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Saturday, March 13, 2010
SXSW live: The Duplass Bros. and ‘Cyrus’
Mark and Jay Duplass fulfill their dream: A premiere of their movie at their beloved Paramount Theatre.
Former Austinites Mark and Jay Duplass returned to town with their first Hollywood movie, the delightful, off-kilter comedy “Cyrus,” starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei and Catherine Keener. The movie, a huge hit Saturday night with a sold-out crowd at the Paramount, is fresh off a strong showing at Sundance.
Before they walked the red carpet, Mark and Jay (“The Puffy Chair,” “Baghead”) came up and said hi and explained that this was their wildest dream accomplished: Screening their movie at the classy Paramount on a Saturday night. This is where the brothers used to watch “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Jaws” and “The Godfather” during the theater’s Summer Classic Movie series when the boys were UT students, they said almost giddily.
After SXSW Film producer Janet Pierson reminded the audience to change their clocks to spring forward (the crowd booed lustily), she introduced the Duplass brothers.
They hit the stage, arms raised. Jay exclaimed, “YES!” The dream, done. “We’ve been waiting 20 years” for this, he said.
They rattled off all the great movies they’ve watched at the Paramount, and Mark dead-panned, “But our movie is better than all of those.”
“Cyrus” is pretty terrific — super sweet, funny, uncomfortable, touchingly human. It doesn’t show again during SXSW, but goes theatrical this summer. More about it HERE.
Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly hit the red carpet at the “Cyrus” premiere.
(Photos: Chris Garcia)
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SXSW live movie review: “Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm”
There’s a fantastic gospel tune made popular by Mahalia Jackson called “I’m Going To Live The Life I Sing About In My Song.” It’s about remaining holy the other six days of the week: “I can’t go to church and shout all day Sunday / Go out and get drunk and raise sand all day Monday.”
Religion aside, Levon Helm, best known as the drummer, mandolin player and sometime-singer for The Band, lived the life he sings about in his songs. Or, in a turn that made everything more complicated, Helm lived the life that Band mate Robbie Robertson wrote about in HIS songs. Or so Helm has always contended. And that made all the difference.
But the excellent “Ain’t In It for My Health,” which made its world premiere Saturday, isn’t about the Band, though there are plenty of images and film of the group.
It’s about Levon Helm from Turkey Scratch, Ark., 69-year old singer, multi-instrumentalist, husband, father, grandfather, stoner, brilliantly distinctive drummer and the only guy in the history of the world who looks cool singing and playing drums at the same time.
As director Jacob Hatley said by way of introduction: “Some heavy stuff happens in the movie, but it’s a party movie.”
Indeed. While Helm is famously bitter about how his authentic Southern roots became the meat of many songs Robertson wrote for the Band, he comes off as an incredibly warm and funny guy, hanging out in his Woodstock, N.Y. home, lighting endless tiny joints, riffing with pals about the good old days without seeming weird about it.
There are tales of catching catfish and hanging out in Canada, all delivered in a cracked version of Helm’s rather extreme Arkansas accent. (Helm nearly lost his once-mighty tenor voice after a bout with throat cancer, and there are several scenes of his voice going out on him and painful checkups at the doctor’s office.)
Some years ago, Helm started doing shows called “Midnight Rambles” in his barn, mostly to make the mortgage on his house. They struck a chord with locals and Band fans and have become a regular thing, ideal for an aging musician and cancer survivor who finds it exhausting to tour.
Hatley started off hired to make a music video for a song off of Helm’s 2008 comeback album “Dirt Farmer” and, as Hatley put it “ended up staying for two years.” There’s wonderful footage of Helm with bandmate Larry Campbell trying to finish a song fragment written by Hank Williams, a scene of Helm singing “In the Pines” (!) to his infant grandson and a fair number of bon mots:
On the Band getting a lifetime achievement award from the Grammy folks: “I would go out for that if they could tell me what good it would do [the late] Rick (Danko) and Richard (Manuel).”
On worrying about money: “Once you get behind financially, you get behind spiritually.” (I’ve never heard this put so well.)
On The Band: “It was over after the second record.” (Dang.)
On chronic illness: “First you try to get well, then you keep from going bankrupt.”
Yet, he still seems like an amazingly fun with, as his wife puts it, “incredible teeth.”
After the movie, Hatley took some questions: “I always just wanted to make a character piece about Levon,” he said, “The original idea was just him at the table talking. It would be something that you put on at 2 a.m. and watch half of or something.”
