If you need any X-mas gift ideas for me this year, here’s one: a custom-made shirt that says, “I went to SXSW in 2023, and all I got was a case of covid.” After successfully avoiding that spikey little bastard for three full years, it finally got me. Unfortunately, that means it got my wife, too, since I didn’t know I was sick until after I returned home. She says she’s not mad at me. I believe her, because, frankly, she’s a better person than I am.
It was probably the one music show I attended at South By that got me sick. It was a small venue, fairly tightly packed, and I didn’t wear a mask at all for it. (My only defense is, after a trip to Ebert Interruptus, Fantastic Fest, and Las Vegas last year, I was clearly under the mistaken assumption that I was invincible.) When Melody, my friend and couch-provider-for-the-week, told me that Tangerine Dream was playing after my last screening for the day, I was all in. I audibly gasped when she told me about the show.
Tangerine Dream in concert. (photo by the author)
The band that produced the soundtracks for, among others, Sorcerer, Thief, and, most importantly, Legend was playing South By!?! I was not going to miss it. Melody’s friend and coworker was also there, his main attraction being TD’s soundtrack work for The Keep. As the three of us waited for the synth band to take the stage, we stood around, talking about Michael Mann movies. A little bit of heaven on Earth.
Turns out, the original founding member of Tangerine Dream died in 2015, and it wasn’t until 2005 that the now-longest serving member of the band joined the group. It was 2011 and 2020 when the other two members of the now-trio were officially added. The music was great, though I don’t know if it was worth contracting a communicable disease.
What was worth it was the sense of excitement in the air for some of the titles playing at the film portion of the fest. There was a buzz in the air for my screening of Tetris – a movie that’s a hell of a good time and comes with guilt-free Argo vibes. (The ACTUAL INVENTOR of Tetris participated in the Q&A after the screening. I was star-struck. I’m sure I failed at least one junior high test because of that game.)
The inventor of Tetris (center). (photo by the author)
One screening provided what is, in my mind, one of the most quintessential film festival experiences I’ve ever had. After my late-afternoon screening of Talk to Me – an absolutely bonkers Australian horror movie – and a quick bite of Austin BBQ with a friend from high school – Hi, Susan! – I was running a little late for my screening of Shiva Baby director Emma Seligman’s new, brutally hilarious picture Bottoms.
Since parking wasn’t free at the venue screening Bottoms – Ten bucks to park for a two-hour-long movie? GTFO. Look, I have an irrational hatred of paying for parking. I think it’s because I grew up in rural East Texas, where all the parking is free, the way the Magic Invisible Sky Wizard intended – after dinner, I posted back up at Alamo South Lamar (which has a free parking garage, thank you very much) in order to take the SXSW shuttle the ten-or-so blocks to see Bottoms.
I waited for the shuttle. And waited. And waited. At about T-25 minutes until the show started, my fellow festival-goers who were also waiting for the shuttle with me started getting antsy. We started talking to each other about how late it was getting. “Are we all here to see Bottoms,” I asked. All but three of the 15 or 20 of us waiting on the sidewalk corner answered in the affirmative. Two ladies, probably in their mid-to-late 40s, chit-chatted about their concerns. Like me, they didn’t have Platinum badges, so they couldn’t get preferred seating.
(Throughout the fest, the Platinum badge holders had to stand in the same lines that I did, with no seeming preferential treatment. One couple, who I met earlier in the (day? week? It’s all a bit of a blur), told me they had both sprung for the additional $400 fee for Platinum access – please note, they were behind me in line, not in front of me – but had failed to get into a single screening of their choice in the five days they had been at the festival. The woman in this couple told me she had absolutely no issue getting into any of the women’s health panel discussions, but that was because they were so poorly attended that she wouldn’t have needed a badge to get into those anyway. Subsequently, all three of us were told that we would not have a seat for the screening we were trying to get into. They. Were. Pissed.)
Back in line for the shuttle, the two ladies let out a cry. The real-time shuttle tracker website was finally working. The little squares representing where in the loop the shuttles were currently located had finally popped back up after a mysterious disappearance. I had also noticed the website issue, so I commented.
“Great! It’s finally working?”
