Here is what I learned from my SXSW 2006 experience:

1. If you have a virtual sell-out in the grandest theater in your hometown, all other screenings will pale in comparison. Even though we sold out the Alamo Downtown for our second screening and the reaction was very positive, with lots of laughing in the right places, it still felt somehow subdued. But, if the screenings had been flipped, with the Alamo one first, I would have found that one ecstatic & transcendant and the Paramount one even more ecstatic & transcendant.

2. My cell-phone ruins my life. This I learned from Swanberg & Co.'s excellent LOL. The device I'm writing this blog on right now also ruins my life and makes me less of a man. Yet I continue to write...

3. In the right hands, the Panasonic DVX100A can perform miracles. This I learned from Los Hermanos Nee with their hallucinogenic vision of New York City in The Last Romantic. They spent months on color-correction alone and the first shot you see of a phospherescent-green Times Square tells you that it was all worth it.

4. High school is a Hitchcockian nightmare. This I learned from Gretchen. Steve Collins has such a precise vision of Gretchen's deadpan, obsessive worldview and with the help of cinematographer PJ Raval & the entire art department, that vision is all over every single frame of the movie.

5. The Dark Elves can't be trusted. This truism comes courtesy of Darkon, a doc that seems to be just about a group of dorky Baltimoreans who like to dress up in padded armor and whale on each other with fake swords, but is actually a fascinating meditation on the nature of perceived reality and the search for meaning in a deadened, corporatized, suburbanized America. As the film goes on, the "real" world of Starbucks, Diet Pepsi and shitty white-walled apartments starts to seem like just as much of a fantasy world as Darkon. But seriously, stay away from the Elves.

And finally...

6. If Paul Schneider tries to hand you a flyer while you're eating breakfast, just shut up and take it. I was sitting at Las Manitas on Monday morning, scarfing down some Spicy Huevos a La Mexicana when Paul Schneider got up and started handing out flyers for Live Free or Die. These two guys across from me somehow disrespected the flyer (I wasn't paying attention at that point) and so Paul had a 10-minute, very public argument with them, along the lines of "If you didn't want the flyer, just say 'No thank you.' Then I'd respect you, then you'd have some fucking balls!" Needless to say, I took the flyer and said thank you.

And thank you to SXSW for teaching me these valuable lessons.

-Bryan Poyser
Co-Writer, Producer, "The Cassidy Kids"
www.burntorangeproductions.com
www.myspace.com/thecassidykids

that last one is hilarious.

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