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Film

Loves Her Gun

Holy crap, we’re making a movie!
I can’t believe it’s actually happening.
One day Geoff and I were writing a treatment, next thing I know we’re starting production.
Today we’re on day 5 of production. Some of us have gotten very little sleep.
From the support of friends and fans, we were able to reach our US Artists goal. We have a terrific cast and crew on board whose talents have been showcased in Cannes, Sundance, and SXSW. Trieste Kelly Dunn (Cold Weather, Canterbury’s Law) is playing our flawed heroine and Francisco Barreiro (We Are What We Are) as our loveable knight in hipster armor.

So besides being the co-writer and general extra hand on set, I’m also handling all the social media and PR for the film. If you have a moment, please check out our Tumblr page which we will update with photos, videos, and fun stories about independent filmmaking. Same with our Facebook page. I also finally set up an Instagram page which I’m having so much fun with!

I will update more later. (more…)

September 6, 2011 by
Austin, Film

Slacker 2011

Austin, Texas is a film city. It is not always easy to find film work in, but it’s an excellent place to write your script or make your movie (see why here).

Moviemaker Magazine named Austin, Texas the #5 place to Live, Work, and Make Movies In.
We host arguably the #3 film festival in the U.S. (SXSW) and a respectable up-and-coming festival that features big Hollywood movies and players (Austin Film Festival). We have studio directors who got their start in Austin and continue to shoot their productions in here (Richard Linklater, Mike Judge, and Robert Rodriguez) and we have a plethora of indie filmmakers whose work has been seen at every festival on the planet, literally.

So needless to say, some pretty interesting and creative stuff comes out of Austin.

A perfect example of this is the “reimagining” of Richard Linklater’s perennial indie classic Slacker, which will be premiering tonight at the historic Paramount Theater on Congress Avenue. If you went to film school, you (more…)

August 31, 2011 by
Film, Pop Culture

The Cultural Significance of Rick Moranis

Lately the Moranis has been on my mind and in lieu of no new post today, I wanted to revisit an ‘ode to Rick’ that I wrote awhile back. Enjoy and share your love for Rick Moranis in the comments below!

A childhood fascination of mine that has transcended into adulthood is my love of nerds. Short nerds, tall nerds, young nerds, old nerds, aesthetically questionable nerds, sexually subordinate nerds- it doesn’t matter. The more socially awkward the better.

Where did this love come from? I’m not sure. Believe me, if I knew, I wouldn’t have spent all that money seeing a psychotherapist on Saturdays and then supplementing my emotional purging with a trip to Golden Corral after every visit.

Maybe it was from the hours of watching “Back to the Future”. Somewhere between the ages of four and six I discovered that Doc Brown could get my latent sexuality flux capacitor up to 1.21 gigawatts. It wasn’t long after that that I ached to get a glimpse of Egon Spengler’s proton pack. By the time (more…)

August 23, 2011 by
Film, Pop Culture

Where My Favorite 80’s Characters Are Nowadays

The other day I came across a post on the ever-so-clever Flavorwire imagining what our favorite 80’s teen characters are doing these days. I wish I thought of the post first, but I didn’t, so the best I can do is copy it pay homage to it.

When I was a little girl, I sat alone thinking by myself a lot because a.) I was an only child and b.) I lived on a street filled with blue-haired folk. Because of this, I fantasized a lot about my favorite movie characters. Specifically Dennis Quaid’s character in InnerSpace (not sure why considering he was about 1 millimeter tall) and Indiana Jones. Oh, and Doc Brown. I used to imagine what sort of future we’d all have together as one big happy polyamorous family. But those days are long gone. We know what happened to Indiana Jones. He got old and made a SHITTY MOVIE ABOUT ALIENS AND CRYSTALS.

This doesn’t mean I haven’t been left curious about some of my favorite 80’s characters from time to time (and neither has Hollywood since they’re probably (more…)

August 9, 2011 by
Film, Hipstercrite Life

Coming of Age in Hollywood

my first year in Hollywood

On my blog, I’ve only mentioned a few times that in a previous life I was a personal assistant in Hollywood.
And as I also stated in that post, I don’t talk about that time often because of the a.) WMD-sized confidentiality agreements that loom over my head and b.) because I value a person’s right to privacy. I worked for people who trusted me and I will never break that trust.

I often forget that I was a personal assistant in Hollywood. Occasionally people will ask me my story- where I came from before Austin- and I’m reminded that the Hollywood part of my life was a very big part for 5 years. 5 years in 28 years of a life is, well, I’m terrible at math, let’s see here, a little over a fifth of my life? One day it will be an eighth, then a sixteenth, and then I’ll be dead.