Hatley said his favorite scenes are those of Helm wathcing Westerns or riding a tractor or talking about catfish. He happend to catch Helm as “Dirt Farmer” became more popular and eventually scored a Grammy on the same day that Helm’s grandson was born.
Is it a stoner movie? Hatley: “Yes. Absolutely.”
Most importantly, perhaps, Hatley would like you to see the film. “If you would like to buy it, that would be great,” Hatley said to one audience member.
It deserves a pick-up. You know how many Band nerds are out there? Man alive, would they flock to this.
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Panel thoughts: Nobody Wants to Watch Your Film
Panelists: Graham Leggat (Executive director of the San Francisco Film Society), Peter Becker (president of the Criterion Collection) and Sarah Pollack (YouTube)
Moderator: Efe Cakarel, TheAuteurs.com
ADD nation is in full swing, I realized when I sat down for the “Nobody Wants to Watch Your Film.” Adjacent to the stage on which the panelists sat was a giant screen that carried a live, streaming Twitter feed of Tweets germane to the panel. Attendees could use the hash tag #watchyourfilm to contribute to the discussion. At first, it seemed extremely rude. Why on earth would you come to a panel and then spend half your time Tweeting while people on the stage attempted to speak to a less than captive audience. Then I saw a few Tweets that provided some good food for thought. It was kind of a cool, a way for everyone to take part in the panel, without interrupting or raising their hands. But it was also extremely distracting, and ultimately unnecessary. I realize the wonder of technology allows us to all comment in real time on everything happening and that old models of almost everything are being transformed. Maybe I will come to feel less offended by it in the future, but for my first panel of this year’s fest, it came as a bit of a wake-up call for where we’re headed with our constant meta-communication.
The panel itself centered around the following question from Cakarel: “What do you think is going to be the prominent business model five years from now?” I was curious as to how much new ground would be covered here. For years now, it seems like we’ve endured panels at fests talking about people going to the movies less, how distribution channels are rapidly changing and how hard it is to get someone to watch our film. There always seems to be much gnashing of teeth, but no real answers as to where we’re headed and how people will be able to continue to make money with their content.
Obviously this is the case because this is going to take time to shake out. We probably won’t see much difference on a broad level for another few years, but the panelists seemed to agree the key to easily accessing content and drawing in the largest numbers of viewers possible is a sort of EZ Pass that eliminates speed bumps and allows users to move seamlessly on their computers/TVs from one content provider to another without having to provide payment or log-in information.
Some highlights:
Becker on the balance of commerce and art: “How do you make room not just for greed in the world, but for art.” The answer he says, is not simply that content should be free.
Pollack: Films are going to have to start being made for a lot less money. Artists are going to have to start smaller and see if they can build interest and a following. YouTube now offers a pay model called the Screening Room, which is allowing content creators to earn some ad revenue, but filmmakers need to understand that it is their responsibility to generate demand in their films. They can do this by attending smaller film fests, using social networking and creating a connection between themselves and their fans.
Becker: People are watching more content online, but they’re not watching more features. The two-hour feature was once an ideal time for seeing a movie in terms of the social context of the day. That length is not sacrosanct, he said, and a new generation of filmmakers is going to be making shorter works for the new mediums which we will use to consume film.
Leggat: The reasons people watch movies online are 1) instantaneity and 2)
Leggat: Dispelling fears that we will be wathcing movies only on hand-held devices in the future: “We’re not gonna be watching 3-hour films in scope w/ subtitles on our mobile phones” … “For cinephiles, going to the theatres will not change. It’s like going to Church.”
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SXSW: Live with that ‘Kick-Ass’ girl, Chloe Moretz
We had a quick sit-down chat with Chloe Moretz, the tiny scene-robbing star of the action-comedy “Kick-Ass,” which opened the SXSW Film Festival on Friday night at the Paramount to thick buzz.
Moretz, 11 when she made the movie and now 13, had just wrapped the “Kick-Ass” panel Saturday at the Austin Convention Center, where she appeared alongside director Matthew Vaughn, writer Mark Millar and co-stars Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Aaron Johnson.
Moretz on Saturday in Austin. (Photo: Chris Garcia)
In the movie, Moretz plays a superhero assassin who goes by Hit-Girl. She blasts, slices, kicks and slashes, leaving heaps of bloodied bodies in her John Woo-ian wake. She drops cuss-bombs with salty elan, all the more shocking for her size, age and wholesome veneer.
