Total Badass at Sydney Underground Film Festival

Hey southerns, catch the good-times-fun that is Total Badass on Sunday, September 9. Go here: http://suff.com.au/2012/08/total-badass/

Here’s the Total Badass trailer for your enjoyment:

Total Badass screening at the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival

Total Badass screening at the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival

More details soon. The fest in in early December. Get your nipples hard!

http://minneapolisundergroundfilmfestival.com/?page_id=182

Total Badass screening at Tucson Film and Music Festival

Kinda last minute, but we’ve been invited to screen at the Tucson Film & Music Fest on Monday, Oct. 10th – 9:30pm at The Hut. Tell your Tucson pals!

http://www.tucsonfilmandmusicfestival.com/

Chad Holt lives, writes again! a Chad’s-eye view of the Chicago Underground FIlm Festival

from CHAD:

Here’s a recap of the trip we took to The Chicago Underground Film Festival this month, as best I can recall it:

Friday June 3, 2011

I took a cab to the airport here in Austin, and the cab driver was this old guy who was very engaging. He was playing a CD of The Buena Vista Social Club, and very much wanted me to hear and appreciate them. My house is only about a ten minute ride from the airport, but he played me the better part of at least three songs, intermingled with his translations of the lyrics and stories about the songs or the band as a whole. As we rolled into Bergstrom, he was narrating a song about a woman who had gone to sleep with a candle still lit and burned down her house, but it was actually a metaphor for old men not getting laid. I remember being both relieved and a little let down that he didn’t elaborate.

The plane was an express jet, and it was the first time I had been on one. I get a little bit nervous from flying. I mean, I’m able to sit there and do the crosswords or watch the little television… even engage in some small talk, but deep down inside I’m usually convinced that everyone is going to die, and my innermost efforts are devoted to coming to grips with that. The express jets get whipped around by the wind a little more than the big airliners, so that’s particularly hard on me, because my perceptions of sensory data are irrationally heightened when I’m on a plane. I’ll detect the slightest change in the hum of the engine, like if the pilot speeds up or something, and even though I never say it out loud, all I can think is, “Do y’all hear that shit? We’re going down!” Whenever I think about air travel in science fiction terms, I imagine a world in the not too distant future, after the advent of whatever technology comes along and keeps planes from falling out of the sky, and I think about a little kid going on a flight with their grandpa. The grandpa is telling stories that he heard from his own grandparents about flying on “airplanes” back before they had boosters or anti-gravity or whatever little adaptation has come along, and the kid asks, “What did they do in the old days, Grandpa, before the repulsion-chute, whenever the plane broke down in mid-air?” Then grandpa would have to explain that they all just fell to the ground and died in a crash, as ridiculous as that may seem. In retrospect, we will look like some of the bravest, craziest people to ever exist on the planet. The modern day businessman-on-the-run will seem like an apache warrior or a kamikaze or some shit.

I landed in Chicago at O’Hare airport and took the train into the city. I loved the ride in because it was out in the open and you could see all the buildings and porches and shit as you rode by the city. At one point I imagined myself as a destitute old pervert who rode the train all day, hoping to see naked people through their windows. I met up with Austin expatriate and Whoopsy! Magazine sportswriter, Trey Elling. I stayed with Trey most of the time I was in town. First place he took me was his favorite Latin American food place, I forget the name and the country of origin, but they put this cabbage in all their food that made everything taste like bilge water. Seriously, I took a bite and before I realized it was the cabbage, I was like, Holy Shit somebody mopped the fucking floor and then made my tacos in the same water. After that, we met up with my friend Abby Wallig, who some of you from Austin might remember from her stint there. We got some weed somewhere along the way, and I guess just went out to a series of bars before eventually winding up at Quenchers for a party that was a part of the Chicago Underground Film Festival (heretofore known as CUFF). Since there’s no such thing as bad publicity, I’d like to mention that everyone I talked to that night or that weekend, whenever I would mention Quenchers on the itinerary, they’d go, “Quenchers? What the fuck were you doing at Quenchers?” Nonetheless, I’m pretty sure Quenchers was the end of the line that night.

