I just returned from the Austin Film Festival and I'd like to announce that I won the screen-writing contest. Hollywood-types
had it going on in AustinI'd like to. But I can't. Since I didn't.
But as a finalist I did get to go to a bunch of parties and meet a lot of film industry hotshots and did get to hear a guy actually use the phrase, "Hey, baby, your hair, you've really got it going on!" without any irony whatsoever.
The guy wasn't saying it to me -- since my hair rarely has it going on -- but to a lovely starlet-type at a lavish barbeque on the lawn of the Texas governor's mansion. And the lovely starlet-type looked at the guy with all the disdain that she could muster and the phrase deserved.
But the incident was instructive because it convinced me it was better to simply sip my Shiner Bock beer -- the local brew -- and watch the festivities, rather than go interactive. Not that I'd know how to go interactive in that kind of setting anyway, other than to go up to someone and say, "Hey, haole girl, your tan, get one."
I saw degrees of whiteness rarely associated with human skin. And many tattoos thereon, most of them bad. I should forget all my screen-writing ambitions and immediately get a degree in tattoo removal because someone is going to make heaps of money when this fad passes.
I saw a stone-cold sober Dennis Hopper escorted by a lady whose dress appeared to have been spray-painted on. Oliver Stone attempted to move across the lawn surrounded by a pack of "conspira-azzi." I felt sorry for him. Everywhere he goes since his nutty JFK movie, some wacko wants to tell him about some new conspiracy. The difference was that these wackos were guests, so he had to endure them. I imagined Texas Gov. George Bush Jr. standing at a window of the governor's mansion muttering "pinko leftist filmmakers" and wondering how they got on his lawn. Needless to say, George didn't even come down and say "Howdy."
I went to the premiere of Stone's new movie, "U-Turn," at Austin's Paramount Theatre. It was my first premiere party and it was pretty much like the barbeque -- same stars, same wannabes, same babes, same beer (for me, anyway) -- except indoors. Standing there in my loudest yellow aloha shirt (the one that looks like King Kamehameha went after Big Bird with a weed whacker) I have to admit that I felt I had it going on just a little bit in the shirt department.
The festival was my first exposure to a "Hollywood-type" crowd, even though a lot of them were struggling scriptwriters. "Type" is the operative word here. The crowd was made up of "types" more than individuals. There were Buck Henry types wearing Buck Henry baseball caps who acted more like Buck Henry than Buck Henry did when Buck Henry showed up. When you are Buck Henry, you can underplay the part.
There were "screenwriter" types who dressed in that carefully conceived disheveled way desperate wannabe screenwriters dress when they don't want to look desperate. There was a kid who looked like a young Sean Penn. And other guys who looked like other stars I didn't recognize.
There were some of us who were merely clueless and dressed the part. It's not that we were complete rubes. Our eyes didn't pop out of our heads when we saw, for instance, a natural- born-killer-type guy in leather with a lot of chains suddenly begin dancing by himself -- I mean, NO ONE ELSE was dancing -- at the MTV-sponsored wrap party at the Hang 'Em High Saloon. He either "had it going on" or was a complete psycho.
By my next film festival, I hope to know the difference.