The day after the film’s premiere, Moretz still hadn’t seen “Kick-Ass.” She missed the big night because her entourage was told that driving from the Houston airport to Austin would only take an hour.
Instead of being at the Paramount, “I was on a three-hour drive watching ‘Mulan’ and eating Jack-in-the-Box in a car going through the middle of Texas,” Moretz sighs.
“I would have loved to be there,” she says, adding that she’s “crazy excited” about the film and what’s certain to be her breakout performance.
We talked about her Hit-Girl influences (Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill,” Kirsten Dunst in “Interview with the Vampire,” Angelina Jolie in all her action movies), her months-long training regimen (“I literally did a thousand crunches every night”) and the fact that she NEVER swears in ordinary life (“I would be grounded for years … We’re a VERY Christian family.”)
We’re saving our full interview with the actress for the film’s release April 16. Stay tuned.
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Screenwriter Paul Schrader donates collection to Ransom Center
The University of Texas’ Ransom Center now honors the writer of the famous line “You talkin’ to me?” as well as the actor who spoke it.
Ransom Director Tom Staley announced on Friday that screenwriter and director Paul Schrader has donated his work to the center. Schrader was the writer behind such classic movies as “Taxi Driver,’” “Raging Bull,” “American Gigolo” and “Affliction.” The center already has the archive of “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” star Robert De Niro.
‘I first heard about the Ransom Center through Robert De Niro, when his collection came here,” Schrader said in a news release. His donation includes more than 300 boxes of materials, from script outlines and drafts to correspondence and photographs.
The collection needs to be processed and archived, but the Ransom will display a few of the Schrader materials in a case in the lobby through March 21. Visitors can already see some items from “Raging Bull” and “Taxi Driver” in the center’s current ‘Making Movies’ exhibit.
Read the press release here.
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SXSW: Live with Chloe Sevigny
Chloe Sevigny excused herself from the Q-and-A session after the screening of her comedy “Barry Munday” on Saturday afternoon at the Paramount.
“I have stage fright,” she said, seemingly hiding on the theater’s mezzanine as a huge ovation erupted inside the auditorium while writer-director Chris D’Arienzo and co-stars Patrick Wilson and Judy Greer took the stage.
“They always tend to ask the main actors all the questions, so it’s kind of like why do it?” she added.
Sevigny has a small but assertive role as a libidinous bad-girl in “Barry Munday,” a highly entertaining offbeat comedy about a rudderless guy (Wilson, hilarious) who, in a drunken haze, gets a mousey, 30-something virgin (Greer) pregnant, upending both of their loserish lives. Festival audiences are historically a generous lot, yet “Munday” earned its laughs and applause.
“I was surprised how well this played. It’s really funny,” said Sevigny, who hadn’t even seen a clip of the movie until today. “I thought it was great. I was really amused.”
The faces of Sevigny, at the Paramount on Saturday. (Photos: Chris Garcia)
Sevigny — known for “Kids,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “American Psycho,” “Zodiac” and HBO’s “Big Love,” for which she won a Golden Globe this year— loved D’Arienzo’s script for “Barry Munday,” finding it “charming, humorous and very tender.”
She originally went for the lead role, Ginger, played to comic perfection by Greer. “There aren’t a lot of great parts for females out there, obviously,” Sevigny said.
When Greer got the part, “I said, ‘I want to be in it even more now that Judy’s in it.’ She’s one of my favorite actresses. Since ‘Jawbreaker’ I’ve been a huge fan of hers.”
Sevigny’s character, Ginger’s salacious younger sister, secretly dances at a strip club that Wilson’s character frequents.
“That was me dancing, sadly,” Sevigny laughs. “I always promised myself I’d never play a stripper or a hooker, but I did this because it was comedic.”
She dances to Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again,” ‘80s hair-band pop that can either be loved on its own terms or in a protective Snuggie of irony.
“I love that song!” Sevigny says, and we believe her.
“Barry Munday” plays again at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday and 7:15 p.m. Thursday at the Alamo South.
Sevigny also stars in “Mr. Nice” at SXSW. It screens at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at the Paramount.
Sevigny will also appear on the “Mr. Nice” panel with co-star Rhys Ifans at 3:30 p.m. Monday in Studio SX at the Austin Convention Center.
