Recap Austin Film Festival opening weekend

"Television-actor-turned-first-time-feature-filmmaker" isn't usually the sort of descriptor that leads to high expectations for a movie, but working with Adrienne Shelly's final script and a gifted cast of Timothy Hutton, Meg Ryan, Kristen Bell, and Justin Long (and pretty much nobody else) gives Cheryl Hines' debut, Serious Moonlight, an uncommon edge. One audience member during the post-screening Q&A declared to Hines that she "had a little bit of Hitchcock" in her—and while even Hines acknowledged how hyperbolic that was, he had a point.

Serious Moonlight isn’t entirely satisfying, but many of the moments that, at the time, feel totally contrived are revealed in the final seconds to be perfectly executed, the same way that Hitch might have done them. Since Ryan stars as a prototypical career woman in her mid-40s who catches her spineless husband (Hutton) cheating with a much younger woman (Bell), Serious Moonlight flirts with some typically angsty empowerment clichés, but never fully embraces them. Instead, it gives us  Long as a tattooed thug who would probably beat the shit out of us for owning a PC, plus a prolonged scene of feisty scrapping between Bell and Ryan that's sure to give bondage fans a special thrill. Granted, it’s overly talky and more or less confined to a single room, which makes it feel more like a play than a movie, but Hines has a decent grasp on how to emphasize some of its more ambiguous elements to increase the tension and make it more fun than it could have been.

“Starring Michael Cera” is another tagline that usually leads to premature dismissal, but those already weary of hyperliterate hoodie-clad lads mumbling into their pigeon chests may be surprised by the Cera of Youth In Revolt—or rather, the two Ceras: Everyone’s favorite emo archetype battles his own inherent wussiness, Superman III-style, with a mustachioed split personality named “Francois” that’s all Gauloises and violently realized ennui. In adapting C.D. Payne’s vulgar epistolary novel, director Miguel Arteta had the unenviable task of translating Nick Twisp’s quest to win the love of his ridiculously idealized object of affection through various outlandish instances of angry adolescent wish fulfillment into something that didn’t come off as some mash-up of American Pie and OC And Stiggs. (No doubt he also took more than a few meetings regarding some of the book’s smuttier passages—such as scenes where Nick is drugged and sodomized by his housekeeper’s son, or gets caught giving his best friend a blowjob.) To Arteta’s credit, he finds a middle ground that’s neither too soft for fans of the book nor so over-the-edge that it won’t find a mass audience—or to where Cera has to spend the next few months answering variations on, “What’s it like to suck a dick?” from snickering journos—and creates a film that’s sharp and funny on its own terms. If Cera’s not quite a revelation as the tough-talking Francois, his usual deadpan translates surprisingly well to casual misanthropy, and he more than holds his own against a stacked supporting cast that includes Zach Galifianakis, Fred Willard, Ray Liotta, Jean Smart, Justin Long (again), and Steve Buscemi. But the real revelation here is newcomer Portia Doubleday as Cera’s sweetly manipulative would-be lover: Precocious without being smug or flinty, she’s a welcome antidote to the perpetually wounded smart girl stereotype embodied most recently by Kristen Stewart and Kat Dennings.

It was a good weekend for discovering ingénues: Judging from what we’ve seen at Fantastic Fest and now AFF, the future promises fewer Lindsay Lohans and Jessica Albas and way more Emma Stones and Portia Doubledays—and definitely a lot of Carey Mulligan, star of An Education. The prevailing wisdom on Mulligan’s performance is that it’s “Audrey Hepburn-esque,” and while this is probably a knee-jerk response to the stunning up-do she sports through much of the film, it’s certainly indicative of the “star is born” aura she carries in this, her first major starring role. As a painfully wise-beyond-her-years schoolgirl who reads Camus and listens to Juliette Gréco records while dreaming of a life of Parisian refinement (in this she’s a mirror image of Doubleday’s Youth In Revolt character), “Jenny” could have been an off-putting study in adolescent pretension and upper-class whining. But Mulligan has a soft shell, an unstudied vulnerability that makes both her and the film absolutely loveable. And even though it hits similarly predictable beats on the way to unraveling Jenny’s story of first love with a thirtysomething suitor (Peter Sarsgaard, eyes twinkling as a caddish sophisticate) who’s probably too good to be true, An Education has an “isn’t life grand?” charm that renders even the age-old cliché of a romantic walk along the Seine intoxicating all over again. Some of that is probably due to Nick Hornby’s lightly droll script—which primarily benefits Alfred Molina as Mulligan’s overprotective father –but it’s also a triumph of art direction, as the unshowy way it renders every aspect of its pre-Beatles, “teddy boy” era Britain makes spending a couple of hours there a delight.

