Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2010 > March > 11 > Entry
SXSW 1: Texas Film Hall of Fame Pre-Party
Back in the 1980s, South By Southwest occupied a long weekend. By 1994, with film and interactive added to music, it grew into a split week, always spring break, then 10 linked days. During the 21st Century, the whole month of March is usually saturated with SXSW socializing, first online, then in person, then online again.
Tim Matheson and Richard Linklater
Since I must cover two solid weeks of charity galas before the advent of SXSW, the Texas Film Hall of Fame Pre-Party is my first festival-oriented live event. Many of the celebrities who grace this annual affair double up walking the red carpet at the Hall of Fame ceremony (always the Thursday before SXSW Film) with appearances at the festival. Works out for everybody.
Anne Ashmun, Kate Hersch and Jane Schweppe
The past two years, the Austin Film Society’s Pre-Parties were absolute blow-outs at the homes of Lance Armstrong, then John and Julie Thornton. This year’s even was more modest, at the dignified but cool Old Enfield home of Jane Schweppe (who counts in the Moodys of Galveston in her family’s orbit). The celebrities proved light on the ground. No Goldie Hawn, who would have been the “get” of the evening for any social columnist. No Quentin Tarantino, for reasons that left guests conjecturing. I must have missed Michael Nesmith.
Deborah Green and Chris Mattsson
That was fine with me. Instead of gawking, I engaged in deeper conversations, with Anne Ashmun on her and her sister’s Nature Conservancy easement in the Davis Mountains; with Catherine Robb, about wildflowers and the Johnson family; with Rick Linklater, about the powerful ‘Macbeth’ scenes in his “Me and Orson Welles”; with John Pierson, about his vinyl collection and Nesmith’s later careers (the PBS video-distribution legal battle was the most memorable account); with Tim Matheson, about “Burn Notice” — he plays psychopath Larry Sizemore — finding its voice. Bruce McGill and Gloria Lee McGill joked, posing with the stuffed-animal art.
If attendance at this year’s Pre-Party was down, it didn’t seem to make any difference to the assembled, who drifted from the hard-to-pass-up porch, to the art-laced rooms and the tented patio. Perfect SXSW weather for it, too.
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By djkdj
April 5, 2010 1:42 AM | Link to this
A beautiful remembrance of times past