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A taste of ‘Leaves of Grass’
I was a little skeptical when I read the “Leaves of Grass” synopsis and learned that Edward Norton was not only going to be playing opposite himself as twin brothers in writer-director Tim Blake Nelson’s film, but that he would be doing so in a marijuana comedy. My fears were alleviated Friday night, however, when I quickly realized that “Leaves” was not a typical stoner flick and even more quickly remembered how enjoyable it is to watch Norton on film.
With a baby on the way and the responsibilities and dangers of being a big-time weed grower and distributor weighing on him, Brady Kincaid (Norton) lures his Ivy League professor brother, Bill (Norton), back home to Oklahoma to play unwitting accomplice in his half-baked attempt to redirect the course of his life.
As Bill gets reluctantly charmed by his brother, he comes to question his long-held resentments and judgment of the life he left behind and realizes that the boundaries and truths which he found in the study of philosophy were no more valid than the life led by his uneducated brother.
Nelson has penned a thoughtful and at times touching study on what it means to lead an authentic life and how one’s search for happiness can take on many forms. The weightiness of the message, which seems to represent a personal and meaningful struggle for the filmmaker, and the plot digressions slow the pace of the film, at times, and the whip-neck changes are cause for as much confusion as entertainment, but the performances by Norton, who obviously embraced the challenges offered by the roles, make for a lively parable - part Coen brothers, part Tarantino.
It’s hard to think of a better place than Austin for the movie to make its U.S. premiere. That was thinking of writer-director Tim Blake Norton, who told me Saturday that he made sure the film’s release was pushed to the first week of April to accommodate screening first at SXSW.
While it is easy to say that marriage makes sense due to the proliferation of marijuana in the movie, an herb not too difficult to sniff out in Austin, the real reason for the effective paring rests in the dichotomy shared by the film and the city: intellectualism balanced by sensualism. Nelson, Norton and I discussed that aspect of the film, along with fear, the business of making movies, mystic Cowboys and more in an interview that will appear on Friday, April 2, when the film is released here in Austin.
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‘Beijing Taxi’ party Sunday night with a host of Chinese bands
In a nice bit of SXSW synergy, the documentary “Beijing Taxi,” in conjunction with Dart Music International House and Maybe Mars, will be throwing a party Sunday night at Mi Casa featuring Chinese bands AV Okubo, Carsick Cars, P.K. 14 and Xiao He. The party starts at 8 p.m. for badge holders and those who manage to finagle an RSVP (email ivana@beijingtaxithefilm.com) and then opens up to the public at 10 p.m. (space permitting).
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Event coverage: “Trash Humpers”
Every film festival has at least one movie that prompts lots of walkouts, either because of “offensiveness” or sheer boredom.
This year, SXSW had its first such screening with “Trash Humpers.” Shot on what looks like scratchy, old VHS tape, “Humpers” is true to its name. A gang of old folks gets its jollies by being a bit too familiar with trash cans, light poles and just about anything else in their wake.
Director Harmony Korine, who’s known for stirring up folks, would probably deny it, but “Trash Humpers” has an eerie resemblance to “Tobacco Road.” I’m not talking about the play or the movie version. I’m talking about the novel detailing the sexual degeneracy of a poor Southern family.
In “Humpers,” the family is a group of old folks who test the limits of freedom by doing whatever they want. They scream. They drag plastic baby dolls around, tied behind their bicycles. They make fun of a kid who can’t make a basket in basketball. They urinate and defecate in people’s driveways.
And in one instance, one of them takes a hammer to a cross dresser’s head. (The actual hammering occurs off-screen).
As for narrative arc, there’s little. It seems like more a hodgepodge of events that an actually structured movie.
But it’s interesting to see Korine go in this direction. I’m not sure whether it’s the right direction. And if you’re judging by the audience reaction during the premiere Friday night, you’d probably say it’s a step backward.
Then again, Korine is a provocateur. And if that’s what he was aiming for, he has succeeded.
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Capsule summary: “Bear Nation”
Four years ago, director Malcolm Ingram made a splash with ‘Small Town Gay Bar,’ winning awards at the L.A. Outfest and the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
This time, he turns the spotlight on a subculture within a subculture: bears, a burly group of gay men who celebrate being hairy.
The documentary is called ‘Bear Nation,’ but it transcends national boundaries by focusing on bears in Canada, England and the United States.
And although he isn’t gay, bear icon Kevin Smith, the hefty director who recently was kicked off of a Southwest Airlines flight, plays a prominent role. In fact, he seems to enjoy being known as a bear pinup boy. (He’s an executive producer of ‘Bear Nation.’)
