The pre-festival buzz on South by Southwest 2002 was all about Journeys with George, journalist Alexandra Pelosi’s home movie of the 2000 presidential campaign. Shot on a handheld camcorder over the course of several months, Journeys plunges into the midst of the traveling press corps as they follow George W. Bush down the primary trail. Pelosi, an NBC news producer at the time, captures the candidate in any number of revealing modes, from Cheeto-chomping prankster to thin-skinned blueblood to surprisingly intimate confidant. It’s an eye-opener for anyone who ever scoffed at the notion of Bush as a charismatic figure or effective one-on-one campaigner. It’s no whitewash, though; the members of the press are on hand to get in their digs, and there’s never much doubt on which end of the political spectrum most of them reside.
It seemed only appropriate that the film had its world premiere at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas, only a few short blocks down Congress Avenue from the capitol building where Bush’s political career was launched. But while Journeys with George kicked off the festival with a bang, it was only the beginning of the story. As usual, SXSW presented a mix of world premieres (Ethan Hawke’s directorial debut Chelsea Walls), homegrown features (Jeff Stolhand’s Master of the Game, the omnibus Six in Austin), and the tried and true (John Sayles and Troma Films retrospectives, a digitally spiffed-up reissue of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz). Here is a sample of the best and worst this year’s festival had to offer.
Home Movie Chris Smith’s American Movie was one of the best documentaries of recent years, and also one of the most misunderstood. Audiences who felt Smith was mocking his unsophisticated small town subjects rather than celebrating them may have their minds changed by Home Movie, in which Smith takes his cameras into five unusual American homes. There’s a houseboat on the Louisiana bayou, a home constructed in an abandoned missile silo, and a fortress of gadgetry that could pass for the residence of a second-rate Batman villain, among others. Of course, Smith is less interested in the houses themselves than the people who choose to live in them. His delight in getting to spend time with these offbeat personalities is infectious, and makes Home Movie a true pleasure.
Six in Austin It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Inspired by 1965’s Six in Paris, a compilation film bringing together top talents of the French New Wave like Eric Rohmer and Jean-Luc Godard, filmmakers Zack and Wyatt Phillips recruited a handful of fellow Austinites for this collection of shorts. Shot on digital video ranging in quality from barely adequate to barely watchable, Six in Austin is an interminable exercise in self-indulgence. The kickoff segment, David and Nathan Zellner’s "Rummy," is slight but amusing, and it’s all downhill from there. Six in Austin concludes with the Phillips brothers’ unbearable "Carlos," a shaggy dog story that takes viewers on a tour of the Austin public transit system in what feels like real time. While SXSW’s commitment to local talent is to be applauded, one has to wonder if this homegrown effort could have possibly made it into the festival on its own merit. The overlap between members of the SXSW staff and the Six in Austin crew does nothing to assuage those doubts.