Happy Halloween

Erica and I made these Jack-O-Laterns the other night. I'm serious. They're on our porch as I type this. We're just that talented. See if you can guess which one's I made and which ones Erica made...

Texas recap

In case you missed it, I was blogging part of my trip over on Film Threat...go check it out over there if you care to. Lets see...

I had a GREAT time. Austin is easily my favorite town and it was my birthday, my wife, my mom, my sister and my aunt were there....Pete came....it couldn't have been more fun. Also, the screenings went really well! People I didn't even know asked insightful questions which was nice. The short docs program on the whole was really good and diverse. Made it alot easier to sit through twice. I will say, I was super, super nervous for my first screening.

I took the red eye and had to sit in the hotel lobby for almost 2 hours until I could get a room. Then, I crashed out and was in and out of deep sleep for about 6 hours. Then I woke up and hit the town. Not wise. I had a mini-meltdown when I got back to the hotel...that no one was going to come to the screening and those who did would hate my film. I also had some freaky dreams that I wrote about on Film Threat.

Anyway...I drank lots of beer, ate LOTS of great food and enjoyed myself. Now, it's back to reality...

We interrupt this endless flagellation...

to bring you Jeff Tweedy singing "The Thanks I Get" from his new solo DVD due out October 24.

Watch it here. When I heard him play this live, it just hit me so right. It's a song he wrote for a Soloman Burke tribute album but he got it in too late. Now, we all get to dig it.

Cheating on my blog...

Greeting Petaluma Films Blog readers...

In order to help promote STRINGERS at the Austin Film Festival, I've been posting my pre-festival activities on the Film Threat blogs. While it may be hard to believe, my blog isn't as popular as Film Threat. Shocking, I know. Anyway...

Here's a link to an RSS feed for my Film Threat blogs. While I won't pretend to know "exactly" what an RSS feed is, I'm pretty sure it's like setting up a subscription to blogs and websites. You can join my Film Threat RSS feed here:
feed://www.filmthreat.com/blog/feeds/lewis_rss.php?feed=rss&author=5

In other news...

We got our screening times:
STRINGERS is playing the Austin Film Festival on Friday October 19 at 9:45 at the Hideout and then again on Sunday October 22 at 3:00 at the Dobie. If you are for some reason reading this and planning on attending the festival, please come check it out. The fest is looking like a GREAT one with lots of celebs and inside people running around. Kevin Smith is going to be there!! Check out the Austin Film Festival website HERE.

I've been working really hard on getting a poster going and trying my best to get people to see the film. I can't wait to get to Austin!

Sweet Subversion

Anyone with kids or furthermore, anyone who works with kids, has their fair share or horror stories regarding kid movie sountracks. Currently we're all suffering through the brain aching and redundant "I Like to Move it" song from the film "Madagascar." The song is just the words, "I like to move it, move it" over and over and over and over again. Those clever lyrics are finally punctuated by "I like to move it...MOVE IT!" Ugh, die song...DIE!!

Yet last week the kids movie "Open Season" opened and there was something especially sweet about it's soundtrack. Paul Westerberg did it! The Paul Westerberg from The Replacements. When my buddy told me about it, I explained that I already knew about it and would be skipping it. I told him I worked with kids and went on to explain the "Move it" phenomenon to him and that I didn't need to hear Westy shilling cuddly bears and like...their wacky pie stealing antics. However he insisted the album was not only good, it sounded like the Replacements. Hmmm. Intriguing. But not intriguing enough. Then he said not only did it sound like the Replacements but that the Replacements bass player Tommy Stinson did some songs on it with Paul! O.K..that was it...SOLD!

See, for us die-hard Replacements fans, the thought of any or all of the remaining Mats teaming up for anything makes us all gooey inside. Even if it's for a kids album. So, I got the soundtrack and it's AWESOME! If you like the Replacements or Paul Westerberg solo, you gotta get it. But here's the rub.

I've only seen Paul Westerberg twice in my life. The first time was at a Virgin Megastore in San Francisco where he was performing solo and acoustic. It was an incredible show because he was sounding amazing, even as this drunk douche bag behind me kept heckling him. About 5 songs in, Paul got sick of the heckler, ran into the crowd, slapped him upside the face and took off. Seriously. That was my first live Westerberg show. It's great that I saw it now, in hindsight. But at the time, I was beyond pissed.

The second time was last year when he went on tour. His first tour in a long time. I won't bore you with the details, but it was everything I hoped it would be. Beautiful, fun, disastrous and legendary. Paul got pissed at one point and cracked his guitar on his amp. Yet when he did so, he accidentally whacked himself in the head and played the rest of the show while bleeding profusely. Fucking. Awesome.

This brings me back to the topic at hand. Paul Westerberg, the man who can't remember the Replacements days due to major drug and alcohol consumption, the guy who, at 50 years old hits himself in the noggin with his guitar in the midst of a tizzy fit, just made a great album. For a kids movie. What the hell? I highly doubt he's going to tour on the "Open Season" soundtrack. But since the movie is #1 and probably will be next week too, he's raking in some phat cash. While I couldn't be more happy for my favorite songwriter finally getting paid, this all means it'll be that much longer before he "has" to go on tour.

Buuut...
I find it simply wonderful that millions of kids are demanding this soundtrack because it's available and that both them and their parents are listening to Paul Westerberg and digging it. If only those parents knew...

Ohhh shiiiiiit...

Our G5 crashed the other day. My wife ran a software update on iTunes and the computer totally, totally wigged out. It was incredibly bad timing as I'm trying to get together a birthday party/film festival party on October 15 and I wanted to get cracking on it. Plus, all my stuff with STRINGERS. I'm trying to get people to come to the screening (which is October 19 at 9:45!) as well as get some press for the lil fella. But all that came crashing to a halt as my computer came crashing down.

Saturday morning I called the Mac hotline and had to pay $49 to have a guy try and help me. We did a bunch of tests and whatnot and the end result was "take it to the nearest Mac dealer and have them fix it." Shit. I know taking your computer in for a fix can take weeks and I frankly don't have weeks so I wiped the hard drive and here we are.

It's like having a bad hangover and slowly remembering what was on the other hard drive. We must've lost about 300 songs and some photos as well as just knick-knack things that have accumulated on my desktop. It's incredibly frustrating, annoying and sad. The most annoying thing I've thought of so far is that the iMovie version of the STRINGERS trailer was on there. I think I have it on DVD, but I'm not sure I can pull it off there. Grrr.....