Amusing and enlightening, ‘Bear Nation’ highlights the many varieties of gay culture.
Screenings: 9:30 p.m. Sunday, March 14, G-Tech; 12:30 p.m. Thursday March 18, G-Tech
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SXSW capsule review: “The Weird World of Blowfly”
Well, the title sure is spot-on. Blowfly is Clarence Reid, the “original dirty rapper.” With a catalog of album covers of naked women and some of the world’s raunchiest R&B that he spoke-sang, Blowfly wearing a weird superhero costume, spent the 60s and 70s making some of the world’s most successful triple-XXX albums, including “Rap Dirty,” a rap record from 1965, becoming a legend among record collectors, hip-hop artists and soul nerds. (“‘Rap Dirty’ was the inspiration when I wrote ‘Fight the Power,’” Public Enemy’s Chuck D says.) He also wrote a mess of R&B songs for folks such as Gwen McCrea.
Like a lot of black artists who started in the ‘60s, Reid had an unfortunately paternalistic relationship with his record label TK Records and when it fell out of fashion, so did he. He sold the rights to his music in 2003 and sees no royalties from samples. (He can’t even listen to songs that sample his music and who can blame him?)
These days, he tours with drummer and manager Tom Bowker, a former journalist and ad hoc bands. “Weird World” is complicated, fascinating stuff, bringing up some thorny questions about the intersections between race, money, personal agency, art and age. Reid says he used to put dirty lyrics to “the crackers’” favorite songs to annoy them. Except they loved it, which is not a bad example of capitalism’s ability to absorb pretty much anything.
At one point, after Bowker has gone to the store on behalf of Reid, only to have Reid blow up at him for not leaving for the next gig yet, Bowker says, “He doesn’t understand that he has no power, he is a passenger. His job is to be Blowfly on stage and to sit in his seat in the van and let me bring him stuff and let me make him great career-wise again….I’ve built up this brand!” It’s not the most comfortable moment ever and kudos to director Jonathan Furmanski for leaving it in. Then again, the get-in-the-van road life is a hard one and Reid can seem…high-strung.
But if you can’t at least giggle at “Should I (expletive) That Big Fat (expletive)?” set to “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” or “By I Time I Get to the Clinic” to “By the Time I get to Phoenix.” you are probably not alive.
“The Weird World of Blowfly” screen 9:30 tonight at Alamo Lamar 3, 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at G-Tech and 9 p.m. Friday at Alamo Lamar 2. Blowfly himself performs tonight at Beerland.
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Casule summary: Strange Powers
‘Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields’
Fans of Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields will probably enjoy this chronicle of the lauded singer/songwriter’s career, which traces the band’s origins back to 1980s Boston, but it might be a tough 85 minutes for anyone else.
Directors Kerthy Fix and Gail O’Hara worked on “Strange Powers” for 10 years, a very long time for a film in which not much happens. Merritt doesn’t seem to like the attention, and says as much on camera. More outgoing band member Claudia Gonson keeps the narrative moving along, but the relative stability of everyone involved doesn’t make for a very interesting viewing.
The climax of the film hinges on an episode during the mid-2000s when New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones accussed Merritt of racism for not including enough black artists on a “best of” list Merritt had written years earlier.
Frere-Jones expresses regret to the filmmakers, though, deflating most of the controversy. Aside from clips of band at work and testimony by Peter Gabriel, Sarah Silverman (?) and others, the most compelling moments are live concert footage.
Screenings: 7:15 p.m. Monday, March 15, Alamo South; 2:30 p.m. Thursday March 18, Alamo Ritz; 7:45 p.m. Saturday, March 20, Alamo Ritz.
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Capsule summary: Enter the Void
Gaspar Noe is a visually trippy director, and “Enter the Void” shows why. The son of famed Argentine painter Luis Felipe Noe, his movies play out like color-draped dreams, sometimes with out-of-sequence scenes, sometimes with flashbacks and flashforwards.
“Enter the Void” plays with experimental storytelling by centering its narrative in the head of a young man, Oscar, who has been killed during a petty drug deal. Oscar’s spirit isn’t free to move on because he promised his sister Linda, a nightclub stripper, that he would never leave her. So he watches from above and prowls the neon-filled city of Tokyo, where they live.
As American Southerners might say, this movie isn’t normal. But sometimes that’s a good thing.
