In the corner by the entrance of the Film/Interactive Conference show floor at SXSW, there’s a glass cube containing a Charlie Rose-esque set (big, round table, black backdrop) and two TV cameras. Here, journalist/blogger/hack-type guests of the festival are invited to interview filmmaker/artist/talent-type guests of the festival, live to tape for later dissemination on the web. This is called StudioSX.
This year at SXSW, I went to see Andrew Bujalski’s Beeswax at the Paramount, and ran out of the theater just as the Q & A was starting because I had been scheduled to conduct a StudioSX interview with a filmmaker less than an hour later. But then I got a call from a StudioSX producer, saying the filmmaker I had been scheduled to speak to had missed his flight to Austin and wasn’t going to be able to make it. What films had I seen? he asked. Who would I like to interview instead. I immediately blurted out, “Beeswax! Andrew Bujalski!” — not just because the film was fresh in my head, but also because it was the rare movie that left me with actual questions, that defied my smug, know-it-all tendency to have its mysteries completely worked out by the line I had to lineup for the next screening.
Long story … uh .. still probably longer than it needs to be, the StudioSX people called Bujalski’s people, and within an hour he was rushed off stage at the Paramount and was sitting across from me in Charlie Rose Bizarroworld. We talked for 10 minutes, about scripting for an unscripted feel, about why a film called Beeswax has nothing literally to do with bees, and about his slowly evolving relationship to celluloid. It was taped, and you can now watch it here.
Originally posted on:
SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth