Well Horrordance 2.0 is coming up this Saturday night at Club Havok, and they will be screening my short film “Leiah”. Also catch the Making of Necrophobia later in the night, probably between band sets. For details, check out www.havokonline.com.

I’ve been reading Sam O’Steen’s (famous Warner Bros. film editor) book lately while I polish up a few things on Necrophobia. Sam’s a real character. I’ve gone back and started re-watching some of his films like The Graduate and Rosemary’s Baby and man, this guy can cut. Although Mike Nichols and Roman Polanski kind of knew what they were doing too.

I’m mainly waiting on CG and music elements to come together. Mike and Steffen are about half way through the movie’s climactic CG sequence. After that, Mike will be going back and re-doing most of the shots for our key CG creature. He and another animator threw it all together fairly quickly for a deadline we had a few weeks ago, but the truth is there’s just no getting around it: if you want the shots, you gotta put in the work. And this creature is just way to damn cool looking to screw up with a bunch of shitty animation. So Mike and I will be going over each shot to make sure it kicks ass.

I’ve been alternating between Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and Coheed’s “Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV Vol. 1: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness”. Is that not the most fucked up album title ever? Gotta love those guys. BTW, if you look close, you can catch a “certain character” in Necrophobia wearing one of their old hoodies.

-s

OK, never did see the Betty Page flick, but I did see BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON, SLITHER and (oh yesssss) HARD CANDY.

Let me start of by saying, SEE Behind the Mask. You won’t hear about it for a while because they’ve only just begun talking to distributors, but when it does come out, you need to check it out. It rocks. It’s basically Man Bites Dog, set in the world of the supernatural psycho slashers like Freddy and Jason (and yes, Robert Englund is in the flick, along with Zelda Ruibstein from Poltergeist!) Along with all the other amazing shit I have lined up for Odyssee Fest, I will definitely be screening the trailer for Behind the Mask (just the first of MANY, MANY awesome reasons you need to be there!)

SLITHER - It was fun. Nothing mind-blowing, but definitely funny. Basically Critters with slugs & zombies. Also similar to Tremors, but much darker and more gory. The director showed up and introduced one of the stars of the film, introducing us to “Pepe” (or something), the “famous Mexican wrestler”. Sure enough, some dude runs up to the front with a mask and waves his arms around. The director then announces that for the first time in 30 years, this famouse masked wrestler will reveal his identity to the crowd!! Sure enough, the dude yanks off his mask and it’s none other than Michael Rooker, the star creature of Slither. It was all very funny, but then they took off to who knows where and didn’t even bother to do a Q&A afterward. Very strange. That was the first ‘Round Midnight slot horror flick I’ve seen at SXSW where the filmmakers were not all excited and out there in front of the audience afterward answering questions. Whatever, I guess.

OK, so the high point of the entire week for me was seeing HARD CANDY. I can’t tell you how much Laura and I enjoyed this flick. When it was over, I bent the ear of the director (and encouraged him to bend mine) about the making of his film, and he told me some great stories. Basically, this film was made for under $1m within an 18 1/2 day shooting schedule. Just to put this into perspective, I think One Hour Photo had like $12m! Yeah. Laura also stuck around and talked to the writers quite a bit. It was a hell of a film, and these guys did an incredible job making it. Hats off, seriously. GO SEE IT.

GABRIELLE was another good one. Fantastic cinematography. Kind of a French “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf”, but far more morbid. There were two shorts that played with Reel Shorts 3 that I absolutely loved, and those were FOURTEEN and HIRO. If you see those around anywhere, definitely watch them. I talked to the directors of both, and in both cases I was really impressed with how down to earth they were. I really don’t know if they understand just how damn brilliant their films were.

There was one other amazing HORROR short that played before Population 436, and it was.. well.. it tore the fucking roof off. It was AWESOME. And all I’m sayin’ is… you’ll see it at Odyssee Fest.

*** UPDATE ***

Yes you WILL!! It’s called Monster, it’s an Australian film from first-time director Jennifer Kent, and she was cool enough to shoot me a DVD for the show so quick I almost got whiplash. Take my word for it folks, even though it’s a 10 minute short, MONSTER will be one of the major highlights of Odyssee Fest!

-s

Toxic Shock TV posted a fairly long interview with me. Check it out…

http://www.toxicshock.tv/interviews/stacy_davidson.htm

So, the Al Franken flick “God Spoke” was frikkin AWESOME. Amazing. Then we had to run over to Andy Dick’s new film (written & directed!), which was hillarious but paled in comparison to the Q&A that followed where Andy freaked out the audience, shouted at everybody, fucked with the guy from Rent a lot and finally dragged Mo Collins out of her chair, tackled her to the ground and humped her face. So yeah, the movie was cool too. But.. yeah.

