Well, I’ve been back from Austin a few days now, and aside from a nasty cold I managed to get afflicted with at some point during our journey, I think it’s safe to say I’ve recovered nicely from our SXSW experience.

The point of this blog, by the way, is really just to name drop and thank the thousand or so wonderful folks who helped us out or appeared before our cameras when we were on Texas time. So here goes: Thanks to the fine folks with the SXSW festival (Linda, Elizabeth, Mary bless you all) who made the preparations for our journey a whole lot simpler than they might have been otherwise.

Thanks to all the talented filmmakers, from Mike Mills to Morgan Spurlock to Evan Mather (too many more to mention), that took time out to talk to us.
An equal thanks goes to all the wonderful musicians who gave us a few moments of their time both in front of and behind their instruments, including Kurt and William from Lambchop, Cortney Tidwell, The Pink Spiders and De Novo Dahl. All of them joined in our fun and didn’t shy away for a second when we shamelessly asked them to plug us.

Also, a big thanks to our programming manager Roxanne Benjamin, who held down the fort here at DOC HQ in Nashville and filled in for me on our podcast when I was still in the early stages of my current ailment.
I should also say that any of the great footage you’ll soon see could not have been shot without the hard work of Documentary Channel creative director Josh Blasingame or the genius (and I do not use this term lightly, I use it heavily) producer/camera-man/jack of all trades Matthew Robison.
Shout-outs and fruit baskets should also be plentifully handed out to Brady and the wonderful folks at Southern Thread who sponsored our journey and didn’t shy away from some pure Gonzo filmmaking (we can’t wait to share the spot we shot for them with you). Also to Dave and all the lovely folks at VMIX (who made me pose for a photograph when I was looking more like Robert Downey Jr.’s character in “Less than Zero” than the bad mofo Director of Programming you gentle readers know me to be.

So there, proof positive that droppin’ names can be awfully fun sometimes. Hope we can do it again in 2008.

While a Doc Channel crew hung out and worked Austin last week at SXSW, I watched David Fincher’s “Zodiac” twice in two different Nashville theaters. I think it is a great film.
It entertained, informed, and best of all, it’s driven with sharp, developed character acting. And miraculously “Zodiac,” a docudrama, informs and entertains at high levels and in equal measure. It can stand alone as an entertaining Hollywood movie or a documentary-style film about a cartoonist from the San Francisco Chronicle who tracked the Zodiac case.
I’m extra curious about the Zodiac because six years ago, as a newspaper reporter for the Tahoe Daily Tribune in Northern California, I covered an aspect of the case. Donna Lass, a young nurse who worked at one of the casinos at the lake in 1971, disappeared from her desk at 2 a.m. She was never seen again and her body has not been found.
The Zodiac sent a postcard to the Chronicle, as was atypical, claiming he had done something bad at Tahoe, but never specified what he did. On the 30th anniversary of Lass’ disappearance, her sister and nephew walked into the Tribune. I was the crime reporter.
They handed me a copy of private investigator Harvey Hines’ report that accuses Larry Kane, a resident at the time of the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, of being the Zodiac Killer and the man who ended Lass’ life. South Lake Tahoe police detectives vetted Hines’ report, even buying enough of it to order up some FBI investigators to x-ray a possible Lass burial site on the North Shore. But the case fizzled out and remains unsolved.
So going into Fincher’s “Zodiac,” I was biased. I thought Kane to be the No.1 Zodiac suspect. The film, based on the book the cartoonist, Robert Graysmith, wrote about the case, pins blame on a man from the Bay Area named Arthur Leigh Allen. Oddly Allen died of a heart attack in 1992 at the age 58 only days before he was to meet with police for the umpteenth time. Allen was not shy.
Fincher has such a tight hold on the story that neither the drama nor the documents get in its way. And that allows the two-hour-and-forty-minute-film to fly by. Plus it looks great. Fincher, a Bay Area native, takes you high over the Golden Gate Bridge and down along neighborhood streets to create a real sense of San Francisco.
The scariest part of the messy Zodiac tale is that this handful of heinous, motiveless murders happened in sunny California when murders don’t happen: During a daytime picnic next to a lake, along a peaceful rich San Francisco street, in a parking lot next to a college classroom.
Shouldn’t the Zodiac be killing people back East in New York alongside the Son of Sam? That’s what creates the chill. Nothing fits. There’s no motive. It could happen around the next corner … even to you.

Ok…so technically we’re doing Austin…but I do love me some alliteration.

As I type this I’m sitting in Dallas Fort Worth airport enroute to the fabulous SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. I’ll be in Austin covering the festivities on both the film and music sides of things for the week and I’m completely overwhelmed by all that there is to see and do. Luckily I’ll have my cohort, Doc Channel Creative Director Josh Blasingame as a wing man. On the film side of things alone it’s going to be impossible to catch everything I want to see. Between the Rock Docs retrospective and the premieres of new films by Docmakers Mike Mills, Steven Kijak, and Doug Pray (to name just three) it’s going to be a very busy week for your old pal Chris.

We aren’t the only ones who get to take part in the fun, though. Josh and I will be documenting our entire Austin journey and there’ll most certainly be all sorts of fun stuff for you fine folks to check out both on www.documentarychannel.com and the channel for daily updates (podcasts, film reviews, assorted wackiness). Our first SXSW edition Podcast should be available for your downloading pleasure soon. It features music by The Black Lips and Blonde Redhead (who’ll if you’re lucky enough to attend the festival will be among the scads of great bands playing) and an exclusive pre-festival interview with filmmaker Matt Robison who produced “Silver Jew” a doc about poet/musician/genius David Berman and his band The Silver Jews. Matt and his Co-filmmaker Indiewire blogger Michael Tully followed Berman and crew on their first ever tour and were even lucky enough to capture their performances in Tel-Aviv so the film will certainly be one to add to your must-see list if you find yourself in Austin.

On the late night side of things, If you’ll be attending the film portion of SXSW at all I encourage you to hit-up one of the incredibly well chosen midnight series films. As a horror fan there are a lot of cool flicks to choose from that will certainly be getting a bit more press as the year progresses and I’m personally greatly looking forward to catching “The Signal” an indie-horror picture that made a few waves at this year’s Sundance festival and has already gotten a distribution deal through Magnolia (the same folks who gave us last years Oscar nominated Jesus Camp).

Josh and I will be getting ourselves into all sorts of trouble at SXSW and we strongly encourage you to say hello if you’re a doc-fan or even if you just wanna shoot the shat about records or movies. We’ll be throwing all kinds of cool coverage up on www.documentarychannel.com these next few days so keep your eyes on the site.

 Doc Channel correspondent Mark Williams gives us an update on the Durango Film Festival, and some fashion highlights to boot….

 Boodog and Klunkerz. This pairing of movies strikes right at the spirit of Durango – outdoor fun. Boodog is wry, and it will put off any vegetarians, but it was the funniest short I saw at DIFF. Made in Mongolia, the plot is simple: shoot a marmot, only a male (shoot first, check later, as they say here), cook it and eat. The humor is in the narration. I wouldn’t recommend it for kids, unless the sight of a headless marmot whose innards have been removed and replaced with hot rocks (also good for a massage, we are advised), swinging over an open flame does not bother them.