Last year was my first Fantastic Fest and I'll go ahead and admit it: mistakes were made. In my defense, I have a hard time believing that anyone, let alone little 'ol me, can attend the world's largest genre film festival for the first time and walk away feeling like they did everything perfectly. That's just not how the world works. Heck, that's just not how film festivals work.
However, I learned a lot over those eight days, seeing five movies a day at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar (the best theater in the best theater chain in the world, if you'll allow me to be so bold) and managing to live to tell the tale. Now, I'm a returning veteran. I'm a champion of Fantastic Fest, ready to return for another 192 hours of the best horror, science fiction, fantasy and action films the world has to offer. While I'm by no means an expert—some of my friends and colleagues have braved the fest six times and are returning for round seven—I do think that I've learned a thing or two about how to do Fantastic Fest right. Grab a pen and some some paper, film buffs… you're going to want to take notes.
1. Eating Right
One of the benefits of Fantastic Fest being held at the Alamo Drafthouse is the food: delicious, often fried and always artery-wrecking—food that will be brought straight to you as you watch a film. After all, nothing compliments a Korean revenge drama more than a basket of hot wings.
But be warned! There are serious side effects to subsisting entirely on Drafthouse cuisine for a week straight (aside from those extra five pounds you'll take home as a nasty little souvenir). The food on the menu may be tasty, but it's heavy and it has the nasty habit of making even the toughest festival-goer sleepy and bloated when too much is consumed. Sure, buy a meal every so often, but don't be afraid to brown bag it, preferably with something light and healthy. Your stamina—and your wallet—will thank you.
2. Regulating Your Caffeine
On a related note, you will need caffeine. I repeat: You. Will. Need. Caffeine. This really isn't an option. If you want to do Fantastic Fest right, you're going to need to pump your slowly weakening body full of brain-slapping chemicals. Here's my secret caffeine schedule, which I gladly pass onto you, grasshopper:
Begin with tea (I'm a fan of the orange dulce with two sugars, lemon and one honey), consumed during the evening shows. Around day three, you'll need to start consuming tea during the day and coffee in the evening. You may be tempted to start with coffee, but you need to work toward that. Too much too soon and you'll crash and burn. Around day five, coffee during the day becomes an option and you'll be needing espresso at night. Days seven and eight? Espresso, all day and every day.
3. Don't Be Shy!
If you're attending Fantastic Fest, it's because you're a movie fan, a hobby that requires you to silently sit in the dark and shun others for two hours while you watch imaginary things projected onto a screen in front of you. This is not a hobby that trains you to be sociable, so many of us movie buffs are shy, soft spoken and afraid of crowds and meeting new people.
Lose this mentality. Now.
Fantastic Fest is a celebration of eclectic cinema, most of which belongs on the opposite end of the spectrum from the mainstream and appeals to the tiniest of niche audiences, AKA, you! Do you know what this means? The guy standing in line in front of you and the guy behind you all belong to the same niche! This is a gathering of people who like the same things you do. Don't look at your feet. Don't ignore others. Say hello. Make new friends. Strike up conversations. If you're one of those people who always has trouble in social situations because all you can talk about is movies, then you're finally in the right place. Embrace that.
4. Be Adventurous
Don't get attached to your schedule, folks. No matter how meticulously you plan your week, there will always be a few screenings you can't get into. Or you'll hear great buzz about another film that wasn't on your radar. Or you'll decide to forgo a movie and attend one of Fantastic Fest's nutty and amazing special events (the Fantastic Feud and the Fantastic Debates should not be missed). If you won't be malleable, if you try to stick to your carefully diagrammed schedule no matter what, you may miss something that you'll regret. Over-planning and fretting over your schedule is no way to have fun. Make your priorities and have a rough outline of what you want to do, but keep it loose and ready to change at a moment's notice. Let Fantastic Fest happen to you. Shake things up. Try things that are outside your normal comfort zone.
If you're not the party type, attend a party anyway. If you came for the horror films, give the French hitman comedy a shot. This week is a celebration of cinema and a celebration of being a fan of cinema. You can stick to routine any other week of the year. Try something special. Try something different. Try something dangerous. But not literally dangerous. Because that would be dangerous.
5. When In Doubt, Walk Out
Sometimes, being adventurous means you walk into a fetishistic Japanese gore comedy featuring a climactic battle between a mutant schoolgirl and a ten foot tall monster who shoots acidic milk from her breasts. There is an audience for this, but if you're like me, you do not belong to this very specific niche. Don't sit there and suffer: just stand up and walk out (unless you're a paid writer and you have to review it, you poor sucker).