As Matthew Weiner could probably tell you, it’s those little details that make all the difference when it comes to producing evocative work. Even if AFF's status as the "writer's film festival" didn't also make room for television, it would still make sense to include an honorary screening like Matthew Weiner Presents: Mad Men. Few TV shows have looked or felt as cinematic as Weiner's survey of the changing mores of 1960s America—a point nearly every critic and viewer of the acclaimed show has made by now, but one confirmed by how great the universe of Sterling Cooper looked blown up and projected on the screen of the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown. Of course, you don't need the big screen (or an accompanying character-themed cocktail) to tell that much of Mad Men's cinematic richness of detail arises from how much affection Weiner and his writing staff have for their characters, but as the showrunner mentioned in his introduction, it was said affection that led him to bring the season three episode "Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency" to the festival. That might not be apparent from the way "Guy" in particular toys with the expectations and desires of the principal cast, but at least Don walks away from the episode with a promising new account. And while Joan doesn't leave Sterling Cooper for the housewife's life she was hoping for, she is granted a moment to let her guard down—if only for a second—showing that the most steely of exteriors in Weiner's world are more often than not the ones that hide the most vulnerable hearts.

Without a screening to hide behind, Weiner opened himself up during his “Script-to-Screen: Mad Men” panel, which turned out to be a one-man show without so much as a moderator to steer the discussion. But like Don Draper forced to wing a presentation to a particularly anxious client, Weiner proved more than up for the challenge. Indeed, it was hard not to see a touch of Draper’s brash confidence (and let’s be honest: palpable self-regard) in Weiner as he delivered a nuts-and-bolts account of his scripting process. In short: Wiener is the dictator, from the initial conception of a season’s themes and plotlines to the final draft of all the episode scripts—although he only gives himself a credit if he ends up rewriting more than 60 percent of the screenplay. This was somewhat insightful to those interested in clearing up recent rumors about Weiner’s controlling nature; those hoping for spoilers, meanwhile, had to settle for vague hints that the series’ timeframe will take a leap forward next season. And although you won’t see Don Draper in tie-dye and love beads anytime soon, Weiner did allow that at some point, Don might grow a mustache. Remember, you read it here first.

One thing you admittedly didn’t read here first: The very good odds that more than one presenter will be forced to wrap their tongues around the unwieldy title of Precious: Based On The Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire at next year’s Oscars. The story of a morbidly obese Harlem teenager who’s pregnant with her second child after being raped yet again by her father (the first child, because that’s not depressing enough already, is named “Mongoloid” because she has Down syndrome) and trying to earn her GED and escape the violent physical and psychological abuse of her mother (Mo’Nique, in an armpit-hairs-and-all performance that’s one of the most villainous of the year) is pretty much like Oprah’s The Book Of Job—and just when you think things couldn’t possibly get any uglier, they shove some AIDS at you. But it’s a testament to the film’s unique grasp of reality—as opposed to melodrama—that it’s not nearly as grim as it sounds, balancing its darker aspects with classroom scenes where Precious and her fellow welfare cases mercilessly rip on each other, and fantasy sequences where Precious imagines herself as a red carpet diva. Best of all, this is no Dangerous Minds: There are no “slow clap” moments of redemption here. In fact, one could argue that it doesn’t end on a happy note at all—and of course, that’s life. Life sucks.

For proof, just ask the three abused writer-creators at Saturday morning’s "They Can Kill You, But They Can't Eat You" panel—although there was a refreshing lack of bitterness as Michael Green (Kings), Paul Feig (Freaks And Geeks), and Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development) ruminated self-deprecatingly about the premature cancellation of their acclaimed but little-watched shows. The bright-eyed, perpetually smirking Hurwitz had the funniest stories and digs, recalling an e-mail received from a Fox executive following AD's first Emmy win ("'Oh shit' is bad. 'Holy shit' would be good"), and talking about the industry-wide move away from major networks by joking about developing a new series for The Weather Channel called Cloudy. Most likely a product of the director's distances from their shows—even Green, whose wounds were definitely the freshest—they were all in remarkably good humor. The only truly dispiriting moment came during a discussion of pitching programs with a broad potential audience. Both Feig and Hurwitz admitted that in creating Freaks And Geeks and Arrested Development, they thought they were casting a net wide enough to snare the same big numbers for CSI and Two And A Half Men, even though their shows never had a chance to attract anything more than impassioned niche audiences.

