It’s day five of SXSW, and I’m feeling overwhelmed. Yesterday while hanging out with Adam Carr of 88.9 Radio Milwaukee, he mentioned that it’s difficult to be satisfied with what you’re doing at SXSW, because you’re always wondering if something cooler is happening someplace else. (Usually, it is.) I think this is what has me exhausted today. I’ve thought so much about trying to find the best event, and then navigating how to get into it, that I’ve reached the point of not caring what’s happening at all. So I’m taking the morning to write in an attempt to hit the reset button.
It has been a great week overall. It’s hard to believe that only three days ago Paul Reubens showed up to his premiere of The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway wearing the full Pee-wee suit and red bow tie. (I think I’ve been misspelling Pee-wee for decades.) He was a delight, by the way, and mentioned that he’s currently writing a feature-length script that Judd Apatow has signed on to produce. He also brought a Pee-wee ice cream truck full of free treats for the audience.
The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway premieres Saturday, March 19 on HBO. Here’s a teaser:
Several other SXSW-screening films open this week as well. Paul, the new Greg Mottola (Adventureland, Superbad) film, opens Friday. It got good buzz, though not great buzz, and Simon Pegg (Paul, Hot Fuzz, and Shaun of the Dead writer-actor) seemed like an enjoyable fellow. He was basically thrown from his airplane into Doug Benson’s podcast, where he traded barbs with Rainn Wilson and Super director James Gunn (the writer-director of Slither and Tromeo and Juliet). Ellen Page was supposed to be there, but she was sick. She irritates me a little, so I feel like the show traded up. I’m sure the majority of men in the audience did not share my feelings. I’ll be honest, aside from my HUGE Rainn Wilson crush, I didn’t know who most of these guys were by name or sight. I’d also forgotten my glasses. Moral of the story: I’m totally sold on Doug Benson’s podcast now. Super opens in a couple weeks.
Win Win by director Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor) and starring Amy Ryan, Paul Giamatti, and Jeffrey Tambor also is in limited release this week, so Milwaukee should get it within the month. I’m very curious to see this one but only made the red carpet at SXSW—I can’t remember why. (That’s my answer for a lot of last week’s events!) Anyway, I loved The Station Agent—thought it was one of the best films during its release year—and I deplored The Visitor—disliked it as much as I loved the other film. Win Win could go either way, and I’m overlooking the terrible hairstyles to maintain my enthusiasm for seeing it:
Source Code and Insidious both open April 1 as well. Seemingly no one saw Insidious, perhaps because it only screened late at night and that audience likely was not on my 9am schedule. Source Code disappointed Moon fans, but it’s getting pretty good reviews, so perhaps it was a case of too-high hopes? I kind of don’t care about it either way. I skipped that screening to see the U.S. premiere of Viva Riva!, the first fictional feature out of the Republic of Congo. It’s an ambitious movie—not to mention incredibly violent—and I’m amazed at what they were able to accomplish in a city with literally no film infrastructure. Director Djo Munga was on hand to discuss how making it became a community event for his town of Kinshasa, and that together they tried to make an action film in the vein of what they see coming from America. I appreciated that they had to go door to door some days asking, “Do you mind if we film someone running through your house today?” (Milwaukee filmmakers can relate.) Viva Riva! is a brutal film, and not one I’d want to see again, but I found the experience watching and listening to the director speak about it much more fulfilling than observing people snap photos of Jake Gyllenhaal and seeing another Hollywood action film.
I could use a closing paragraph to make this blog seem as if it had a unifying point, but I think it’s time to see more movies.
