Standing near the entrance of the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse, waiting to get into my next screening, I noticed something odd. On the street right in front of the theater, where a lone curb forms to separate cars from pedestrians and street from sidewalk, a large, black SUV swiftly pulled up and a flurry of activity followed. The SUV stopped about thirty feet from where I was standing; there was a direct line from the vehicle to the theater doors.
As the back door of the SUV swiftly opened, a phalanx of security guards surrounded the car and then the person getting out of it. It was Paul Rudd, who was starring, alongside I Think You Should Leave creator Tim Robinson, in Friendship, a film that premiered at TIFF in late 2024 and was screening at SX. The team of security guards – probably eight or ten in total – surrounded Rudd on all sides, like they were Secret Service protecting President Rudd, who was making his way to Air Force One during an attack on the White House. They whisked Rudd past the crowd – many of whom were unaware of what was happening – in the space of about ten seconds.
I relate this story not to put myself into proximity to a celebrity, like some pathetic star-fucker, but because of what happened next. After the excitement of Rudd’s arrival, two or three minutes later, Tim Robinson then comes walking up to the theater. No security, no mobbing fans, only a few friends. One of those friends turned around during the walk to take a picture of Robinson. They both laughed, like they were making a joke of how little fanfare there was for one star arriving compared to the other. “I guess that’s what being in the MCU gets you,” was all I could think before going into the screening for which I had been waiting.
I tried a few times to get into a screening for Friendship. The line was too long by the time I got to the theater for that Alamo screening attended by Rudd and Robinson. I could never quite get any of the other screenings to work with my schedule. I did, however, get to see a total of 22 films during the nine days of the fest. (Twenty-four, if you count the two non-SXSW related titles I watched while in Austin.)
Of the films I haven’t properly wrestled with (other than logging them on Letterboxd), there were a few duds, a few revelations, and a few that flat out knocked me on my ass. Are We Good?, the documentary about comedian and podcaster Marc Maron’s battle with grief after the sudden death of his long-time partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton, was poignant and touching.
I saw a horror movie shot entirely from the perspective of a dog, called Good Boy. While the story might seem pretty basic, the movie gets creativity points (from this dog lover, anyway) for its unique and novel approach.
The Infinite Husk is a trippy sci-fi tale about an alien consciousness sent to Earth to gather information. If the husk – aka human body – that each of these aliens possess dies, they simply upload into a new husk until the mission is complete. The sardonic take on humans by one of these aliens is particularly satisfying, and the movie overall searches for meaning in the human experience.
The Surrender, a bonkers debut feature from director Julia Max, is a slow burn horror movie that contains deeper meanings and reflections on death, grief, and letting go of a loved one. It also has something else. It allowed me to do one of my favorite things in the universe, namely, seeing really weird shit happen on screen. Shoutout to Kate Burton – from one of my all-time favorites, Big Trouble in Little China, and Meredith Grey’s mother – in one of the lead roles.
One of SXSW 2025’s biggest disappointments for me was more about how the movie was made than in what it was trying to say. And I never would have known it if I hadn’t attended a Q&A with the filmmakers after the screening. Make It Look Real is a documentary about a trailblazer in a relatively new field, intimacy coordinators for film and television shoots. Sex is a part of life, so naturally filmmakers want to explore it to varying degrees of explicitness. While sex might be a part of life, it’s not a part of typical work life. Actors and crew on movie and TV shoots are every bit as deserving of protection in the workplace as the rest of us. These are working people who are only trying to make a living. An intimacy coordinator is an important part of making sure everyone feels safe and respected doing work that puts actors (and sometimes crew) in extremely vulnerable situations.
However, during the Q&A, the director and a producer copped to a secret about their movie. After detailing how hard it would have been to get a production to agree to allow a documentary crew to film an intimacy coordinator working through sex scenes with actors, the filmmakers revealed their solution. They found a director who was working on a project. They then paid that director to write three sex scenes (which he did not originally intend to include in his movie) so that the documentary crew would have something to film. They also already had a subject, so the director hired to write the sex scenes didn’t even have to look for his own intimacy coordinator.