Saturday June 4 2011

We had a huge day in Chicago. Trey and I got up and walked around the city, ending up over at the “beach” on Lake Michigan, watching Justine Hayes and some of her friends play volleyball. Trey and I played a game against some guys, and I totally sucked. I would have liked to have played a few more games to get the hang of it. After that we went swimming back at his place, or they did at least and then I even squeezed in a forty-five minute nap when a thunderstorm rolled in. After that, we went to Maifest, which was basically just a German street festival with all the stereotypes you’d see at Wurstfest in New Braunfels; lederhosen, polka bands, big ass mugs of beer… everything but the swastikas. While I was there, I decided in my head that it is time for Germans to maybe not necessarily embrace the swastika, but at least start rolling out their WWI and WWII flags and memorabilia at events such as this, and just be like “We fought in the World Wars. Who cares whose fault it was, we fought and died like everybody else.”  In the interest of disclosure, I am one quarter German, but my ascendants moved out of Germany before the rise of Hitler, thus clearing my conscience of any holocaust guilt. Conveniently, they also arrived in America after slavery, so I’m covered there, too. Anyway, Maifest was a fucking blast, as was Division Fest, a more conventional street festival that we went to later.

I almost got arrested at Division Fest. As much as a boon as it would have been to Total Badass’ overall street credit if one of us had been arrested on yet another movie trip, I’m glad that I wasn’t. It was all a matter of finances, really. In theory, there was no fucking way I could have afforded to go to Chicago for even a second, much less an entire weekend, what with the quitting of selling of weed back in November, and all. However, once the plane ticket was taken care of in what was a combination of hospitality, luck and the borrowing of money from friends, I realized that it costs just as much to be broke in Chicago as it does in Austin. Living like this, one of the things I do is, I’ll hang out at the bars all fucking night, but most of the beer I drink is bought in convenience stores and guzzled down in the streets of surrounding neighborhoods. So, I’m walking around in this neighborhood and go into the store and buy a big-ass miller light and start to crack it open right as I’m walking out the door. I walk right into this lady cop who looks exactly like Meg Ryan… so much so that I want to say Meg Ryan actually did play a uniformed officer in a movie once, but I might be imagining that because this lady looked so much like her. She told me I was lucky I hadn’t opened the beer all the way, or I would be going to jail, but the beer was literally foaming over with a frothy head and shit, so I don’t know if she was serious. It took everything I had not to hit on her, or tell her she looked like Meg Ryan, or some seductive combination of both.

We had been hanging out a lot with this buddy of Trey’s named Peter Rowell. We were over at his place later that night, and this big group of Indians (as in India, not Illini) came walking up to the place next door. They were his neighbors, and invited us up to a party. They had this food set out, a chicken dish for sure and then I don’t know what else, but it was fucking delicious. Later we were at a completely different party that was a lot like that one and I was rolling a joint at the kitchen table…. Several of us were. The owner of the place comes up, and was like… “Ah, you are doing marijuana. That’s ok, just don’t start stealing my shit.” I thought that was weird, but whatever. Later on we were out on the porch getting stoned with the womenfolk, and they were like, you know so and so’s husband is a cop… talking about homeboy. Eventually, we ended up at a club which I currently forget the name of for another CUFF party. This one had an audio visual deal set up where a guy would take your pictures in front of a white screen and then project them to the whole party. Here are some of said pictures:

 

Sunday June 5, 2011

We got up Sunday and went and ate breakfast in the middle of a book festival. It was festival week in Chicago, apparently. From there Trey and Justine dropped me off at the Gene Siskel Film Center for the screening. I didn’t even think to film the Q and A, or anything else all weekend, for that matter. Whoopsy! The crowd at the film was decent, and we fell into a bit of good fortune. They played a short film called The Forest by Steven Summers. He was at the screening as well, and told Bob he was a high school teacher. Well, some of his kids and their parents had come to see his movie which was supposed to play before Total Badass, but due to technical difficulties played right after it, so they sat through all of Total Badass, as well. Some of the high school boys though my daughter, Jessica was fine, so I’ve got that going for me.

