Well not exactly dark, but this morning you’d never know the festival conference was here. Everyone who didn’t leave yesterday is probably on their way today, and the locals have gone back to work. It’s amazing how deflated a hotel feels that has been the center of the arena for a conference like the AFF. There are a few movies to see, but nothing that seems compelling, so I’ll probably go “back to work” for the day and do some writing.

Before I do that I’ll wrap with this and promise one more thing in a couple of days or so. Bill True (Runaway), a writer, AFF winner in 2005, and a panelist here, was going to connect with me here for an interview. With one thing and another we missed each other, but he has offered to do an interview via e-mail. I thought it would be a great opportunity to get the reflections of a successful and experienced screenwriter on the Austin Film Festival Conference. So, editors willing, come back to the blog for that in a few days.

You come here with all your Texas stereotypes running in your head expecting Stetsons and boots, and what you see in this cosmopolitan city is spike heels, sneakers and fancy flip-flops. Except for the warm humidity it could be any number of not too hilly newer cities in the country.

Anna Hanks has given you the history of conference central—the Driskill—so I’ll mention the neighborhood. Just east of the Driskill is a strip of small clubs and bars in funky old buildings. Seattlites should think Pioneer Square, New Yorkers, the Village. Saturday night fills up the closed street with revelers out for a good time. A small fleet of pedicabs services the street. Girls and boys travel in packs, cell phones at hand texting or talking as they walk. Some are casually dressed, others—the girls especially—look shined up just short of prom night. It’s quite a show.

And if stories about the first Austin festival are to be believed it sometimes features a little unexpected audience participation. It seems that some LA types who had been persuaded to come, including Barry Josephson of Columbia Pictures, and John Levin, Dustin Hoffman’s agent were out checking out the local night life and got caught up in a fight in one of the bars. They just walked in to it. Levin ended up getting decked. Despite the festival organizers’ horror, the story just pumped up the AFF luster in Hollywood.

I caught a movie yesterday that you have to see. It’s reviewed elsewhere on the site, but Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl is amazing. Ryan Gosling (Oscar nominee for Half Nelson in 2007) does a brilliant job as an introverted young man dealing with his parents’ deaths and his brother’s wife’s pregnancy—his mother had died in childbirth having him—and “inviting” Bianca, a “Brazilian internet friend” to visit him. One small correction on the review: Bianca is a RealDoll®, a lifelike solid silicone simulacrum not a “blow up” doll.

A film which could have easily been done as a tasteless joke is both sweet and funny. I haven’t heard an audience laugh so much in ages. The whole setup is a great opportunity for actors to do “takes.” Not the camera shots but the second ohmygod look when they realize what they are seeing. Patricia Clarkson is one of the best of all in her role as family doc cum shrink. Lovely.

So that’s pretty much it from Austin for this year unless Anna has another piece to file, and look for my look back at the AFF with writer Bill True.

RW