Had to turn in early that night, but yesterday it was on again. We did a bunch of panels, very cool. Met an awesome guy from Film Threat by the name of Eric Campos who loved my trailer and we talked news coverage and festivals for Necro. Very awesome. Also met some great guys at the TEXAS FILMMAKERS booth, go check out their website: www.texasfilmmakers.com. They have amazing resources, offer free editing bays to struggling filmmakers, contracts, online project management w/ a filmmaker community setup. Very very cool. We need to help get these guys an office setup in Houston.

Ran into Alfred from the Houston Film Commission and we poked around at the IF Show a bit and then hit all the parties (some of which I wasn’t supposed to be at, but SXSW is funny that way). Let me just say, going to open-bar mixers all over Austin from 6pm til the break of dawn, very dangerous.

We started off at the Courtyard. Nice little place. Great BBQ spread. I don’t think we were supposed to be there, but oh well.

Then we went off to see The Kassidy Kids, which was a great frikkin flick made by some great Austin “dream team” talent and man, what an awesome story. That’s what I like about Austin filmmakers, they actually TELL STORIES. Fucking crazy idea, I know.

So after, we went up to the Karma Lounge for the after party. I heard they had tacos, but I wasn’t hungry. Free wells, but no “real” drinks. Good enough. I setup my laptop and showed people my trailer and various fucked up Fulci and Argento flicks. Good times. Stopped Kadeem Hardison and expressed my delight at seeing him in a dark, fucked up dramatic role. I love seeing a new side of an actor who has been stereotyped the way he has for so long. Very cool. He loves Austin, and hopes to work here again sometime soon. We agreed that it’s like LA without the attitude. People care as much about film and story here as they do about money in LA, and that’s pretty exciting. He’s a really cool guy. Hope to have him on my MySpace friends list soon. muhaha. Saw David Cross on the way out and we screamed at each other for a moment. He’s all over the place in Austin.

Free booze ran out, so Laura, her friend Rachel, Alfred and I all headed over to Maggie May’s for the Darkon after party. Maggie’s has an open courtyard, YAY we can finally smoke. Awesome spread. All finger food, but gormet. Darkon is a flick about some SCA guys and how their hobbies effect their personal lives, so naturally there were big guys in armor bashing the crap out of each other on stage (and girls bashing guys). Good times. More free booze.

Finally, it was edging 2am so we all took off for a private party up at the Marriot. Got to meet my reps, very cool. Mostly we sat around and watched people fall over couches and spill vodka everywhere while we tried to sober up enough to drive home (before hitting that falling asleep stage). Goooooood times.

I just did a film law panel, waiting for a theatrical distribution panel. planning to see a flick about Betty Page(!!) later at the Alamo. Oh god I love the Alamo. But first, I’m gonna go back to the IF show, find a Panasonic HVX200 (you can’t friggin SPIT in there without hitting one) and screw with it until it falls apart. DRRROOOOOOOOOLLL. fuck I want one. It HURTS.

I think we’re seeing a horror flick tonight too. Kick ass. Oh I ran into Ti West of The Roost. Horror peeps in da’ house, yo.

-s

OK, so I’m blogging my SXSW experience. After paying $300 for our badges, the $17 for a couple of deli lunches didn’t sting so bad. Of course, now that we basically spent our life savings (including parking and bottles of filtered tap water), they basically hurd you like cattle and treat you like a jackass tourist.

Hey but.. fucking FREE WiFi. Gotta love that.

I seem to remember there being real panels at SXSW a few years ago with major film industry personalities. Now it’s like sifting through sewage to find a panel featuring anyone more interesting than “Joe Blow CEO of some fuckhead technology company you never heard of” talking about the exciting new ways to capitolize on the “iPod explosion”. Can I just say, “Fuck SXSW Interactive?” I mean, I’m glad it exists, I want it to thrive, hell I used to work for Origin and had my own game company for a while so I think the concept is great. But integrating it with SXSW Film was a shitty idea and the film side has suffered incredibly because of it.

Started off the films with two flicks exec. produced by Kevin Smith, “Fuck” and “Small Town Gay Bar”. Both great flicks, and the director of Gay Bar was especially awesome and entertaining. Plan to see a film about the plight of the trans-gender, then on to the Paramount for Al Franken’s new film. Then back to the ACC for an Andi Dick flick and Midnight Shorts at Alamo S.Lamar. No Alamo Downtown tonight, dammit. Maybe tomorrow. Just met the owner of the original Austin Alamos today. Cool guy. Sparks were flying when he and a Landmark guy butted heads on a panel. Good times. Off for another panel…

this sandwich is good. not $7 good, but it’s pretty fucking good.

-s

I’ve just started this as a master blog for Odyssee Pictures and my various films. Thanks to Scott Glosserman (director of the kickass epic “Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon”) for the idea. I saw the same blog program on his site and thought it looked great. I’ll start by re-posting a couple of blogs from Myspace on my SXSW 2006 experience.

-s