SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/81866
From left: Directors Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith, Mike Judge and Steven Soderbergh at the 1997 SXSW Film Conference panel "Outside the System Inside the System." also the year Nancy Schafer's four-year-old SXSW Film Festival had something of a coming-out party. The docu- mentary Full Tilt Boogie, about the making of Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk 'Til Dawn, meant Quentin Tarantino (the film's screen- writer and Razzie-nominated star) made one of his many trips to Austin. Though QT had inititally gone AWOL, he joined locals Rodriguez, Richard Linklater and Mike Judge, as well as Kevin Smith and George Huang, for a panel called "Outside The System Inside The System." "That was a huge deal," to be solved: Why didn't he know how many people truly cared about him?" Johnny Cash's 1994 show would not be the only time that staffers broke the "SXSW is not for you" command. In 1999, Tom Waits played the Paramount Theatre. "I turned off my radio and watched that show, I'll confess," says Grulke. "I was not gonna miss Tom Waits. "It was a really miraculous future SXSW Film producer Matt Dentler said in Alison Macor's 2010 book Slackers, Chainsaws And Spy. He was in the audience for the panel and soon became a South by Southwest volunteer for the first time. "Great timing. Here are these guys who have been this huge overnight sensation. They do this panel, and they all went on to do bigger things." Just as Linklater and Rodriguez proved you could thrive in movies from a place like Austin, Texas — echoing Swenson's original music business raison d'etre — SXSW would also thrive as a film festival. Interactive's moment was still some years off. It enjoyed a growth SXSW 1997 Music Featured Speaker Tony Bennett (left) spurt from the .com boom between 1999 and 2000, but then endured the bust like everybody else. "We would tease Hugh mercilessly that the reason he had so many panels was to keep his numbers up with speaker comps," says Swenson. "I always believed it would turn around, but it was only Hugh's stubbornness and drive that kept it going." A tragic setback came in February 1999, when Interactive founder Dewey Winburne committed suicide. "I told people that Dewey had the perfect mind for dealing with interactive media because he was nonlinear in his thinking," Swenson wrote on a Winburne memorial website. "He was one of those people who just burned too bright; who moved too fast for this world. And now he's left us with a mystery never 12 SXSW ORLD / M ARCH F ILM- IA 2011 Including giving Waits his own personal contact lens valet. "He'd just gotten contact lenses," Grulke told Geek Weekly. "I got a call a day or two before the show and [Waits' manager] said, 'Brent, can you get me the name of an optometrist in town who can put Tom's contacts in and take them out?'" Austin physician Ron Byrd, also of the band Prescott Curlywolf, handled the assignment. Waits was SXSW 1999's tough ticket (the reserved seats were split among badgeholders, wristbands and a same-day general public sale), with fans lining up as early as 4:30am. "People tried to hide in the theater during the day and we had to chase them out," says Swenson. "One enterprising young woman brought a mop and bucket and tried to pretend she was a janitor." Gil Kaufman of Addicted To Noise sur- veyed the line before the show, spotting Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous and Calexico's Joey Burns hoping to get in with everybody else. As the aughts approached, what affected SXSW most is what affected show," he continues. "Every year we have a wish list: 'We ought to see if Tom Waits wants to play,' and I said, 'Oh, Tom Waits doesn't have any reason to play SXSW, he doesn't have a record.' Waits' manager called like two weeks out and said, 'Tom wants to play, but he'll only play a theater, blah blah blah. So everybody really worked hard.'" everybody, from the music business to the media to grandparents and children: the internet. THERESA DIMENNO