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EVENT: AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL
AUSTIN
FESTIVAL
AT A
GLANCE
HONOREES
Outstanding
Television Writer
› Norman Lear (1)
Distinguished
Screenwriter
› Brian Helgeland (2)
Extraordinary
Contribution to
Film and Acting
› John Singleton (3)
› Chris Cooper (4)
FILM HIGHLIGHTS
Opening night
› “Legend”
Closing night
› “The Program”
Centerpiece
› “Burning Bodhi”
HOT TICKET The Austin Film Festival will host the world premiere of “Burning Bodhi,” with Kaley Cuoco, left, as its centerpiece film.
ences can get a glimpse of festival favorites
like Todd Haynes’ “Carol,” Brian Helgeland’s
“Legend” and Paolo Sorrentino’s
“Youth,” as well as the world premiere
of Matthew McDuffie’s “Burning Bodhi.”
The likes of Norman Lear, John Singleton,
Helgeland and Chris Cooper will be
on hand to receive honors, as well as to
conduct some of the 175 panels that will
be presented during the first four days of
the fest. Over eight days, the festival will
Tipsheet
WHAT:
22nd Austin
Film Festival
WHEN:
Oct. 29-
Nov. 5
WHERE:
Austin,
Texas
WEB:
austinfilm
festival.com
screen 180 films.
Morgan emphasizes that
keeping Austin weird is still
very much part of the guiding
philosophy, with the
screenwriting-oriented panels
driving the festival programming,
rather than the
other way around.
“We have an interesting
audience compared to a lot of other festivals,”
she says. “We fill out 30-some-thousand
movie seats, but the conference is
a huge draw. And there are a lot of people
who come to the festival for the conference
who may not go to a single film.
Because they’re in panels, networking,
trying to get their next job. And that’s
really what drives us. We don’t have a
market. We’re nothing like Cannes or
Toronto. We’re not at all like Sundance.
We’re very much a place where the capital
is people.”
And appropriately for Austin, these
events aren’t exactly black-tie affairs.
“There’s a bar” — namely, the one in
the Driskell Hotel lobby — “that tends to
be a big hangout after the panels. Everybody
goes to the bar, whether it’s the
Coen brothers or Oliver Stone. You never
know who you’re standing next to,
because there isn’t another place to go.
And that’s what people are really here to
do, to meet like-minded people who can
give them a leg up.”
When Morgan started the festival, Austin
still might as well have been the Wild
West for many on the coastal industry
hubs; SXSW had yet to add a film component,
Fantastic Fest was a decade away,
and as she remembers, “in California particularly,
there was still the idea that Texans
were all just crazy people with guns.”
Focusing on screenwriting gave AFF an
early identity, and Morgan was impressed
at how well the experiment took.
“We took a group of people who
weren’t used to being invited to the party,
which is the screenwriter, and we threw
them all into a room together,” she says.
“And you know, even all being members
of the Writers Guild, none of them really
knew each other, because they’re not
bumping into each other all the time.
They’re rewriting each other, but they’re
not necessarily bumping into each other.”
Key to maintaining that focus is the
festival’s annual screenwriting competition,
which drew 9,000 submissions this
year. Recent years’ winners have parlayed
the attention into jobs on the writing
staffs of “Empire,” “Silicon Valley,” “Justified”
and “Halt and Catch Fire.” Predictably,
Morgan cites the explosion of aspiring
TV writers as the biggest shift she’s
seen in her years of reading submissions.
The AFF recently added a TV pilot competition,
and just this year, they’re bowing a
scripted digital series competition.
New this year: Global specialist insurer
Hiscox is not only a fest sponsor but
launching the Hiscox Courage Award,
which recognizes the festival film and
filmmaker that best represents courage,
voted on by the audience.
Considering the festival’s continued
success and the preponderance of screenwriter-driven
new media, Morgan says
she’s surprised that no other festival has
followed its lead.
“If you want to hang out with the cool
kids, the cool kids to me are the screenwriters,”
she says. “And I just can’t imagine
why anyone else hasn’t done it. But I
hope they don’t. I hope we keep it ours.”
PANELISTS
Screenwriters
Conference
› Michael Arndt,
Charles Burnett,
John Ridley, Gary
Ross, Shane Black,
Jack Burditt, Peter
Craig, Chad and
Carey Hayes, Mark
Heyman, Angela
Kang, David Wain,
Todd Kessler,
Simon Kinberg,
Jenny Lumet, Kelly
Marcel, Jonathan
Nolan, Nicole
Perlman, Jason
Reitman, Phil
Rosenthal, Terry
Rossio, Liz Tigelaar
1
2
3
4
LEAR: ROB LATOUR/REX SHUTTERSTOCK; HELGELAND: JAMES SHAW/REX SHUTTERSTOCK; SINGLETON: MATT BARON/BEI/REX SHUTTERSTOCK; COOPER: GREGORY PACE/BEI/REX SHUTTERSTOCK
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