Greetings, South by Southwesterners!
It’s another busy day in the beautiful city of Austin. Light rain is likely to cool things down today, which might be a welcome reprieve to anyone outside during yesterday’s scorcher. Gear up with your swag umbrellas, there’s a lot to look forward to today.
Quartz’s Tim Fernholz, who covers politics and the space business, has joined Adam and Ashley here in Bat City to cover the political heavyweights who’ve descended on the festival.
What to watch for today
Her smell. Elisabeth Moss is all over South by Southwest. Earlier this week, The Handmaid’s Tale actress celebrated the premiere of the film Us, in which she had a supporting role. This afternoon, she takes the stage to discuss her starring role in the upcoming movie Her Smell, about the troubled punk rocker Becky Something.
For the sneaker-heads. Nike design legend Tinker Hatfield will break down his creative process in a session this afternoon that’s focused on the disciplines of design.
Zucked. Tech venture capitalist Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, will talk to with Wired’s Nicholas Thompson about how the social network got to where it is today, and where it is headed. McNamee, author of the recent book Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, has said that Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s new privacy-forward policies are still mainly looking out for the best interests of the company, and not its users.
The Fonz teaches us how to act. Henry Winkler of Happy Days fame will be leading an acting workshop in one of the day’s coolest events. Some audience members have prepared monologues and scenes for Winkler to critique; everyone else just gets to watch. On HBO’s Barry, Winkler plays a former actor now teaching theatre workshops for aspiring actors. Life imitates art.
Fly me to the moon. We’re really excited for this one: The moon landing documentary Apollo 11 screens today. Comprised entirely of archival footage—most of which has never before been seen by the public—the doc wowed festival attendees at Sundance in January and is looking to do the same this week in Austin. It should make for a great companion piece to last year’s Neil Armstrong biopic, First Man.
Party planner: The SXSW party scene is still going strong. Hydrate well, friends. Here are a few gatherings we’re monitoring: Paramount and Twitter’s invite-only party for Pet Sematary, which will close out the film festival later in the week (10:30pm at the Twitter House on Rainey Street), and BuzzFeed’s RSVP-only gathering at Amazon’s Garden of Earthly Delights pop-up (10pm).
Screening of the day
Booksmart. Actress Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, Booksmart, premieres today at the Paramount. Don’t worry—if you can’t get in today, it’s playing again tomorrow at the Atom Theater in the convention center.
Billed as a coming-of-age comedy about two high school seniors living it up before they graduate, the film is garnering early comparisons to Lady Bird. That’d put it in some very good company.
What everyone is talking about
Scooters. Last year at SXSW, clusters of scooters lingered near the Austin Convention Center, University of Texas in Austin campus, and select other spots around town. This year, they’ve taken over. Scooters from Jump, Lime, Bird, Spin, and Lyft litter the sidewalks. Rogue riders run pedestrians off sidewalks. Drivers, including one Lyft driver who shuttled Adam and Ashley around, avoid drunk adults bobbing and weaving on the shared vehicles. The two-wheelers would be an epidemic if they weren’t so darn convenient.
The heat. “It’s bloody hot out here,” as one festival-goer leaving the Austin Convention Center on Saturday put it. The Texas sun was out in full force. Brands like Showtime and Amazon took advantage of the unexpected sunshine on what was supposed to be a rainy weekend. Showtime passed out sunglasses on Rainey Street, and Amazon Prime Video gave folks standing in line for its Good Omens pop-up umbrellas to shield themselves from the shade. People were spotted later using them around town.
Yesterday’s highlight reel
Ground zero for the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign. It’s ostensibly a technology conference in a red state—where better to speak truth to power?—but the friendly crowd of marketing associates and brand influencers makes Austin safe territory for the aspirants.
Senator Elizabeth Warren promoted her plan to break up the tech giants, and weighed in on her bar bev of choice: Michelob Ultra, “the club soda of beers.” Senator Amy Klobuchar tried out nicknames (paywall) for the president—”Mr. Umbrella Man” might want to go back to the workshop—and spitballed about a special tax on data profiteering. South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg, a real millennial, talked about escaping a drug arrest in college (thanks white privilege!) and that time he realized that, as a gay man, he could never get through to vice president Mike Pence.