Still, as Feig—along with Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof and Chris Rock’s right-hand man Chuck Sklar—later expounded upon in their “TV Development” panel, it’s the niche audiences that you should be shooting for, rather than trying to be everything to everybody. Although all three writers openly admitted that they were probably the wrong people to host a panel on what it takes to create a successful pilot—Feig, because Freaks is generally viewed as a ratings failure by late-’90s standards; Sklar, because his success has always been inextricably tied to Rock’s; and Lindelof, because he revealed that Lost’s pilot was made primarily as an expensive “fuck you” from an ousted network head—they did have a few useful tips for aspiring writers, such as not saving all of your best ideas for “later,” because there may not be a later. Also, you apparently shouldn’t pin your storylines on a romance subplot if it involves Matthew Fox, because that guy doesn’t have chemistry with much of anyone. (Though to be fair, making sparks fly between Michelle Rodriguez and any dude is a Sisyphean hurdle.)

Those who slept through the daytime panels could get the condensed version from Peter Hanson’s documentary Tales From The Script, the title of which purposefully evokes the famous horror anthology. Featuring talking-head interviews with dozens of screenwriters from the Hollywood trenches—accurately described by one participant as “egomaniacs with low self-esteem”—the film is chock-full of grisly anecdotes about endless rewrites, producer interference, pig-headed actors, and battles for proper credit. If you can stomach the likes of Steven E. de Souza (Judge Dredd), David Hayter (The Scorpion King) and Justin Zackham (The Bucket List) bitching about affronts to their “artistic integrity,” it’s an entertaining and even occasionally informative primer.

Similarly, anyone who found little in the panels to alleviate a severe case of writer’s block could take a hint from the documentary Con Artist: simply hire someone else to write the script for you, then sign your name to it. That’s what Mark Kostabi would do. A fixture of the 1980s downtown New York scene, Kostabi rode that decade’s art boom to fame and fortune by overseeing a sort of sweatshop for self-knockoffs, employing minimum-wage painters to ape his style on works to which he simply applied his signature before selling them for big bucks. When the boom went bust, Kostabi became his own self-caricature, hosting a cable access TV game show, selling off his stock for pennies on the dollar, and generally alienating all his peers. In Kostabi’s mind, he’s simply more honest than most (pointing out that great artists dating back to the Renaissance have employed assistants to carry out their grunt work), but the figure that emerges in director Michael Sladek’s film is more buffoon than misunderstood genius.

And if there’s one thing you can easily get surfeited on at film festivals like these, it’s people who believe they’re misunderstood geniuses—particularly the über-sensitive, philosophically muddled navel-gazers mucking about in the still-thriving “mumblecore” movement. Although it has much in common with that already-tiresome genre—a microscopic budget, studiedly aloof characters, and actor Alex Karpovsky (Beeswax) among them—Bob Byington’s Austin-set comedy Harmony And Me thankfully plays more like a spiritual descendent of Richard Linklater’s Slacker. Granted, it has a bit more narrative thrust, although that’s not saying much: Indie musician/office drone Harmony (Bishop Allen frontman Justin Rice) has just been dumped by his girlfriend, a sob story he’s all too willing to share with anyone who crosses his path. His road to recovery includes piano lessons (courtesy of local joker Jerm Pollet), indifferent sex with a horny neighbor, and finally, a life-threatening coma. The individual scenes are little more than short blackout skits, but Byington’s deadpan, absurdist brand of humor makes it all work, despite a near-total absence of emotional involvement.

A wicked sense of humor definitely might have helped save The Donner Party, which—even given the tendency for cannibal movies to be starved for plot—makes Fantastic Fest's mediocre Van Diemen's Land look downright high-concept. (We wrote that "starved for plot" pun on an ordering slip at the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek after the screen saver accidentally kicked in during the screening—just one of many technical difficulties plaguing the festival this week.) Crispin Glover did a fine job of creeping us the fuck out with his pageboy haircut, scraggly beard, and glowing eagerness to eat all of his companions up, but unfortunately the movie can't subsist on a diet of Glover’s particular breed of crazy forever—which is about how long the 90-minute film seems to last. Without clichéd filmmaking tricks like having a "protagonist" or “sympathetic characters” to fall back on, The Donner Party instead opts for endless shots of pretty, wintry forests, and actors eating undercooked chicken and pretending that it's flesh.