One of my old friends, Chris Young came out to the screening, and I ended up hanging out with him for the rest of the day as we returned to Division Fest and watched A Place to Bury Strangers (A Reason to Bury Faggots) and, more importantly, Big Freedia, the transgender rapper from New Orleans. Big Freedia is a part of the social phenomenon of extreme ass-shaking which has apparently arisen from the New Orleans transgender rapper scene, and will almost certainly prove to be one of black peoples’ most significant cultural accomplishments since wearing hats sideways, or perhaps the “crip walk”.   Seriously though, if you haven’t seen Big Freedia shake his ass in person, you need to go ahead and put it on your bucket list… it’s awesome. Me personally, I have no problem with a bunch of people up on stage fucking the air with their ass out while some big nigger dressed up like a woman yells “Ass everywhere! Ass everywhere!”, but I found it odd that the citizenry of Chicago would see this as fit to fly into town and have at one of their public festivals with families and shit. Then again, someone spent $450 bucks to fly me out there to show a movie about me dealing drugs and getting blowjobs, so maybe this shit is considered fine art up there, hell I don’t know.

Later that night, I made my way across town to the CUFF final party at Delilah’s, which is apparently a sister bar of Austin’s Casino El Camino, as the owners are friends. By the time I got there, I was completely exhausted from the weekend, and just sat there watching television and listening to the metal they were playing on the jukebox. Good stuff… Iron Maiden, Danzig, Rainbow, all kinds of shit. I hope nobody thought I was being lame or anti-social there, but I really was on my last leg. The funny thing is, when I first landed back on Friday, I had immediately texted Bob, “Just landed. Where’s the drug-fueled pussy party?” He’d keep texting me shit that was going on, but I kept making it clear that whatever he was talking about didn’t sound like the drug-fueled pussy party that I had been promised. I went so far as to finally decree that I wasn’t going to be satisfied unless I walked into a party, and they had this laboratory-type set up which included a disembodied human pussy in a jar being fed drugs through various tubes and whatnot. I talked a big talk, but in reality I haven’t been preoccupied with pussy at all lately, especially with having a girlfriend who lives far away and being accused of rape on that last movie tour we went on. All that has combined to dull down my mojo a bit. Don’t get me wrong though, there was pelt all over Chicago, especially in the film festival crowd.

The film festival put me and Bob up in this really nice hotel our last night in town. I forget the name of it, but it was easily one of the best I’ve stayed in. I left Delilah’s really early and checked in and went straight to sleep.

 

Monday June 6, 2011

Bob and I flew home out of Chicago O’Hare. We were sent to the wrong gate by the airport, and had gotten there so early that we both just kind of drifted off fucking around on our computers and ended up realizing at the last minute that something was wrong. We made the flight by less than a minute. Other than smoking a joint at the airport, right outside the terminal, that is about the only exciting thing to report from the journey back to Austin. I really had a good time in Chicago though, and loved the city.

 

Total Badass and Documenta Madrid; the hole truth

Total Badass kicked total ass at Documenta Madrid

Documenta Madrid was a hoot. A fun-as-hell hoot. If your documentary gets accepted to the fest, you should go. And be ready to party. And see good films.

I didn’t really take the time to bone up on Madrid before hopping on a plane for the fest. But I did learn a few things while there. Here are some observations: all the women in Spain look like Penelope Cruz. And the ones who don’t (including the men), look like a mix of white folk, Mexicans, Italians and Arabs. Spaniards are shorter, on average, than Americans. I’m 6’2” and taller than the average American, but way taller than the average Spaniard. And the black folk (African-Spaniards?) are not fucking around with their blackness; they are as black as night. Character-wise, the Spaniards I encountered were super-nice. They are like Canadians, if the Canadians knew how to party your balls off. Spaniards will throw down a party any time and any place. And they love to be the last man standing, drinking, or smoking. Even the women. Which reminds me, they all smoke.

