2024 SXSW

A: In 2024 SXSW, Dev Patel came to his talk for Monkey Man late, we couldn’t watch that movie last night, it had 200+ of his Indian "friends and family” (a type of ticket the festival gives to the producer, director and main cast, but usually people at most bring 20+) came to see, legit like an Indian wedding scene. We watched it later in theaters. It was a solid movie, even though immature, it was his debut, so i'll give him that. More than the movie, I liked Dev Patel as a person, at least from what he said and how he was in person. I still can’t exactly pinpoint what’s so charming about him, but he is a very likable person. He came in late because he had been partying all night last night and only slept three hours. Who was he partying with? I wonder, at the same week, the Daniels from Everything Everywhere All At Once were there, who watched Didi by Sean Wang in the same room with us, the entire cast of The Three Body Problem, Alex Garland with the cast of Civil War, Emily Blunt, and a bunch of other people, and musicians, I’m sure they were partying alright.

For the first 15 mins of the talk I was so distracted wondering how the party went, because it’s not a Hollywood party, this is SXSW, people must be relatively chill here, it’s not Florida, Epstein island or some shit in Blink Twice, at least I hope it’s all just normal parties. I doubt all of them knew each other that well though, people don’t always get along with people they work with or in the same industry with, it’s all natural to just meet up with who you want to see. I have never been to any so-called Hollywood parties, just fyi. There were some when I was working on set in China, but not ever since I started only doing post.

Then I got distracted by Dev Patel saying that he smashed his hand making the movie somewhere in Indonesia, ran out of money, was trapped by Covid, lost his financiers, but eventually got picked up by Jordan Peele and finished the move. He said it was his attack on India, and its problems. I honestly don’t remember too much about that movie, I just had to look it up to vaguely remember what it was about, I just remember lots of action, and I could really feel his anger as I was sitting in my seat. He said he smashed his hands, and broke his knee or shoulder or something, but he still went hard. He must have been holding all the anger in for a while now, and took it all out on the film, I can understand that, it happens. Everyone has a different coping mechanism, some are healthier and more constructive than others. Even when it involves hurting yourself.

B: In the same week, we went to another talk by the Daniels from Everything Everywhere All At Once, it was honestly kinda weird, they had powerpoints, and i thought I went for a lecture, when I just wanted some intel on how things are going for them work-wise, any creative tips for the next break, how to manage your crew etc. But they kinda did a rundown on how they grew up like college application essays.

I ran into them later again at Didi’s showing. It was a really packed room, everyone was super excited to see it, and everyone had so much fun. There was a sense of “wow, that was new, that was a fresh angle” kind of surprise, I’m not sure why that movie didn’t do well, I enjoyed it so much.

C: The line for Civil War was long. I think we were in line for an hour, the line wrapped around the building and went to the next block. Alex Garland was there, and he didn’t say much at all before the movie, so I had no idea what the movie was actually about, I didn't do any research. The whole trip was kind of a last minute idea, I was just curious, so we went to check this out, more on this later.

I had no idea Civil War was literally the answer to, “What if there’s another American Civil War?” because people had been storming Capitol Hill these days, so he literally was like, here you go, this is what would happen if there is another one. Maybe I should make one too, “What if China and Taiwan had a war and it proceeded to trigger World War III?”, sounds like a good idea, I gotta write that down, sounds expensive though, not sure how to make it.

D: At the premiere of The Three Body Problem, we each got the VR helmet that was actually in the show, that’s of course, made in China. The first episode was very strong, a girl sitting next to me was bawling during the opening scene about the Cultural Revolution. That section was intense, I wanted to faint, quite triggering. No trigger alert at the time either.

After the screening, the main cast came on stage, along with the show runners. They didn’t say too much, but everyone seemed to really enjoy making that show, and working together is usually always a good thing, and the quality of the collaboration usually reflects the quality of the product, which is how I always know when some people didn’t like working together by the look of the final product / film.

After exiting the theater, we saw a huge red countdown projection, that's projected onto a manmade special effects fog. It looks like those bloody red countdown numbers were appearing and hovering in the air. It was really scary. And that was of course the countdown at the beginning of the Three Body Problem, episode one. It was a really good promo, I was very impressed. And then of course, for all their marketing effort, Rotten Tomato ratings for this show reached 98% or something crazy that night.