"BACKSEAT" Screening this Thursday

BACKSEAT Trailer - Austin Film Festival Audience Award Winner - Narrative Feature

Thursday, April 3, 2008 // 7:30PM // Landmark Dobie Theatre // FREE

Send RSVP with your name + number of guests to: rsvp@austinfilmfestival.com

Seating is first come-first served until capacity is reached. Hope to see you there!

In BACKSEAT, a 'coming of age late' story about prolonged adolescence, two old friends flee New York City on a three-day road trip to Montreal to escape their problems and meet the great Donald Sutherland. Between running drugs and meeting a man who only communicates through instant messaging, they run head-on into the always lingering problem of real life.

"Writer and star Josh Alexander is tuned into what his fellow late twenty and thirty somethings want to see, a kind of pulpy road pic with pop culture hipness galore. At times, purposely pretentious and other times dead on, "Backseat" is the kind of movie that will resonate with the somewhat forgotten Generation X. A moody soundtrack and good performances make this the kind of raw indie that ought to catch audience attention and hold it in place."- Jonathan Hickman, Entertainment Today

"Sideways: The Extra Funny Version Without the Wine Metaphors...[and] what's most surprising about this "freshman" effort by Alexander, is how effortless it all appears. Alexander's humor is derived from a very real knack for comedy coupled with an equally acute understanding of his audience, so Backseat ends up a truly memorable, funny...yes...Guy Road Trip Movie." -Laura Kyle, efilmcritic.com

"...the combination of good acting, a clever soundtrack, sharp dialogue, and unexpected situations make this crew one to watch." -Rise Keller, moviehabit.com, Denver

AFF Photo Contest!

Submit your favorite photo from your trip to the Austin Film Festival and if we use it on our site we'll send you a large custom-embossed AFF Moleskine®!

Send Photos To:
pictures@austinfilmfestival.com
Include - Your full name, Hometown, Year of Festival, and Contact E-Mail
Optional - Story behind the picture

Rules
*By submitting a photo, submitter grants Austin Film Festival the right to post or showcase photographs on their website or any relevant media.
*Contest is open March 27, 2008 - May 15, 2008
*One winner will be selected from all eligible entries

Prize Details
Large Moleskine® notebook with ruled pages, 5” x 8.25”, 240 pages,
Cover, blind debossed with Austin Film Festival logo; mission statement silk-screened on the flyleaf, custom paper band.

"Beyond the Pale" This Thursday!

Directed by Victor Fanucchi, Running Time: 86 minutes

Thursday, March 27 - 7:30PM

Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek - 13729 Research Blvd, Austin, TX

FREE for AFF Members, $4 Public - PURCHASE TICKETS HERE or at the door.

A satire of literary academia, Beyond the Pale centers on an eccentric 13th year grad student in English named Sasha Plotzkin, who is unable to finish his dissertation and faces expulsion unless he can make a name for himself at an upcoming academic conference—though he isn't invited.

Interview with Director Victor!

Hope to see you there on Thursday.

AFF @ 15: Screenplay Alumni Stories

I recently had a chance to correspond with 2003 Adult/Family Semifinalist Tobias Iaconis. I asked him how his career was going since placing in the festival in 2003. Here is what he said:

I'm now writing a small movie for Fox; I just did a re-write for the director and producer, it starts shooting in Puerto Rico in two weeks... my first credit! It's a yet-to-be-titled military actioneer about a U.S. Navy SEAL team that gets stuck behind enemy lines in Colombia, falsely accused of assassinating participants in a secret, historic peace conference between the FARC rebel insurgency and the Colombian government.
I've gotta say, the tangible recognition my work got from AFF over the years has a lot to do with where I am today. (I was a semi-finalist in 2003, and a second-rounder a few times before and after that). My greatest difficulty as a writer is to simply keep going, to continue to chase the dream in the face of the Chinese water-torture of one rejection after another rejection after another rejection after another.
It took years for me to land my first gig (a never-produced sequel to TIMECOP for Uni), and then more years to get my first movie made. Many times during those Sahara-like dry spells I thought about tossin' in the towel. So much time and so much energy, poured into what? A big black hole that swallowed the fruits of my blood-sweat-n-tears labor with profound and casual indifference.

But AFF's acknowledgement of my writing over the years served a huge encouragement to me. At least somebody in the biz was responding positively to my stuff! A flickering hope remained, and so I plodded on. And now here I was, last Thursday, on the phone with a director who was standing in an abandoned military base in Puerto Rico -- there because of a script I wrote! -- asking if it would be possible to re-write a scene (to take advantage of the surrounding jungle landscape). Barring perhaps the walk down a premiere's red carpet, it doesn't get much better than that!

See more Austin Film Festival Success Stories at: http://www.austinfilmfestival.com/new/success_stories

AFF@15: Gary David Goldberg on Alex P. Keaton's vote

2001 AFF Outstanding Televison Writer Award winner Gary David Goldberg sounds off in this week's New York Times Opinion section with a funny bit about what candidate might win Alex P. Keaton's vote. Garry is pictured above with 80s TV icon Dirk Benedict from The A-Team.

From nytimes.com

March 3, 2008, 8:02 pm

Comedy Stop: What Would Alex Keaton Do?

By Gary David Goldberg

It’s been almost 20 years since “Family Ties” went off the air. And Alex P. Keaton’s political idols, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, have each gone off to their deserved places in history. Yet I still get asked a lot — O.K. maybe not a lot but more than twice — whether Alex Keaton would be a Republican today. And, if so, who would be his candidate in the 2008 presidential election.

Before I go any further I should point out that I’m a registered independent. I vote Democratic most of the time but not always. I am part of the 75 percent of Americans who strongly disapprove of the job George Bush has done as president.

I should also point out that to properly represent Alex and his political point of view I, as well as the rest of the “Family Ties” writers, did a great deal of research on this subject. And during that time I developed a very healthy respect for the true conservative point of view. A powerful and proud strain of American political thought. And even today I bow to no one in my desire to see the capital gains tax eliminated.

Read more