As the Interactive side of the SXSW Festival winds down, the Film fest keeps on going … and the Music kicks into gear tomorrow.
On Saturday I checked out a couple of interesting movies. The first was The Oath and it’s a documentary that focuses on two brothers with connections to Al Qaeda. Abu Jandal was Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard from 1997 – 2000. He was arrested in 2000 and spent two years in prison after the USS Cole bombing. He agreed to a form of change called “Reconciliation” (I think), where he vowed not to recruit young men into Al Qaeda anymore or promote violence. He was given money to buy a taxi and start his own business in Yemen. The film follows him around and shows him teaching his young son to pray to Allah in the mornings and he also mentors young Muslim men. He’s very candid about his life and his beliefs. It’s fascinating to get this close to a former Al Qaeda member. He was a trusted friend of bin Laden and was interrogated by the FBI and US government after 9/11. Apparently his intelligence (where certain Al Qaeda safe houses were, where ammunition was kept, how they communicated with cells) was so helpful that the US military held off the Afghanistan invasion until they could finish getting information from him. He felt great remorse for his brother, whom he recruited and had become bin Laden’s driver. Salim Hamdan was a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay after being arrested post-9/11, where he was the first man to face the military tribunal for war crimes. Jandal got lots of face time in the film, while Hamdan did not speak to cameras. Jandal answered questions about jihad and the taking of innocent life in the hijacking and bombing of the World Trade Center, where it was interesting to hear what he said and how he hypothetically might’ve responded to the order to participate in that plot had he been active in the group at the time. He apparently reacted with shock when he was interrogated early on as he realized that he knew all 19 of the men that carried out the 9/11 attacks. This part of the film was fascinating, because it showed how different intelligence-gathering methods are effectively used – where an Arab man used peaceful methods to gain his trust – as opposed to the torture methods we see dramatized on television shows like 24. The film shows the guy’s craftiness, which the director, Laura Poitras, explained afterwards was fairly intense – where sometimes she trusted him and other times not. She also shared that it was easier for her, as a woman, to get access and openness in her interviews in that world than had she been a male.
Monsters played to a packed house at the Alamo Drafthouse, which is a multi-room theater with a small table/shelf that is placed in front of each row in the room. Waiters and waitresses discretely come by throughout the movie to serve food. It makes for a fun movie experience. This was a fantasy/science-“fantastic” film that was set in Mexico after a NASA test probe came back to earth with samples of alien life forms. It disintegrated in re-entry over the nation of Mexico, which was now an “infected” territory that the government had quarantined and was a battle zone where the giant squid-like creatures rose up at certain times to wreak havoc on civilization. The CGI effects made the movie realistic, with murals, signs and warnings everywhere that would have sprouted up in such a scenario. Turns out the movie was kind of a romantic tale where the two main characters get thrust into close proximity while he (a photo journalist consigned by his boss) attempted to escort the media mogul’s daughter safely out of the infected zone. Plenty of action, plenty of sci-fi food-for-thought and a decent drama to boot.
Lemmy is a documentary about the legendary Motorhead frontman. This guy is as thoughtful, sweet, every-day and intense a character as you might have heard. Directors/screenwriters Wes Orshoski and Greg Oliver followed the guy around for three years – shooting him in his Hollywood apartment, his spot at the bar in the Rainbow Bar & Grill, in dressing rooms throughout the world and on several rock stages. While the viewer gets fed a fair amount of concert footage, it is mostly a biopic that paints an even-handed picture of this veteran rock star – (ahem) warts and all.
It’s almost odd that the centerpiece performance moment is the song “Damage Case” (from Overkill) that he performs with the members of Metallica. It’s really the only time in the movie that you see an entire song from beginning to end, which is kinda odd, but it’s a great version and it kills. There’s lots of celebrity/musician interviews, where rock stars from yesteryear (as well as Dave Grohl, who’s played and recorded with him a few times) talk about his influence on rock, punk and metal. There’s a humorous segment filmed at his old prep school in England, where some kid plops on the piano and bangs out “Ace of Spades,” which his entire class of young boys and girls (probably 14-year-olds) sing along with gusto.
He’s a rock and roll icon that is embraced by rockers, metalheads and punks alike. His inspiration is Little Richard, Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. He discusses music history as well as his own throughout the movie (dude was a roadie for Jimi Hendrix). “I saw the Beatles before they had a record,” he explains. “People say the Beatles were sissies and the Stones were the tough guys, but it’s really the other way around.” The Beatles were from a working class town and the Stones were art school students, etc. Besides the many shots where this tall, long-legged man is seen just walking around (like at Amoeba Music in LA, where he picks up the Beatles mono boxset), there’s a really cool iconic moment where one of his associates is rocketing through Hollywood wearing a black leather dragon helmet. One fan admits that the appeal to Motorhead’s volume level is that once a year, at least, for five days he doesn’t have to put up with his wife’s nagging (because his ears are ringing).
There’s a few poignant moments where Lemmy shows how thoughtful he is. In one he is asked what his most precious/cherished thing in his apartment is. It’s like a museum of Nazi memorabilia, as well as some rare rock and roll artifacts. Without hesitation he replies, “My son,” who was sitting behind him. At another moment he shows his understanding of women and why many rock and roll marriages don’t work. He has a keen insight into what each sex wants out of a relationship. There’s also a moment of reflection about his heavy partying, where he states that, after all he’s done, it’s kind of too late to change, as if God wouldn’t want him now. It’s a sad but honest moment in the film.
After leaving the movie and getting in line for another film showing at the Paramount, Lemmy walked by with his people and I handed him a copy of HM Magazine.
MacGruber is another Saturday Night Live skit that’s made the jump to the big screen. It was a worldwide premier, so the large and historic house was absolutely packed. This one takes absolute ridiculous, immature humor to extreme levels. I mean, the absurdity that a young male mind imagines…? It’s played out here. One such example is the MacGruber character gets dissed by another car. He memorizes the license plate, hoping for revenge. His more straight counterpart (played by Ryan Phillippe) looks through his notepad at one point, where he finds the first page reading the heading: “Clues,” followed by the number zero. The following dozens of pages are filled with notes of the license plate number, including drawings of him pooping on the car. That, in a nutshell, is the kind of humor we’re talking about. It almost got an NC-17 rating due to the spoofy and moronic nature of some sex scenes.
While certainly not a family film, it was packed with laughs. The cast was present (even though actor Val Kilmer stayed in his seat), which made for a funny time of Q&A with the director afterwards. Their ability to work an audience was on display to good effect. One person asked Kristin Wiig (whose character had a career in cheesy ’80s ballad music) if she’d sing a tune, to which she replied in tune (and in character), “Not … right … now.”
I wish I had time to take it all in. This South By Southwest thing is such a great event. In order to serve so many people, there is an over-abundance of offerings. I always try to balance my May/June deadline obligations with covering the festival/conference. One thing I do to help is extend my deadline from the normal middle of the month time to the very end, adding an extra week to finish our next issue. I’m missing a friend’s panel today. Mike Kaply, who was on the team at IBM that developed the Mozilla Firefox browser, is heading a panel on fan sites – how to love something (like a band) and monetize it, too. One example he’ll probably draw upon is the cool Brand Thunder company he works with. They’ve developed custom browsers (like the one HM Magazine has) that are used all over the place for various entities – like professional hockey teams, colleges, radio stations, etc. There’s plenty of useful such panels going on at this thing. Besides providing a lot of great networking opportunities (it pays to sharpen your socializing skills), there’s a lot of information and knowledge to be gained here. Viva la conference!
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