My SXSW Movies, Part 5

Today FFP is picking the movies. But I was the culprit yesterday. One out of two isn't bad.

Yesterday we headed downtown in a windy drizzle. The first parking lot we tried was full. We barely got a place in the next one. We got in for $6, however, and got to stay in the spot a lot of hours.

We headed to the Paramount to wait for our documentary. This movie was pretty (amazing storm footage and scenery and chromed up trucks) and ugly (let's face it...truck stops), sensitive and insightful. Big Rig is a documentary about truckers and the land they are crisscrossing bringing us goods from everywhere. I think I saw Doug Pray's other doc (Scratch) and this one really works and introduces you to the world of other citizens of our country. I enjoyed it. It was the kind of movie where when a couple of the participant truckers came up after, someone asked one of them about his health and his son who had been in Iraq.

We decided to eat at the Capitol Brasserie bar. Happy Hour here is a bargain. We had a big plate of calamari, mussels and pommes frites and a carafe of wine (which we ordered a half carafe at a time). The bill was 25.70 before tip. That house white wine was good, too, like the simple wines served in French cafés with a touch of slate and a touch of sweetness.

We headed out to queue up for the next movie. We had decided, after thirteen doc features, to see a narrative film. The Lather Effect comes almost twenty-five years after The Big Chill. It attempts to do for the graduates of the mid-eighties what Chill did for graduates of the mid-sixties. Now, my first disclaimer is that naturally since Chill was my generation I was more predisposed to it. I thought all the Lather music completely forgettable. A sound track of would go a long way toward being a sound track that would take me back to the day. (Absent the Janis and Beatles.) I also thought the premise for people showing up was better in Chill (someone died) than Lather (someone's parents were selling their house?). A lot of Lather didn't ring true. I wasn't convinced that one gal returned to meet up with someone you don't see. (They had a character you don't see. There is a party and the whole movie is after the party and one of the guys went to jail? Is this a nod to the dead body of Kevin Costner?) I couldn't be convinced that someone had that much furniture left in a house they were selling the next day either. Oh. Well. It's just a different generation. And we were less than usually predisposed to a film. It started a full half hour late. While we waited we were standing in front of the (closed) State theater. FFP stepped out of line and went back a bit to talk to someone he knew. There was a noise like a shot and the glass in the door behind me shattered. Apparently something was propelled from the street by a car or truck tire and broke the window. A guy standing next to me said he saw something go right by my head. FFP said he always is a few steps away from disaster. (He has August 1, 1966 syndrome.) Anyway, after it was already quite late, Matt Dentler yammered about how he was being short and the director Sarah Kelly came out and yammered on before the movie. I'm sure she did after also. This is one of those 'special screenings.' They always seem to get shown because someone knows someone. (Or because someone is in it like Connie Britton who stars in the series Friday Night Lights which films here in Austin. I love that show, by the way, and her role in it. She didn't move me in this movie.)

Conclusion: I'm twenty years too old for The Lather Effect. Big Rig is about people who could easily be related to me. It's about a world I'm only baby steps away from and yet I'm miles from there. After we saw Big Rig and were sitting in Cap Brasserie drinking wine, I told FFP about the one and only time I rode in a large truck. Then I told him that it was the same day I started drinking coffee and liking it. I continued to tell him about the first time I liked beer, straight tequila and beef tartare. He said he'd never heard any of these stories. That is a miracle, I think. I thought we knew all of each other's stories.

Well, it's time to head off to the seventh day of film feast, er fest. Wish FFP luck on his picks.