Day 1 – Thursday, May 5, 2011

This part mostly sucks, but it gets better. My trip started on Thursday, May 5. Which as some Mexicans and Americans know, is Cinco de Mayo. The trip over took 21 hours… (The ellipses are to indicate the passage of time, not a lazy attempt at punctuation.) The trip took a good deal longer than planned and I blame the President.

On the flight to the edge of America, New Jersey, I sat next to fellow Austinite Steve Sanders. Steve is an actor and pal of Michael Dalmon, of Platypus Rex and APESH!T fame. He looks like Hellboy dude Ron Perlman. We had a good time shooting the shit.

The flight from Austin to Newark was delayed. The pilot made sure to let everyone know that it was the President’s fault, as Air Force One was flying around the Northeast and all planes headed that way were held up. The delay caused me to miss my connecting flight to Madrid. After the rigmarole, I ended up on a different flight through London featuring more delays and several hours added to my trip. When I finally arrived in Madrid, it was 23 hours after leaving Austin.

Day 2 – Friday, May 6, 2011

As I just said, this day started on the plane. And languished on the plane for a good deal longer. The only up-side of my delay and diversion is that I learned that British Airway’s flights give you plenty of free booze. Finally, by six in the evening, I was drunk in Madrid. Time to party!

I made it to my hotel and hustled down to the Cinema Palafox for the first of two Total Badass screenings. The decent crowd at the cinema seemed to enjoy the movie. It was pretty neat to watch the flick with Spanish subtitles. I’m already familiar with Spanish cuss words, but it was cool and weird to see the whole flick subtitled. We had no Q&A because one of the festival’s cinemas wasn’t ready for the fest and they had to squeeze in more screenings at the Palafox. I had been looking forward to an awkward and language-barrier challenged Q&A, but no dice.

After the screening, the fest folks headed down to Club Costello for after party shenanigans and booze. I made the trek with the fun-loving festival director Antonio Delgado and his pal whose name I forget. It’s on this night at Club Costello where I’d meet many of the folks I’d end up spending the weekend with: Ruth Somalo (festival translator, filmmaker and Spaniard living in NYC), Sandra Ruesga (filmmaker and programmer for the films in competition), Jean-Claude Taki (fellow filmmaker with the doc Sotchi 255 screening at the fest), and more. The booze flowed and the languages mixed. The partying had begun!

Day 3 –Saturday, May 7, 2011

There’s a Documenta Madrid meet up and lunch every day around noon and several people were praising Total Badass. Maybe because it was praise in the form of the seductive, lispy jiggle of the España Spanish language that made it so special, but it was pretty fucking sweet. The filmmakers, crew and fans took turns introducing ourselves like at a way less sober version of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. We all got a who’s who and I figured out which of these folks could speak English well enough to be my new friends. When a guy resembling Geraldo Rivera’s moustache began to talk, his Spanish sounded more familiar. It turns out he’s from Mexico and had no Spaniard’s lisp. He also spoke fluent English and had that killer ‘stache, so we ended up partying throughout the weekend. His name is Lorenzo Hagerman and he’s a great guy who has a film in the competition called 0.56%. He runs a micro-cinema in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula called La 68.

At the same lunch, I met Martin Guerra, an hombre from Peru, who now lives in Spain and once lived in the U.S. He’s a great guy as well as the hospitality liaison for the fest. It’s a fitting role for him as he’s fun and charming and speaks the sweet, sweet English. We’d end up partying and hanging out later as well. A pattern was developing.

Immediately after the filmmaker lunch (with plenty of red wine), I took a five hour siesta. When in Spain, do as the Spaniards, right? But being an obnoxious American, I had to show them up at their own game. A two or three hour siesta? Bah!