They excitedly answered in the affirmative and kindly offered more confirmation by flashing a cell phone screen in my direction, a blinding rectangle of light in the starry darkness. It was now T-20 minutes until the screening was due to start. “Now, we just have to hope we aren’t stuck in the front row,” one of the women said to me. “I’ve got a bit of luck on that front,” I said. I was meeting Melody for this one, and she had sprung for the SXXpress pass for this screening, which bumps you up to getting into the auditorium immediately after filmmakers and their guests. She said she’d hold a seat for me for as long as it was feasible. My humblebrag elicited congratulations from my shuttle mates. (I had my DNA checked. Turns out, I’m 100% that asshole.)
On the shuttle, I was lucky enough to snag a seat right next to the door. Therefore, I would be the first off the shuttle, and one of the first from my shuttle cohort to get into line for a queue card. (It pays to be strategic in these situations.) While I wait, I do a little quick math. T-18 minutes before the show starts. Five minutes for the shuttle to drive over to the theater. That leaves thirteen minutes for figuring out the line sitch and getting into the theater – I’ve discovered that each theater has its own quirks and idiosyncrasies when it comes to line formation and management. I’ve only been to the Bottoms theater once before, for a much lower-stakes screening.
As the shuttle rounds the corner for the theater parking lot, I see it. A. MASSIVE. LINE. This thing has at least 200 people in it, the line snaking back and forth in neat little compressed rows, like it was squirted out of a frosting piping bag in layers on top of a cake.
The theater has 420 seats, so I have a shot.
Maybe.
The way ticketing for each screening works is: You go to a table where volunteers scan the QR code on your badge. (SXSW, please start paying these people. It is ridiculous that a muti-million-dollar event like this uses free labor.) If the system confirms your badge is valid, you get a color-coded queue card, based on the kind of badge you have. White for filmmakers and guests of filmmakers. Blue for SXXpress ticket holders. Green for Platinum and Film & TV Primary badge holders (what I have). Red for, well, anybody else who turns up and is trying to get in. Red is on the bubble. Red is, I might not be getting into this thing. (Although, I’m happy to report that I got into the Tetris screening with a red card. And the seat I ended up in was actually pretty great.)
(photo by the author)
This massive, snaking line, located under a large tent-like structure, is bedlam. I can’t make heads or tails of where the actual end of the line is. As I’m trying to figure this out, the line splits up into two lines at the direction of volunteers, in order to accommodate extra snaking. After a few precious seconds of walking around blindly, I make my way to what appears to be the tail end. Immediately, people fall in behind me. “I hope you’re not following a lemming, here,” I think to myself. An extra switchback-and-a-half – each line segment is about thirty feet long – appears out of nowhere by the time I see the volunteer, my saving grace for getting into this movie, slowly making his way down the segment of line I’m in, scanning badges with his handheld device and handing out queue cards.
“Welcome back, my friends
to the show that never ends.
We're so glad you could attend!
Come inside! Come inside!”
(photo by the author. words by Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
This kid looks to be maybe – maybe! – 17 years old. He’s about 5’-7’’, with large glasses and a bewildered smile plastered on his face. I get my card. My number is 175. I should be golden. A woman in the next segment of line behind me is talking to a man who seems to be a complete stranger to her. They’re chatting about what they’ve seen at the fest so far. The man mentions wanting to see the new doc about the late, simultaneously adored and reviled painter Thomas Kinkade, Art for Everybody. I lean over to tell him I caught it a few days ago, and that it’s worth his time.
As I’m standing in line, people-watching (one of my favorite hobbies) and eavesdropping, I hear people talking about how excited they are to see Bottoms. It’s one of the most anticipated movies playing South By this year, and this is the second of two screenings. People have been hearing nothing but raves about it in the wake of the first screening. Director Seligman is scheduled to be in attendance.
My mind wanders to what it must have been like to stand in the queue at festivals for great films of the past. (Look, I use the term “queue” instead of “line” because the British way of saying it is just cooler. Period. Although, if it weren’t for the American idiom of “standing in line,” one of my favorite Rodney Dangerfield one-liners wouldn’t make sense: “You kiddin’? My kid’s school is so tough, the teacher asked the class to form a double line… They all got high!”)