As far as I could tell from what they said, the movie-within-a-movie is still a work in progress, which leaves one with the impression that it wasn’t a real movie at all, and Make It Look Real’s crew staged these scenes expressly for their own benefit. I support the profession of intimacy coordination and making sure that everyone on a film shoot feels safe and protected, but, honestly, I felt like I had been scammed by Make It Look Real. (The unintentionally ironic title didn’t help). Adding to the slimy feeling I got during the Q&A was the realization that, because the filmmakers staged this work with an intimacy coordinator with whom they had already teamed up, their movie essentially becomes a 78-minute infomercial for this one specific intimacy coordinator and her skills.
Two other documentaries – both with admittedly devastating subject matter – left me much more impressed. The Secret of Me explores a shocking secret that the parents and doctors of a child kept from that child, and the earlier, even more shocking experiment that gave them the excuse to inflict lifelong psychological and emotional scars on someone they ostensibly wanted to help.
Night Fight director Khary Saeed Jones (photo by the author)
Night Fight is a documentary in which its director, Khary Saeed Jones, struggles to find meaning and closure after being stalked by a complete stranger after locking eyes with him at a gas station. Jones – a Black man – uses dreamlike and experimental imagery throughout Night Fight, especially in the segments dealing with the director struggling to have “the talk” about race with his young sons.
*****
I also saw some inspiring street art while in Austin for SXSW. Obviously, these were posted by someone with enough resources, time, and passion to spend on it, but I’d like to believe that maybe (just maybe!) people are starting to wake up to the danger that has infected the country. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that SXSW dropped the US Army as a sponsor after an outcry last year due to our government and military aiding a genocide in Gaza. SXSW’s statement succinctly reads, “After careful consideration, we are revising our sponsorship model. As a result, the US Army, and companies who engage in weapons manufacturing, will not be sponsors of SXSW 2025.”
No war but class war; tax the rich; fascists fuck off.
(photos by the author)
My last day at SXSW 2025 was a bit of a bust. It was the last day of the fest, so I surmised that a good portion of the attendees were probably either heading out of town or were already gone. Turns out I was mistaken. Both of the screenings I tried to attend on that last Saturday afternoon were full by the time I got to the head of the line.
One, a movie called Fucktoys, was at the top of my list based on the title alone. As you can also probably guess from the title alone, Fucktoys mostly played the midnight block, when I am typically under the haystack, fast asleep. This is one of those titles that I clocked each and every time it popped up on the schedule, but for one reason or another, I was never able to get to it.
The description for the movie, the debut feature of director Annapurna Sriram, has bumped Fucktoys to the top of my must-see-in-2025 list: “Join AP on a bubblegum grindhouse adventure through sunny and romantic Trashtown, USA. In this raucous odyssey, a wanton minx quests hard across a dreamy landscape of smut, filth and psychics, hustling to lift a curse that has been fucking her shit up.”
Fucktoys director Annapurna Sriram letting us know that she’s sorry we won’t be able to see her movie (photo by the author)
As we were waiting in line, Sriram came by to extend condolences (and a few parting gifts in the form of stickers and posters) to those of us who weren’t likely to make it in to the last screening of her movie. She also brought a few “props” from the movie. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch Fucktoys at DIFF, OCFF, or some other fest I attend this year.
Props from Fucktoys (photos by the author)
I really want to know what this movie is about
I need to give one last shoutout to my friend Melody, my wonderful host for all of the film festivals I’ve attended in Austin. Melody has accepted an exciting new job that will be taking her out of Texas, so my free room for Austin film fests is coming to an end. I never would have been able to afford a hotel for a week at SXSW rates, and Melody, a fellow film freak, graciously allowed me to sleep and write in her spare bedroom for a week at a time over the last three years. Thanks so much, Melody!
To everyone else, as always, thanks for reading. Next stop, the Dallas International Film Festival.
Movies are neat.