I got a late start to this eve, but it wasn’t quite party-time, so I decided to walk half-way across the city and see some sights. I strolled up past the Prado and eye-fucked some fancy architecture and sexy statues while en route to the bar. Spain is a beautiful city. It’s filled with lots of old buildings that are covered with sculptures and other spiffy accoutrements. Even the newer buildings embrace an artistic bend in their design and construction. I am really liking it here. I timed my walk to land me at Club Costello for the after party. After arriving, I partied.

We shut down Club Costello at 3 AM (again) then headed down to a Spanish version of a heavy metal bar. The joint is called Refugees. Our little gang of Ruth, Sandra, Jean-Claude and a few others (whose names I forget) pounded more booze until 6 AM. These Spaniards like to fucking party. They party like they’re on cocaine, but they’re not on cocaine. They also sing along to all the American songs and don’t give a shit about how gay it makes them look. And they dance. So I gayed out with the locals. Stop, drop and roll-gay.

I made it back to my hotel as the sun was coming up. Never a good sign. Or always the best sign. I flicked on the TV and immediately saw dick and balls, titties and ass: porn. Spain is great! I passed the fuck out and snagged some well-earned zZzs.

Day 4 – Sunday, May 8, 2011

I met a Belgian filmmaker named Sophie Benoot at the filmmaker lunch and we hit it off pretty swell. She directed a film about the American South that I ended up watching later in the day. I really enjoyed the flick.

I saw a total of two movies today, the other being 0.56%. Both were great and both were made by some new friends. My mustachioed Mexican pal Lorenzo directed 0.56%. His flick was an in-the-moment account of the last presidential election, examining the thin margin of victory that gave the Mexican presidency to Felipe Calderon, over the liberal candidate and former mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Aside from reminding me of, and re-pissing me off about, the Bush-Gore bullshit that we Americans had to endure, it was a great doc.

I strolled into my other new friend’s movie immediately after. Sophie’s flick, Blue Meridian, is a choice little essay-doc that floats down the Mississippi River, stopping in small communities along the way to revel in the local oddballs and weirdos who dot the landscape. It was pretty sweet, beautifully shot and bizarrely engaging. Among other things I enjoyed about the movie was getting more than a giggle out of watching the Spaniards in the audience laugh and freak out over a high-stepping, ass-shaking black high-school marching band from the deep-south.

Speaking of weirdness, people keep staring at me. This happens everywhere I go: the bar, the subway, on the streets, in the restaurants. Everywhere, and a lot. Sometimes it’s sexy gals, so that’s cool (happens all the time, ahem). But it’s not exclusively sexy gals. Hell, not even exclusively gals. And when I gaze back at someone who’s eyeballing me, they don’t look away as if busted. They keep on getting a gander, soaking up the me. I’ve yet to figure out why. I’m a bit taller than most here, but is that it? There are plenty of folks with blue eyes running around Madrid, so that can’t be it, right? Maybe it’s cuz I’m so goddamn pretty that they are lured to my visage like the light spewing from the Arc of the Covenant? Or maybe they all think I’m Dr. House from that TV show? I’m certain it’s not that I’m just paranoid, as I’ve found no weed here.

Speaking of sexiness, a sexy gal approached me in the streets and said something seductive in Spanish. I replied “No hablo español.” And she asked “Qué habla?” “inglés.” I replied. “Want to fuck?” she asks. My dick plumped and tingled, as it should when a scantily clad babe inquires about succulently surrounding your cock with her hot, wet flesh. And what kind of question is that? Is there more than one answer? “Fuck yes, I want to fuck, I’m a red-blooded American.” “Twenty-five.” She replied. Euros, she meant. I thought she meant minutes, as in: let’s fuck for at least 25 minutes. Which was fine by me. Hell, why stop there? At this new realization, however, I began to barter her down to 20. That’s when she slipped up; clearly her bartering skills were not good. Or maybe it was the language barrier, but she offered to cut me a deal for 15 Euros (maybe she thought I was Dr. House?). After a bit of back and forth, I settled for a hand job behind the dumpster for five bucks. Or did I?

