We kicked off the morning with a pair of panels no worse for wear from the light evening before...
A Conversation with Bill Paxton
One of this year's Texas Film Hall of Fame inductees, Mr. Paxton seemed to genuinely feel at home with the crowd and being back in the Lone Star State. A native of Fort Worth (yeehaw cattle town), the anecdotes came fast and loose, from his dad telling him, "son, I love you, but you picked a real fucked business" and how he knew Shia LeBeouf had "it" from back during shooting of The Greatest Game Ever Played, which to be fair, got unrightfully dismissed as "another one of those Disney Insert Inspirational Sports Plot Here movies" when it was really very good.
Paxton spoke of film as a true renaissance craft, where you can start anywhere and go anywhere, completely dependent on what skills you pick up along the way. He said that as an actor, "the camera is interested in who you are...it's your plot that has to be developed and what pieces of that story we get to see" and how few actors seem to get that these days.
A really classy gent, who, as my fiancée noticed, isn't afraid to wear boots and Wranglers at some fancypants film festival.
A Conversation with Richard Linklater
Jon "Godfather of the Indie Movement" Pierson served as moderator for this one and dove right in, touching on the fact Linklater doesn't really take much time off and is always kind of doing something, whether a pilot for HBO that sounded really good while shooting one movie and cutting/post-ing another, or the mammoth task of shooting and assembling a documentary on the UT Baseball team while trying to find something else to dig in to.
He shot Tape in 6 days. I'll be damned. Makes you want to go find your favorite Stephen Belber play and tell yourself you can shoot it on the cheap (of course, with not nearly the craft or cast he did).
We got to questions, and one of my favorite ever "hey I got a script/movie/album/dvd/porn can I give it to you" idiot shootdowns happened. Roughly (badly) paraphrased:
Mo Ron: Hey man, I'm like, a writer, and I was all wondering--
Jon Pierson: What?
Mo Ron: I mean, could we like hang out or somethi--
Pierson: Are you fucking kidding me?
Mo Ron: Uh, what?
Pierson: You want to learn something, join the Austin Film Society. Go to some screenings.
Linklater: I go to those.
Pierson: Yeah, and learn what a question is. Honestly, some people....what do they think this is?
I threw in a question about DVD, knowing Linklater's relationship with Criterion was good, and what if any future collaborations with them or special deluxe packages could be expected. Pierson chimed in that it's harder to get a studio to license a movie to Criterion, and that Warner Bros. was almost out-Criterion-ing them. Linklater said he'd like to get some of his non-Special Edition work re-issued, like Before Sunrise/Sunset, and that we could expect to see SubUrbia soon.
Regarding filmmaking, he left us with this: "just because digital is inexpensive, don't leave the camera rolling all the time" and with that, was off running to a UT baseball game.
Ok, afternoon screenings and then back late tonight, I think.