasco sauce, olives, lime juice, and bloody mary mix), Iron Works BBQ — and I’m sure people have violent opinions on BBQ (Eep! Chuy’s! Eep!) but it got the fucking job done admirably, and our new site sponsor, The Rio Grande.
We decided to commemorate the PajiBacon by gettting famous directors tattooed on our nether regions. Frylock got the Scott brothers on opposing thighs, Dustin got Jason Freidberg on his taint, Stacey got Mike White under her left breast and Mike Judge under the right, The Boozehound got Haggis on his haggy-sack, PStep got Kieslowski in three colors on each of his balls, Dan got the last fourteen Academy award winners on his penis, TK got George Romero and a horde of zombies running up his runway. I wanted Uwe Boll on my sphincter, so that he winked at you when I farted, but the tattoo artiste refused on account he’s got blue eyes.
Actually, we really did get tattoos in memory of our events. We spread our love around the various tattoo shops on Sixth Street. We stuck to mostly family related tats, sticking to letters rather than the unicorns fucking on rainbows that we so desperately wanted. TK won at life because he got four stars running up his arm. Because, he’s a film critic. I’m actually thinking about going back with Nosek tomorrow and getting four stars circling my ankle — where acting credits insist I keep them hidden for casting purposes — in honor of his awesomeness.
We tried to dash over to Observe and Report, but it turned into a massive failure and we figured we hadn’t a snowflakes chance in Perez Hilton’s taint of getting in, so we decided to run back to the bar and spend time together. As I speak, we’re currently killing brews at the Pajicabin and prepping to watch Street Fighter: The Movie. We’re joined by Justin and Smokin, because we’re that fucking cool. Sadly, the others will abandon us at dawn. I’m ganging up with Smokin to catch some more flicks tomorrow, possibly Splinterheads (with my favorite actor Dean Winters — Liz’s boyfriend Dennis the Beeper King on “30 Rock”) or Four Boxes, the horror flick.
Dan continues to be the awesomest motherfucker of the conference. He went over to do the red carpet for Observe and Report, which we sent him over to do with two or three mason jars full of long island iced tea in him. Seth Rogen saw Dan and the first words out of his mouth were: “Hello me.” Dan made the Timecop joke, and Rogen shouted, “Too soon! Too soon!” Apparently, we missed out, because Diggity Dan gives it the old thumbs up. He said it was incredibly dark — full on compound fractures, frontal male nudity, awesome cameos, and seriously disturbing concepts. And Dan isn’t afraid of being vocal with his displeasure: earlier in the day, he shouted out the front of the bars at a Segway tour. Literally, the dude bellowed, “Segway! SEGWAY! SEGWAY! SEEGGGGWWAAAY!” It was the highlight of the evening.
I really love this festival. I’ve been running into so many of the same people from the lines all over the place like they’re old friends. People asking me how it went in some of the movies I got into. I had two lovely women — rather uncommonly amazing folks in fact — who laughed at me and asked if I could have found a better term to use to refer to them than “common housewives.” Then we laughed and talked about what we saw that night. It’s been a fucking blast, because you can tell how much people love this town. In fact, I want to retroactively retract my semi-pan of The 2 Bobs. The more I think about it, the more I think about how much I enjoyed it, as cheesy as it might have been. Because you can tell the actors just loved being in the movie — especially the incredibly gorgeous Evelyn Hurley (and not because I’ve been running into her and her lady friend every where during the festival and laughing with each other) — as well as how much of a labor of love it was for Tim McCandlies, the writer-director. Sure, the story was a little dumb, and some of the jokes are clunkers, but it’s the kind of film you want to see at a local festival. It celebrates Austin, and it’s got a lot of ridiculous jokes and over the top antics. It beats the fuck out of anything by Harmony Korine or the other monkeyfuckers who ride his nuts and slather the festivals with dreary existentialist pics and arthouse dreck. I’ll take a billion fucking Bobs over any of that crap anyday.
Things just taste better out of a skull. Yeah, I’m reaching that level of anti-sobriety and exhaustion where I’m going to fucking evaporate into nonsense. I’ll still be dispatching once more tomorrow, even if it’s just to announce how drunk I got on St. Paddy’s and what I got inked on my balls today. I’ll miss those magnificent fuckers and it’s a shame our time together has been cut so short. But this isn’t a wake, and you’re reading this on St. Paddy’s, so hopefully everyone’s nice and fucked and listening to TK’s Drinking Song Playlist. Slainte, ya feckers!
Comments
Posted by: Cindy at March 17, 2009 2:15 PM
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Prisco, you seem ass-obsessed today.
...who laughed at me and asked if I could have found a better term to use to refer to them than “common housewives.”
Thank you ladies! We have no relation to the housefly.