The line(s) for the Bottoms screening. (photo by the author)
Could you imagine being at a film festival in 1976 that was screening Taxi Driver? You hear chatter around you, as you’re waiting to see it. “I’ve heard this thing is intense.” “Yeah, an absolute mind-fuck is what I heard.” (Taxi Driver, because the violence was so extreme for the time period, was booed by half the audience at Cannes, while the other half stood and cheered.)
I wish I could have been in the first audience to see Daughters of the Dust, the 1991 film by Julie Dash, which, according to Wikipedia, marked the “first feature film directed by an African-American woman distributed theatrically in the United States.” The film is an experimental meditation on the legacy of slavery on three generations of Black women in the South. It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and won the Excellence in Cinematography Award when it screened at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival. It must have been exhilarating to be in the audience for that screening.
By now, the ticket volunteer has made his way back down the next segment of people, and he is being harangued by a guy trying to get a ticket for his friend. The guy explains that he and his group of festival goers had left to grab some dinner. His friend took his badge off during the meal, but forgot to put it back on. He didn’t realize he didn’t have it until they arrived at the theater. This guy towers over the meek volunteer. He’s at least 6-1, maybe 6-2, looking like Treebeard the Ent by comparison. He only needs a ticket for his friend, but, of course, there’s no code to scan to account for the seat that the queue card would represent. Treebeard assures the volunteer that Forgetful Friend is franticly making his way back to the restaurant to retrieve his badge, but it’ll take about 20 minutes. Is there ANYTHING that the volunteer can do to make sure Forgetful Friend gets into the screening?
The kid looks at his device, as if that might offer a solution that won’t disappoint Treebeard. Finally, after Treebeard finishes making his case, Volunteer Kid looks up at him and offers, weakly, “I’m sorry, without a badge to scan…” That ellipsis does all the heavy lifting.
He might as well have looked Treebeard square in the eye and let Ted Striker be his guide by saying, “No dice, Chicago!” This might be the most power this kid will ever wield in his entire life. In this moment, he is one with the Gods. He is Thor, riding a chariot pulled by twin screaming goats as he drops the hammer.
“Well, ok, then…,” Treebeard delivers impotently as he turns on his heel to walk away. Right as he begins his first step, he lets out a sound that (not-so-subtlety) telegraphs his displeasure. He lets loose a passive aggressive “WHOO!”. It’s like the sound you might make when your favorite baseball player belts the game-winning run over the fence during game seven of the World Series, but sotto voce. (Treebeard is nothing if not a model of self-restraint.)
With that little bit of soap opera over and done with, I check my phone. Melody has made it into the theater with her SXXpress ticket, and is saving the seat next to her for me, center section, 6th row. But she’s getting nervous:
I don’t get a chance to respond at that moment, because the line is moving, albeit in a confusing fashion. As soon as the gatekeeper volunteers begin letting people into the theater, the first few lines start to all collapse as people make a mad dash for the door. One lady near me steps away. She says she was nearly trampled in a stampede at some other music festival earlier in the year, and she says she won’t be put in that position again, her lingering PTSD won’t allow her to stay in “line” much longer.
My cohort makes it close enough to the entrance to hear that the volunteers are calling people by ranges of queue card numbers (ex.: “Numbers 50-70 may now enter! 50-70!”). I wait my turn, and eventually I make my way into the auditorium. Melody is able to fend off the barbarian hordes long enough for me to take the seat she’s been holding.
All is right with the world.
I’m hoping to write a proper review for Bottoms when it gets a theatrical release, according to Seligman, later this summer. I’ll sign off here by offering the teaser that Seligman’s movie might be an all-time teen sex-comedy great. And it's a satire of Fight Club. And it’s unapologetically queer. It's like Book Smart on steroids and giddily violent. It was totally worth every bit of the agita of getting into the screening.
Director Emma Seligman (left). (photo by the author)
I saw a bunch of other stuff at SXSW that I really want to talk about. But I’ve been going on for quite some time now. Rae has ordered breakfast, and it should be delivered (we’re back to living that #contactlesslyfe again until we both test negative) in about 20 minutes. If we ever hang out, buy me a slice of pizza, and I’ll tell you all about ‘em.