What I learned later is that Club Costello, the after-party venue, is in the heart of the prostitution district. Lucky me. And here I was thinking that there was this fine babe who just could not control her lust for me and coincidentally needed to borrow some cash. I was slightly less flattered to learn this.

Berr-heen-ya. That’s how you say Virginia in Spanish. It took me a very long tome to figure out what the hell she was saying when I asked her name. Both Virginia Candás and her friend Maria Torres are workers at the fest and we ended up partying all night at Club Costello. It was a fun and weird night of speaking very slow Spanglish to, once again, conquer the language barrier. Both Virginia and Maria were awesome.

After shutting down Costello, we gathered a gaggle of funsters and partied all night at Wurlitzer, a rock and roll club that’s open until 5AM. The beers here cost 3.5 Euros (more than five bucks). After three in the morning, they jump up to 4.5 Euros (nearly seven bones, American). A mixed drink, while pretty fucking big, will rip eight Euros from your pocket (12 fucking dollars). So, it ain’t cheap to get your drunk on around here. That doesn’t seem to be stopping anyone from partying balls.

Day 5 – Monday, May 9, 2011

I slept for 11 hours. I just skipped the first part of the day and ran the night’s sleep into the siesta. I totally one-upped these Spaniards at their own game of day-sleeping.

I got all touristy today and walked around old Madrid, looked at buildings, ate tapas and chorizo. Went totally American tourist on their asses.

We unspooled our second Total Badass screening tonight. There were over a hundred people in there and they were digging it. I guess the word of mouth from the first screening spread and got folks riled up for the flick. That was nice.

Duh, but I partied at Club Costello again. I hung out with my new friends, Ruth, Sandra, Sofie, Jean-Claude, Lorenzo, Omer Oké (filmmaker) and others, whose names I forget.

Late night found us at the Wurlitzer again. The party was thinning and the Spaniards were starting to fall behind as it was only a Mexican, a Frenchman, a Belgian and an American who kept the torch going until the wee hours. Well, there was a Spaniard in our midst, but he’s originally from Peru. Martin was good to go, nonetheless.

As we stumbled out of the bar, I learned of this killer Oriental express beer-selling scheme that has a well organized groups of Asian folks (of whom there seem to be very few in Spain) slinging booze off cardboard boxes like crafty entrepreneurs or Three-card Monte hucksters. When cops are spotted, the scouts on the periphery text all the pop-up speakeasies and they simultaneously disappear like a choreographed gang of ninjas sans smoke bombs. A few minutes after the fuzz leaves they return in unison. And a street beer for a single Euro (compared to 3.5 or 4.5 Euros in a bar), ain’t a bad deal. That and the beer seems sweeter because crime is fun.

Day 6 – Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Today, I headed home. I got two hours of sleep last night. I hit the hay at 6AM and got up at 8AM to bolt for the airport. Nothing eventful happened until I hit customs in Washington D.C., where I was to switch planes.

Hey, guess what. Remember when Chad and I were arrested while on tour last summer? Remember how Chad’s forgotten bag of shwag-weed crumbs got us busted by the sniffer dog? Remember how we just couldn’t come to part with our hash and I’d stuffed the weed and hash inside a jar and crammed it into my pants and then was subsequently jailed for possession after a warrantless search of our car? Here’s the tour journal entry, in case you’ve forgotten: TOUR JOURNAL: Day 35: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 Miss Marfa and Arrested