An altogether different form of vérité horror, alien abduction thriller The Fourth Kind purports to be about actual events that occurred in Nome, Alaska, backed up by the integration of “genuine” video and audio footage into its reenactments. As star Milla Jovovich announces directly to the audience in the film’s awkward introduction, what you choose to believe is your decision to make—and unfortunately, the studio’s viral marketing strategy (including creating fake news and medical sites to support its claims) has already been thoroughly debunked, which means anyone with the slightest bit of Internet savvy is already primed to resent The Fourth Kind. But even forgiving it its trespasses and taking it as pure entertainment, The Fourth Kind falls prey to the same frustrations as every other UFOs: Bullshit Or Not? documentary, relying solely on reenactments that are just slightly higher caliber than your average episode of Unsolved Mysteries and grainy, distorted home videos. As always, it comes down to not so much what you “choose to believe” as what you want to believe. That said, the “archival” scenes of supposed abductees reliving their experiences are genuinely unnerving; even those who “make the decision” to believe they’re totally fake will definitely never forget them.

There’s no question that the retrospective rockumentary Cowtown Ballroom...Sweet Jesus is based entirely in fact—although at one point an interview subject does invoke the old maxim about the psychedelic era: If you can remember it, you weren’t really there. Director Joe Heyen must not have heard that one, as he’s attempted to document the early ’70s heyday of the Kansas City rock venue based almost entirely on the recollections of aging hippies who mostly fondly recall the billowing clouds of marijuana smoke that once rose to its rafters. There’s no doubt that the venue’s former denizens had a great deal of fun in their day, and Heyen has done what he can to help us visualize the era through old photographs and handbills. Unfortunately, the paucity of concert footage leaves a gaping hole that isn’t easily plugged by interviews with white-bearded men reminiscing about that night Frank Zappa came to town.

Though it’s not quite a documentary, there’s a depressing verisimilitude to The Ugly American that makes it as poignantly condemning of our modern foreign policy as it was cynically prescient when it came out in 1963. As legendary screenwriter Stewart Stern pointed out in his (long and rambling—but hey, the guy is old, so give him a break) introduction, they didn’t quite realize how accurate the novel was that formed its basis until they started filming on location. There they discovered firsthand that the “battle for the hearts and minds” of the Southeast Asian people was really just a battle for a safe space that Americans could then exploit in the war against communism. And while drawing parallels between the events of the film and our general populace’s continued ignorance about the exploitation of Middle Eastern and Latin American countries was on the minds of many in the audience, Stern mostly answered any direct questions with rambling tangents about his experiences overseas, both while traveling with his friend (and the film’s star) Marlon Brando and while fighting in the Battle Of The Bulge. In that sense, it was a frustrating Q&A—none more so than for actor Tom Skerritt, who had little reason to be acting as moderator—but who can complain when said tangents include anecdotes about mile-long brain-eating worms and witch doctors cursing your poo?

Such prurient interests also dominated the landmark Q&A that followed the special retrospective screening of Apollo 13 with director Ron Howard, screenwriters Bill Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert, actor Clint Howard, and members of the original mission crew that included Capt. Jim Lovell himself. While Howard garnered actual applause by demonstrating how he struggled to stay upright during zero-G filming sequences on the infamous “Vomit Comet,” it was his anecdote about—and impression of—Bill Paxton getting barfed on by a camera operator (after which Paxton reportedly exclaimed, “Was that cool or what?”) that got the biggest laughs, and prompted Clint to follow-up by asking his brother if he had barfed himself. (It was the sole contribution from Clint, who at one point was apparently so bored he wandered off stage for about five minutes.) There wasn’t much to report in terms of non-puke-related revelations, of course: As Lovell elucidated again and again, the film was remarkably faithful to his memoir, with only a few insignificant details tweaked for dramatic emphasis. (And the most fascinating revelation of all—that Howard had initially pursued John Travolta to star in Splash—had nothing to do with Apollo 13 at all.) But unlike most of AFF’s slate, the audience wasn’t here to make discoveries; it was there to relive history with the people who actually made it, including a never-before-seen assemblage of archival footage that screened before the film. In a festival where 75 percent of what you see is inherently fleeting, that’s a rare opportunity indeed.