Outside of that theater, there is plenty more to do, plenty more to see and plenty more people to meet. If you're not having fun, just leave... even if it means catching the disappointed glare of the attending filmmaker. You've learned something about your personal tastes and now you're a stronger person for it. Well done. Pat yourself on the back and dash across the street for a treat at Gourdough's. You've earned it.
ch-ch-changes
Austin music podcast tackles Ticketmaster, climate, and more in new season
Not to shock anyone, but the music here in the Live Music Capital of the World doesn't play itself. A performer's stage persona is often only a sliver of their full reality — and unless they're taking breaks between songs to proselytize, many issues that affect their careers daily never meet the public eye.
Pause/Play, a podcast collaboration between public radio stations KUT and KUTX, is entering its fifth season of uncovering these backstage experiences. This season, which launched April 17, tackles topics that loom large in music industry debates as well as ones that don't seem explicitly connected at a glance.
Some marquee topics are abusive ticketing platforms, climate change, affordability in Austin, AI, abortion, and gender affirming care. Most, if not all (but who's counting?), were listener ideas — a common practice on Pause/Play, and one that helps the hosts know they're representing Austin's real interests. The overarching theme of the season, however, is "change."
Besides having a broader scope, this season was also different because co-hosts Miles Bloxson and Elizabeth McQueen held pre-recording interviews. Of course, it's nearly impossible for any artist, venue owner, or other industry player to be affected by only one of the above topics, so these pre-interviews resulted in more threads than usual running through the season — and hopefully, more of a chance to get to know each local respondent.
Guiding listeners through the grievances and hopeful musings throughout the season is Bloxson's therapist, Bella Rockman. One of the first speakers in the first episode, Rockman talks about the individual and collective trauma following in the wake of COVID-19 shutdowns — drawing a full circle back to the origin of Pause/Play, or "The Pause," as the pilot episode is titled.
"With Bella Rockman being along [for] the ride — for the journey of us taking you through like all of these changes — you also start to learn ... that all change is not bad," says Bloxson. "Change allows you to grow as a human. Sometimes we're so against changes, and we don't want it, and it causes anxiety ... but at the end of the day, it propels us forward as well."
Indeed, change has been hot on our heels since time immemorial, and it doesn't slow down for podcasters.
In 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union counted 510 anti-LGBTQ bills, including drag bans, introduced in state legislatures — nearly three times as many as in 2022. (As of April 19, 2024, it's tracking 487.) In March, more than 100 artists pulled out of their South by Southwest (SXSW) showcases to protest the festival's military ties, the disproportionate killing in Gaza, and unfair pay for performers. On April 15, news broke that the Department of Justice is planning to sue Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation, on anti-trust grounds.
Bloxson, a reporter focusing on Black life in Austin and pop culture, and McQueen, a radio host and former Asleep At The Wheel singer, have been around the Austin industry for long enough to remember when tickets cost a few dollars extra with tax, and misplacing them meant simply no longer having tickets. They've been around for the ups and downs of SXSW, and are gathering personal anecdotes from speakers as well as the real history — of ticketing, paying performers, and more — that got us to where we are now.
These topics and more shape the always-changing season. The co-hosts have prepared a scripted outline and collected quotes, but they're still fitting pieces in and trying to keep up with the news.
"But we do a fair amount of exposition, and so that's where if [news] comes in ... we can still research it and talk about it," says McQueen. "We started this podcast during the pandemic, and literally week-to-week, we would have something totally in the can, and then we'd come in the day before it was going to go up and they would have changed the masking rules, or changed the something. So we're pretty familiar with how to bob and weave when the news changes."
Although all the episodes will be forward-thinking, one toward the end will ask current industry players to take a look back at their careers and offer advice to folks starting out now. McQueen hopes to provide a "roadmap" to New Austin, and Bloxson asks questions about what success means nowadays.
As for this podcasting duo, they're still feeling the change since the beginning of the show. As McQueen grapples with the idea that her weekends are now more for relaxing than for going to shows, Bloxson is living like every city show is her last — and hoping it's not.
"I'm rarely saying no [to invitations] these days, because I want to see what's out there, and I want to enjoy the scene that we have — because I don't know how much longer we're going to have it, to be quite honest," she says. "I know that people think that that's so far fetched, but the numbers don't lie, and a lot of people are moving outside of Austin. Maybe people won't have to come back to Austin to get money for shows anymore, because they've developed their communities. So I'm just trying to like see us take it all in and do as much as I can right now."
Whatever changes are in store for Austin musicians, Pause/Play will be covering them. Tune in at npr.org. Austinites with ideas or questions can contact the podcast via Instagram messages or kutkutx.studio.