The daily Grindhouse

Today was my first day in Austin without a hangover. I can’t tell you how much of an achievement this is and how much of a relief to my wallet it was. Budgets have already been blown out the window by my inability to say no to anything. One little word. How hard can it be? Then again, who wants to be a ‘No-person’.



Anyways, I digress. Day three at the South by South West Film Festival starts off with the Grindhouse 101 session with director Robert Rodriguez and Aint It Cool News honcho Harry Knowles. Now for those friends of mine who don’t know, Grindhouse is the new double feature from Rodriguez (Planet Terror) and Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof) that is set for release this summer. Very soon you’ll be receiving a crash course in the cinematic form known as grindhouse.



In the briefest way I can tell you grindhouse is exploitation film, though I use the term very loosely. Grindhouse is graphic – oh so graphic. It’s been around since the 50s, but became real popular in the 70s. This is not auteur film by any stretch. In fact the worse made a grindhouse film is the better it is. We’re talking about films that rely on the sensational and the downright outrageous as their bread and butter. These are movies with tits, balls, and big guns.

Rodriguez has with him some clips of old grindhouse movies such as The Green Slime and The Crippled Master (which looks amazing). This is some seriously cool stuff. It’s a good introduction to the form although little more than.

The two best moments of the whole session are the clip we see from Planet Terror and the Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel) fake trailer made for the intermission between the two movies. The film hasn’t even gone to the MPAA yet and make well have parts of the scene we see removed. When you see the film you will find there are crazy jump cuts and slices that make no sense and the narrative has moved on. In grindhouse cinema if a scene is censored by the MPAA the filmmakers simply cut the scene, so Rodriguez’s plans this for his movie. It’s not going to float all your boats, but it sure will be a wild ride.



So in the clip we see Freddy Rodriguez and his ragtag band of people are doing their best to escape a horde of zombies. Weaponed and in an array of vehicles they charge head of splattering zombies as they go. When I say splatter I mean SPLATTER. And the exploding dog. It’s hilarious. But my favourite bit has to be Freddy R pulling a ripping wheelie on his mini-motorbike (you know, the chavy ones) and peeling out. Fucking awesome.

Now let me tell you this, the Eli Roth ‘Thanksgiving’ trailer will never see the light of day (except on DVD). This 3 minute trailer is so outrageous it’s unbelievable and Roth is almost certainly going straight to hell…possibly pulling a wheelie on a mini-motorbike. Apart from the serial killer humping the severed area of upper torso there is a moment with a naked cheerleader on a trampoline, only her mini skirt covering her personal regions. Ok, so I’m just gonna blurt this out. Knife through the tramp, cheerleader spread eagle leaving nothing to the imagination, nothing, going for a bump bounce. What happened next I can’t say cos I couldn’t look. But you can guess. Sick.

Next up in my day was a Conversation with Morgan Spurlock, he of Super Size Me fat, sweatiness fame. I love this guy, have done since I interviewed him for the film. He turns up sporting a large Taliban-style beard and prior to the session I had heard a very interesting rumour about his upcoming film Where in the world… So Spurlock has been shooting in the Middle East for the passed year or so and in that time his wife has also had a baby. Here’s the thing, the thing that I heard.

Question number one: "Morgan, did you find Osama Bin Ladin?"

Spurlock: "You’ll have to see the movie."

I don’t know the truth, I only know the Weinsteins bought the film for millions of the back of a couple of clips of an incomplete movie a couple of months ago at the Berlin Festival. We will know soon enough, but watch this space, I think this is going to be the biggest film story of the year. It’s so fucking huge it can’t be true…can it?

After Spurlock I head over to see Christain Slater’s new movie He Was A Quiet Man. I liked this movie more than I expected even though it had been me harping on to Chris about heading out to the Paramount theatre to see it. It’s a very dark comedy, twisted in parts, but really endearing and enjoyable. Slater is an loner office worker who fantasises about murdering his co-workers who torment him. He doesn’t have the guts, until one day another equally socially challenged worker, white, shirt, tie, glasses, brown socks and half masts type beats him to the punch. Slater kills the gunman and from here takes care of the office beauty he had an eye for and who is no paralysed in the aftermath. I’m not going to say anymore, but this is a really odd little movie with a lot going for it. Far from perfect, but very enjoyable. And did I mention twisted? You get the idea.

Afterwards Chris and I head to a bar called Antone’s to see Robert Rodriguez’s band, Chingon (translated as Badass), play. In between we pop over to the He Was A Quiet Man party for drinks. The director Frank Capello buys me a JD and coke, sweet and I make a vague attempt to chat up the film’s assistant director. In the end her married sister is much nicer and we bond over both being the eldest of five. Random.



Back to the Grindhouse party at Antone’s and Rodriguez’s band come out. These guys are fucking amazing! He has two guitarist who play in a mariachi style I guess, though I don’t know much about this kind of music. These guys are unreal, I can’t even describe, but I have video and will post it later. The pace of their playing is furious, they riff off one another and more than anything, it’s great to see musicians having such unbridled joy in performance. Rodriguez is pretty good too and a highlight is him and the two other guitarists all stood on their chairs playing with their guitars behind their heads…way cool. Which is what Rodriguez almost certainly is.

Not quite partied out yet, I manage to hog a lift off of this nice aussie (of course guys, I attract them like groupies to a rock star) guy called Dave and his wife to a bar called The Longbranch. A stonking 60s party is in full swing and as I am wanton to do I find myself dancing on chairs, slutting it up like no one was watching. We hit a house party afterwards where I had fun chatting to a couple of guys on shrooms. Mostly I made lots and lots of friends.

It was a good day. I’ll come up with more meaningful stuff sometime in the future, for now though I’m just trying to keep track of where the hell I’m at. Needless to say I’m loving Austin.