Well, in the long run on that hot summer day, Chad and I each got a ticket for possession of paraphernalia. If we weren’t ingrates who’d had their constitutional rights trampled (and $537 citations assessed), we’d be thankful that we didn’t get a felony possession charge for the hash. But do you know what all this means for my current and future travel? It means that every single time I return to the U.S. after a trip abroad, Homeland Security will search all of my possessions. They will remove every item and shake, poke and prod it. They will open every container, test the structural integrity of the baggage itself and take up to 25 minutes searching for a pipe or maybe some weed. Way to gobble our tax dollars keeping us all safe by thoroughly looking for a joint, TSA. That joint (had there been one) was surely going to blow up the airplane and kill hundreds, right? What a grievous threat I am to the security of the homeland. Our tax dollars at work. Always keeping national security a priority, TSA, searching for some fucking pot. Summon your patience the next time your find yourself in line behind a harmless weed-smoking fellow traveler, folks. You will be delayed—for your own protection.

The bookend of the trip: Every single flight I took was delayed. The first flight was the President’s fault (all planes headed to the N.E. had to be delayed or re-routed because Air Force One was flying in the area) and it was all downhill from there. The last leg of the trip was actually not delayed. That is, until we landed in Austin. We then sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half. Once again, the pilot made sure to inform us that it was the President’s fault again as he’d just finished his visit to Austin and was about to take off.

Despite the President’s fucking up my trip, I had a blast. I’d do it all over again in a flash.

Total Badass screening at Documenta Madrid

Total Badass and director Bob Ray will be in Madrid hanging out with the Princess of Asturias for the Documenta Madrid International Film Festival.  Come see how Total Badass translates to Spanish and party with royalty!  Documenta Madrid runs from May 6-15.

http://www.documentamadrid.com/ficha.php?cod_pelicula=109

NEW Total Badass news coming soon!

Forthcoming is info about:

• Total Badass screening at Documenta Madrid
• 2010 Year in Review (including lots of Total Badass news)
• Total Badass screening at Chicago Underground Film Festival
• Slacker 2011 w/ Total Badass director Bob Ray
• Total Badass DVDs for sale online!

Stay tuned.

SXSW '10 and CrashCam Films / CrashToons

On Sunday, March 14, the SXSW Film Festival will screen “Platypus Rex’s ABC-Hole.” it will be funny.
http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/6176

And this Tuesday morning panel on “fair use” will screen a Total Badass clip!
http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/5086

2009, the year in rewind

CrashCam Films & CrashToons year in review.

First off, thanks to all y’all for your help and support in making 2009 such a great year!

Admittedly, we’ve been posting more of the smaller updates on our Facebook pages as opposed to “official” blogs for our multitude of ongoing projects.

Here are the Facebook pages, if you wanna buddy-up:

CrashCam Films: http://www.facebook.com/CrashCamFilms

CrashToons (including APESH!T, Platypus Rex and more): http://www.facebook.com/CrashToons

Hell on Wheels: http://www.facebook.com/HellOnWheelsTheMovie

Rock Opera:  http://www.facebook.com/RockOpera

Total Badass: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Total-Badss/117590408128

And for you Twitter-heads: http://twitter.com/crashcamfilms

So what went down over at the CrashCam Films / CrashToons Global HQ in Austin, TX this year of 2009?  Behold:

The bulk of elbow grease went into the new feature doc, “Total Badass.”  It’s nearly finished and crazy-fun (more info below).  We also completed a re-write of the feature-length script for the dark comedy “The Down Side.” Slamdance Script Coverage Service raves about the Down Side “Hilarious and gut wrenching.  Pure Storytelling genius!“  On top of that, we finished the story for the new narrative feature “Reign in Blood,” and are now fleshing out the script with hopes of shooting it mid ’10.