But the real star isn’t running for president—she’s just setting herself up as a progressive king (or queen) maker. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had fans waiting in a line that wrapped around hallways on multiple floors of the convention center. Good news! She says the US government is still redeemable. Bad news: Capitalism is not.
There were non-Democrats, too: Erstwhile coffee baron Howard Schultz failed to impress at a morning panel. Grumpy former Ohio governor John Kasich warned about the debt but admitted that “I’m a slob trying to make it through.” Massachusetts Republican Bill Weld, who’s maybe challenging Trump in the Republican primary, confessed a yearning “for the good old days of mimeograph machines.”
House of Blum. Horror mega-producer Jason Blum spoke to attendees about his career and the current state of the horror genre. The talk was filled with interesting tidbits: He said he’s hesitant to work with first-time directors unless they have a lot of experience in other fields, and he admitted that he believes directors tend to go too quickly into big-budget productions after a single small-budget hit.
One exception to that rule, of course, is Jordan Peele, whose film Us was produced by Blum. Sometimes a talent is that special. Blum also let us in on a little secret: He used to collect his fingernails as a kid and still has some of them. No wonder he got into horror.
Time to activate
SXSW is as much a canvas for creative and immersive marketing campaigns as it is a launchpad for tech startups. Here are more experiences that stuck with us:
Bose AR. A year ago at SXSW, Bose showed off a 3D-printed prototype of AR sunglasses that play a surprisingly loud and clear sound into the wearer’s ear without headphones. The audio company returned to the festival to show the product wasn’t just a concept. The sunglasses went on the market in January, and Bose is developing additional styles, as well as partnering with navigation and other platforms to develop services for the sunglasses. You can check out the frames at the Half Step on Rainey Street through Monday.
How the turn tables. Fans of NBC’s The Office, which is perhaps as popular on streaming video as it was when it aired on TV in the 2000s, can sit in Michael Scott’s desk chair (you know, the one he promised to give Pam) at NBCUniversal’s hub at Container Bar. It features a replica of Michael’s desk where fans can take selfies.
Blood types, Body Types, and You. FX is promoting its upcoming vampire satire, What We Do in the Shadows, by handing out free books at stations around Austin (Iron Works BBQ, El Naranjo, and Bat Bar) from dusk until dawn through Tuesday. The books, including titles from Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe, keep with the eerie theme. The series, which premieres March 27, was also screened at SXSW on Friday.
Seen and heard
Bae-to. Beto O’Rourke made a surprise appearance at the premiere of the HBO documentary Running With Beto, which chronicles the Democrat’s failed 2018 bid to unseat US senator Ted Cruz in Texas. He received a thunderous applause after the screening, but was mum on whether he would run for president in 2020.
Fatherly love. “Get that kid out of here,” Jason Blum yelled at an infant in the audience for his talk. The infant was his own son.
“Yale black mafia.” Jordan Peele used this phrase during the Us panel at the Comcast/NBCUniversal House yesterday to describe the two leads of the film, Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke, who both attended the Yale school of drama.
“This incredible squad of black Yale-trained actors, that’s just killing it,” Peele said. “Working with these actors with their training and their methodology, really taught me a lot about what it means to dig deep.”
Hamm it up. Mad Men star Jon Hamm was one of several celebrities Quartz cited mingling at the Amazon/Entertainment Weekly party for the upcoming series Good Omens (which Hamm will also appear in). Joining him in the VIP section was the rest of the main Good Omens cast: David Tennant and Michael Sheen, along with American Gods actors Ricky Whittle and Pablo Schreiber. Spotted in the crowd were Us actors Winston Duke and Shahadi Wright Joseph and the Pod Save America bros. All were on hand to enjoy Queen cover band, the aptly named Almost Queen.
Quartz eats
Ashley walked and waited for nearly an hour in the sweltering Austin sun to get tacos from Veracruz’s All Natural food truck in East Austin. It was totally worth it. She couldn’t contain herself long enough to take a photograph before devouring the fish taco, which had a healthy chunk of grilled tilapia, Monterey jack cheese, and a slice of avocado. But the migas and migas poblano breakfast tacos, and strawberry and banana agua fresca were equally scrumptious.
Our best wishes for an inspiring day in Austin. Please send any news, tips, and fingernail collections to Adam, Ashley, and Tim. The best way to keep up with news while you’re on the go this week is the Quartz app for iPhone and Android.