I’ve missed doing a post yesterday and struggled to catch up after my previous ‘Fainting at the Paramount‘ post so I thought I’d combine the last couple of days into one. Quite frankly the last 2 days have been as brilliant and surreal as all the rest!
Something I forgot to mention previously were the Mashable Games that I attended with PR firm, Honkfish where I was an honorary member of their team doing my best to bring glory to their Florida based company. Fortunately for me (and my team-mate Nick), I was tasked the with the Shuffle-board round (I guess this is a bit like curling except on a wooden table with sand to give the ‘puck’?! traction) rather than the Twister round which Dana & Elena took on board. I managed to get the maximum
four points for the team on my very first throw which out our team into good stead for the win on the shuffleboard table. Alas Twister didn’t go so well but we blame that on some rather dodgy referring decisions! I’m sure that’s what they all say!
Up until this point, most of what I’ve been to are the interactive panels with talks on how to make a better website but one of the panels a couple of days ago was the Aint It Cool News panel where Harry Knowles reunited his original team of writers to talk about the daddy of all movie blogging websites. This year is their 15th Anniversary and they talked us through some of the stories from way back when as well as giving us a little insight into how the site all came together and it all came from Harry’s accident which left him paralyzed just over 15 years ago. AICN was the tool which would give him access to the outside world and now it’s one of the most influential movie websites if not THE most influential site in the world. After the seminar, I got to meet Harry which was an honour. He’s currently going through surgery to fix his broken back and we wish him all the best in his recovery and look forward to seeing him back on the site in the very near future and walking again.
That night, to celebrate their anniversary, SXSW gave Harry the chance to show a movie of his choice in what became, the AICN secret screening. Now I took a gamble here. Super was screening at another cinema and the secret screening overlapped but the rumour mill was saying that the secret screening would be something like Super 8, Thor or possibly even an unfinished version of Captain America. Harry had also told us earlier at the panel that there would be a special guest coming along to the evening.
Myself, Eddie from Soul Culture and our new good friend Ty headed back off to the Paramount (the scene for the previous days incident!) to find a massive queue stretching around the block. Everyone was speculating as to what it might be and I’m not sure there was a single person in the entire line who got it right. After getting into the cinema, Knowles comes on stage to introduce the movie only to bring out legendary director, Guillermo del Toro. This had potential to be good I thought but I couldn’t work out the link to how any of the three movies were going to link to del Toro. After doing a bit of stirring to get us in the mood, the movie announced to be shown was 1981 classic, Dragon Slayer to the surprise and some delight of many of the audience. I’d never seen it (and probably never will again!) and was a bit confused as to why they’d chosen that movie. Del Toro and Knowles did a Q&A following the movie talking about how Dragonslayer’s dragon animations were ground-breaking and how the director of the movie, Matthew Robbins had used such groundbreaking techniques to achieve what he did in the movie. This was all well and good but inside I was just thinking, I wish I’d seen Super! Oh well, you live and learn. Had it been one of those three movies mentioned above, I’d have been gutted to have missed them. You can check out Harry introduce Guillermo below as I captured the moment on video. Everyone goes nuts!!
VIDEO COMING SOON!
The convention centre exhibits stand is now in full swing here at SXSW and I think my favourite stand has to be the Guardian where they are not only serving tea and scones (cos we eat them so much over there!), but also giving away these fantastic newspapers with articles like ‘How to Be British’ in them! The language barrier here in the states is so comical but I love it. It feels like a quarter of the people here are English anyway as I keep hearing English accents wherever I go. I think I’ve spent the last 3 days mocking and being mocked for the words we use for various things especially with Dana and Elena so I made sure to get them a copy of the ‘How to Be British’ before they headed back to Florida today!
The HP trailer park (where I’m staying) feels like it’s getting more and more popular and more and more chilled everyday. If you’re at SXSW and have some time to kill between 6 & 8, you should head over to the HP Mobile Park for some free drinks and good company (not just mine I promise!). This place has become a real Oasis of somewhere that you can just come and relax in the Texan sun and I personally have made loads of new and great friends here so you should all come on down! This evening I think the Gregory Brothers who you may know from YouTube are doing a set.