Here’s a project-by-project breakdown of what went down this year:

Total Badass

Total Badass is the new feature documentary about my buddy (and notorious sex-fiend, writer-publisher-singer-trashcan-jumper, rabble-rouser and man-about-town) Chad Holt.  From May of ’08 through June of ’09 we shoot the new doc.  We quickly moved into post-production in the late summer and, as of today, are about 98% through with the edit.  The movie is NUTS!  You’ll surely be hearing about it a lot in the near future.

www.TotalBadassTheMovie.com and www.facebook.com/pages/Total-Badss/117590408128

CrashToons

Through most of 2009, we were screening the pile of ‘toons we made in ’08.  We screened “Spanish Lessons with Chupacabra Volume 7: Conversational Spanish” at SXSW.  Various APESH!T ‘toons screened at LA Comedy Shorts Film Festival and Animation Block Party (in both NYC and Austin).  And a mound of creatively curated CrashToons unspooled before the Rock Opera 10 Year Anniversary screening at the Alamo Drafthouse in October.

Online, we host all the ‘toons at www.CrashToons.com.  And a few ‘toons even popped up on Playboy Magazine’s site, www.Playboy.com.

As for new ‘toons, 2009 was a tad sparse.  We were pretty busy finishing up the filming and editing of the new feature doc, Total Badass.  But we did complete a new one called “Platypus Rex’s ABC-Hole.”  And it’s crazy-fun.  ABC-Hole is featured on the CrashToons home page, so swing by and check out the 28 seconds of hilarious and educational fun.

www.facebook.com/CrashToons and the ‘toons at www.CrashToons.com

Hell on Wheels

We released the doc through IndiePix (http://www.indiepixfilms.com/film/hellonwheels) in late ’08, and it was such a blast that IndiePix re-released it in Feb!  Double the fun!  And then, we launched the doc on SnagFilms (http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/hell_on_wheels/), where it remains as one of the highest rated docs on the site!  You can also catch the flick on Netflix and on Xbox and even on iTunes (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMovie?id=333912438&s=143441)

The great reviews continued to pour in over 2009.  Check the Facebook page (www.facebook.com/HellOnWheelsTheMovie) for links to many of these reviews.  We also got a big plug from Texas Monthly magazine (www.texasmonthly.com/2009-10-01/hollywoodtx.php) and we landed on the homepage for Moviefone.com.

We screened Hell on Wheels in several cities in ‘09, including but not limited to theatrical screenings in Austin, Asbury (NJ), Sacramento, Boston, a fest screening at CineSol Film Festival in McAllen, TX, and even a university screening at The Southwestern University Feminist Studies Program with filmmakers Bob Ray and Werner Campbell and skaters Electra Blu (TXRG) and Smarty Pants (TXRD) in attendance for a lively and enlightening post-screening Q & A.

Hell on Wheels landed on a couple of those end-of-decade lists care of The Onion’s
A/V Club: http://www.avclub.com/austin/articles/10-overlooked-austin-movies-of-the-00s,36275/, and a “Best Documentaries of the Decade” list: http://boomerbust-scooter63.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-documentaries-of-decade.html

http://www.HellOnWheelsTheMovie.com and http://www.facebook.com/HellOnWheelsTheMovie

Rock Opera

Holy poop!  We had our ten-year anniversary screening of Rock Opera at the Alamo Drafthouse in October with after party at the Highball featuring a Voltage and Pocket FishRmen reunion.  If you were there, you rocked!  If not, you missed out on some FUN!

http://www.RockOperaTheMovie.com and http://www.facebook.com/RockOpera

CrashCam Films

http://www.CrashCamFilms.com

http://www.facebook.com/CrashCamFilms

CrashToons

http://www.CrashToons.com

http://www.facebook.com/CrashToons

Twitter: http://twitter.com/crashcamfilms

Whew!  So there ya have it, the year in rewind.  We promise lots more far-out, and raucous flicks in 2010.  Keep up to date by signing up for the email newsletter (http://crashcamfilms.com/index1.htm) or palling around with the Facebook pages, if ya prefer.

Once again, thanks to everyone who helped make 2009 such a fruitful and fun year.  We cannot do all this alone, and are really appreciative of your help and support.  Best wishes in 2010!

Hugs and Happy New Year!

Bob Ray & the CrashCam Films / CrashToons team