I’m sad that I’m slowly forgetting this important time in my life. Or rather, forgetting the emotions I felt at the time. Like the day that I was asked to work for (more…)

August 3, 2011 by
Film, Hipstercrite Life, Pop Culture

How to Make a Movie

My boyfriend is a writer/director. He’s been making films for over ten years and his first feature, Mars, debuted at SXSW in 2010. Mars is a love story that takes place in space and stars Mark Duplass, Kinky Friedman, Howe Gelb, James Kolchalka, and Don Hertzfeldt. Geoff shot the entire movie live action, then animated the living shit over the entire movie with a program he created. If that is not badass, then I don’t know what is! The film has traveled all over the world in the festival circuit. Geoff is also currently one of the filmmakers remaking Richard Linklater’s indie classic Slacker and was selected as one of Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

I am not a director. I’d like to think of myself a writer though? Last year, I made a movie in my head that starred David Byrne, Danny Elfman, Bryan Ferry, Robert Palmer, and Peter Gabriel. I one time remade the intro to Twilight Zone by putting on a suit and burning a cork to draw thick Jewish eyebrows on my face in order to (more…)

July 27, 2011 by
Film, Pop Culture

Interesting Facts About Your Favorite B-List Celebrities

When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time reading about celebrities. But not the ones plastered in the newsstand glossies. I liked the lesser known guys and gals, the supporting players, the B or C-listers. They were usually more interesting-looking or often stole the show from the main players. I wanted to know their back story. So when we first got the Internet, I spent hours reading IMDB. Then one day Wikipedia came along. I was in heaven! My Mom often said that if I spent as much time reading my school books as I did about Martin Short, I would have been valedictorian of my class. I guess I can pin all of my downfalls in life to Martin Short.

Even as a grown up, I still love reading about the underdogs. Here are some neat facts I’ve learned through the years about my favorite character actors. Some of these facts you may already know from reading past posts about my B-list movie star obsessions or maybe you’re just a smarty pants. Either way, I stay up on your favorite B-movie (more…)

July 19, 2011 by
Film, Hipstercrite Life

The Los Angeles You Will Come to Know

It’s easy to love Los Angeles. It’s sunny and warm and exciting and big.

What is hard, is loving the Hollywood you experienced. It’s so much more enjoyable to revel in the Hollywood from movies, books, and media. The Hollywood you thought you were going into when you first decided to move to Los Angeles. The industry you thought you were going to conquer, or at the very least, never give up on.

Having worked in the film business off and on in Austin and my boyfriend being a local director and film professor, I meet a steady stream of people who are en route to Los Angeles. When you’ve experienced LA for yourself, and you’re talking to a young person who has limited concept of what the film industry in LA is actually like, it’s hard not to give your two cents. It’s hard not to sound jaded, regardless if your time there was good or bad. I can separate the joyous moments from the terrible that I experienced in LA and I can sum up that ultimately my time there was worthwhile. That still (more…)

July 11, 2011 by
Austin, Film, Music, Pop Culture

The Characters of SXSW

Austin-based company Software Advice sent me an AWESOME sketch breakdown they did of the different archetypes one would see at SXSW. They’re pretty spot-on. Here is a little snippet below, but you can check out the rest of their hilarious drawings here, or follow them on Twitter here, or ‘like’ their Facebook fan page here.

(Interactive) Aspiring Entrepreneur

“We’re Twitter meets Zynga with an API that transforms the social graph.”

He’s an alpha male in a beta body, rockin’ the hoodie and flip flops – just like Zuck. SXSW Interactive attracts a swarm of these php-smokin’, eager beavers. You’ll find him at “Business Model 101: How To Actually Make Money?,” but he wishes he was at the Android Developer Meetup. You’ll often find the PR Chick and the Venture Capitalist in hot pursuit – a stunning reversal of the social order that was in place during college, last year. At least one of these aspiring entrepreneurs will join the digital elite within a year. And OMG, you totally ordered (more…)

March 18, 2011 by
Austin, Film, Music

The Best Part of SXSW Is…

My friend from college, Joe Nicolosi, is a super talented filmmaker. Everyone in Austin knows it, but now it looks like the world does too! Joe is the filmmaker behind the SXSW “film bumpers” you see before a screening. Truth be told, Joe’s various bumpers are better than many of the movies this year. This guy has real talent and you should check out the video below. Within two days, his short video, Mario, went from 300 Youtube hits to over 300,000 and climbing! I have a feeling you’ll be seeing more of this guy soon…

March 17, 2011 by