I think that brings us pretty much up to yesterday where I went along to quite a few seminars but also to the best one I’ve heard so far by miles. This seminar (which was the Keynote for the day) was given by Blake Mycoskie who is the fonder of an organisation called TOMS. I’d never heard of it before but the basic idea is that for every shoe that is sold by TOMS, they will give away a free pair of shoes to someone that needs one somewhere in the world. One for One.
The idea is a simple one but man, Blake can talk well. The man was an inspiration! He talked through how the organisation started and they got to where they were now right up until the one millionth pair of shoes that was given away in September 2010. He spoke to passionately and brilliantly that I think every single person who left Ball Room D and every other Ball Room where his talk was live streamed came out buzzing thinking to themselves that there is no reason that their own business couldn’t do something to help less fortunate people across the planet. His idea was so simple but is changing lives around the world right now. I’ve been thinking for a long time now about how HeyUGuys as a platform could be used to help other people in a real practical way and as yet I haven’t come up with an answer but if there’s any mechanism that you can think of that we could use to make some money through the site in some film-related way, I’d love to hear your ideas and you can email me at dave@heyuguys.co.uk or use the comments form below.
After the seminar, I headed off to a car park (or parking lot if I’m speaking American) to go and see Michael Cera’s band play a gig. He’s the bass player in a band called Mister Heavely and they’ve been playing quite a few different gigs over the past week.
So, that’s the end of the round up form the last couple of days. The interactive section of SXSW finished yesterday which means that lots of people will be flying back to their various locations across the globe to their every day jobs including my team-mates from Honkfish. Guys, you’re all legends and hopefully we can do more of the same next year! Stay in touch (I still think ‘The President’ doesn’t exist by the way!!).
This leads us nicely up to last night and last night was all about Hobo with a Shotgun. I was walking down sixth street with some friends and still had two hours to kill before attending the screening but noticed that there was already a line for the movie. This was literally two hours before it was due to show. The cinema only has a 175 capacity and I didn’t want to be missing it so I had to just get in line like everyone else to guarantee a seat and man it was worth it!
Hobo with a Shotgun came from a trailer competition which was conceived by Robert Rodriguez (Troublemaker Studios) and SXSW. Jason Eisener was the man who came up with Hobo and made it happen and in this vein, did such a great job that Alliance asked him to turn it into a feature film. Cut to four (i think!) years later and the movie is ready, it stars Rutger Hauer and is playing right here at SXSW!
It was so great to see the success that Jason has had with his movie. I loved how humble he was and how proud he was of what he had created and the places that he had taken his movie. It had been a roller-coaster I’m sure but what he has produced was insanely awesome and I’m sure that’s the sort of review he’d want to have or it. I likened his passion to my own for HeyUGuys. When I had the idea to start the site, I had no idea that a company like HP would end up flying me to an event like SXSW. I just started it because I love movies and wanted to discuss them with other movies lovers around the world. I am in such a privileged position and I never want to forget that. Seeing Jason on stage with something he has worked so hard on was a special treat and I was so pleased to be there to see it.
I’ve placed the intro video and Q&A below which was great too. Jason was brought onto the stage in a bin, the only problem was he had been wrapped in black sacks and the reel that that showed before his intro went on for about 10 minutes, somewhat longer than he was expecting as you’ll see!!
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qizxnhu0eZ4′]
I think that pretty much concludes what I wanted to say in this little round up. Not sure what I’ll be up to today but I know Mel Gibson’s The Beaver is the midnight screening tonight and I don’t want to be missing that one. I have a feeling it’s going to be interesting! I just hope I can stay awake for it with the three hours sleep I managed to get last night after staying up late in our Oasis that is the HP trailer park! Love it!!
Till next time!!