Noe describes his most famous film, “Irreversible,” as a “trial run” for “Enter the Void.” It played in the official competition in the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and got a mixed critical reception. Its running time: 2 hours, 36 minutes.
Screenings: 11:59 p.m. Monday March 15, Alamo Ritz; 8:30 p.m. Wednesday March 17, Alamo South
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SXSW capsule: The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights
Music lovers attending the premiere of the White Stripes film may have been befuddled when they were greeted, outside the Paramount entrance on Congress, by not the bandmates but a troupe of bagpipers.
As they soon learned, bagpipes were sometimes part of the very odd Canadian tour the film documents — a charmingly nutty itinerary that had Jack and Meg White playing everywhere from bowling alleys to inside public buses, with Inuit meeting houses thrown in for good measure.
There’s also plenty of fiery footage from proper concert stages in the film, and if Friday’s audience didn’t scream and shout as director Emmett Malloy had hoped, they were clearly appreciative. Afterward, they peppered Malloy and his producer with questions about everything from the movie’s predictably stylish color scheme to the reasons for Meg’s tears in an enigmatic closing scene.
On the way out, fans passed a table offering at least one cinematically themed novelty: a 12-inch single featuring remixes of a Stripes tune by directors Michel Gondry and Jim Jarmusch.
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Rodriguez unleashes some ‘Predators’ at SXSW
(Director Nimrod Antal, creature designer Greg Nicotero and producer Robert Rodriguez chat in front of an artist’s rendering of one of many “Predators”)
After the big SXSW Film opener “Kick-Ass” on Friday night at the Paramount — which reportedly went over like gangbusters, as expected — the must-see event was the sneak peek of the Robert Rodriguez-produced sci-fi thriller “Predators,” which immediately stuffed the 187-capacity theater at the Alamo Ritz. (Envision: eager fanboys, demanding press and a battalion of frantic publicists. It was a nervous evening.)
Rodriguez, in jeans, cap, leather jacket and chain-wallet, took the stage and thanked Fox for allowing this special moment a week before the movie’s trailer becomes official. He described how he wrote the “Predators” script back in the mid-1990s as a hired gun, after his “Desperado” was delayed. His love for “Alien” and James Cameron’s crack sequel “Aliens” influenced his decision to bring the “Predator” franchise back to its roots, and to simply add an ‘S’ to the original film’s title.
Rodriguez went nuts on the script, knowing that he wasn’t directing it, with no eye on the budget. “Any cool idea I came up with, I just shoved it into the script,” he said. The young filmmaker even wrote it with Arnold Schwarzenegger in mind to star.
It never happened, and Rodriguez went on to … you know what. Recently-ish, Fox dug up Rodriguez’s old script and got re-excited about it. They approached an always-busy Rodriguez. He said: Cool, let’s do it. But only if we do it at Troublemaker Studios here in Austin. It was a go. But Rodriguez, busy man, elected not to direct but to produce the film. A pair of screenwriters, Michael Finch and Alex Litvak, worked-over and burnished Rodriguez’s old script.
Nimrod Antal was handpicked by Rodriguez to direct after a short search. Rodriguez loved Antal’s thrillers “Kontroll” and “Vacancy” (Antal also directed last year’s “Armored”).
“Your’e a badass,” Rodriguez recalled telling a very nervous Antal, who looked at the more experienced director as a personal “hero.” Antal was there, too, and he joined Rodriguez in retelling their story.
Rodriguez and Antal screened two versions of the “Predators” trailer. The film stars Adrien Brody (who, we are told, is in Austin Friday and Saturday), Laurence Fishburne, Danny Triejo and others carrying heavy weaponry and dripping with jungle sweat.
The trailers looked great — eerie, fierce, violent, filled with promise for that old Rodriguez pow. Antal explained that he wanted to create a variety of Predator aliens with their own personalities and skills. As the duo spoke — creature designer Greg Nicotero soon joined the party — a slide show of production art illuminated the big screen behind them. There were myriad new creatures - birds, insects, dogs, all ferocious and covered in metallic spikes — and variations on the Predator itself, with their “own mood, look and style,” Antal said.
Repeatedly, they said they made the movie, coming July 9, for “Predator” fans. “I think you guys are going to be really proud, really happy with it,” Antal said.
See the official site, where the trailer will be available March 18 HERE.
Afterward, Fox gave away “Predators” T-shirts and autographed posters, like this one:
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