Den of Geek SXSW 2022 Special Edition by Den of Geek

MOVIES | MUSIC | TV | GAMING | TECH

THE ISSUE

YOUR ROADMAP TO THE FESTIVAL’S BIG RETURN

– CAR & PILOT

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE

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PREVIEW DOCUMENTARIES An art heist, a “trauma cleaner,” a special FX master and more are in the spotlight. PG. 30 MOVIES Edgy horror, Linklater nostalgia, Winona Ryder’s new thriller and Nic Cage playing Nic Cage. PG. 34 TV True crime drama, postapocalyptic America and a time traveling serial killer get showcased. PG. 40 TECH Our pick of the panels: space exploration, the future of AI and an internet utopia. PG. 44 GAMING This year’s panels celebrate the the latest innovations and advances in the industry. PG. 46

MUSIC SPOTLIGHT

IMAGE CREDIT: KEVIN CONDON

A round up of the must-see acts, from heavy-hitters like Geese, Maxo Kream and Wet Leg, to international artists including JBABE and CIFIKA. Plus, our SXSW Spotify playlist! PG. 22

ATLANTA S3

The long-awaited third season of this critically acclaimed and willfully weird show is finally upon us. We chat with star/ creator Donald Glover and his creative team on season three’s themes and ambitions. PG. 48

THE LOST CITY

Sandra Bullock and her coproducer Liza Chasin take us behind the scenes of their action-adventure romp, The Lost City which shares DNA with classics including Romancing the Stone. PG. 54

HALO

The cast and creators of the groundbreaking new Halo TV show bring to life their vision for Master Chief and Cortana’s liveaction small screen debut. But will they manage to please fans and newcomers alike? PG. 62 SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

SXSW 2022 | LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

THE SPIRIT OF SXSW

There’s no better place to celebrate a new era at Den of Geek than at the most forward-thinking event on the entertainment calendar. BY MIKE CECCHINI WHAT IS DEN OF GEEK DOING

at a festival that has historically been devoted to indie film, music, and technology? We’re so glad you asked. But maybe the better question is: what took us so long to get here in the first place? To be fair, we’ve already been here, just not in print. Well, and to be perfectly honest, we were almost here in 2020. In fact, at least some of this very letter was written two years

ago to the day, for a special SXSW issue of Den of Geek that was sent to the printers… two days before the festival was canceled that year, just as the crushing reality of Covid came to America. The sentiment is the same, though. We’ll be there for real this year, and you should probably know what brought us here. Chris Longo, our Director of Editorial and Partnerships, was the first member of the team to champion

JOHN KRASINSKI AND EMILY BLUNT’S A QUIET PLACE

South by Southwest to our audience. We’ve been showing up at SXSW with a video crew, setting up a studio, and interviewing some of the biggest stars and buzziest talent in pop culture since 2018. Just like E3, San Diego Comic-Con, Star Wars Celebration, or New York Comic Con, South by Southwest was quickly becoming one of the most important events on our editorial calendar before, well… you know. But it’s back, and so are we!

JORDAN PEELE’S US

MAJOR WORLD PREMIERES AT SXSW

STEVEN SPIELBERG’S READY PLAYER ONE

IMAGE CREDIT: GARY MILLER/FILMMAGIC (BLUNT/KRASINSKI), TIM MOSENFELDER (PEELE), GETTY IMAGES MATT WINKELMEYER GETTY IMAGES FOR SXSW (SPIELBERG)

While you’re unlikely to find some of the more traditional staples of our coverage like Marvel, Star Wars, or The Walking Dead at the festival, SXSW has delivered more than its share of genre heavy hitters in recent years. One of the best horror movies of the 21st century, A Quiet Place had its world premiere at SXSW in 2018. That same year also saw Steven Spielberg unveil Ready Player One to a stunned audience, while TV faves like Barry got spotlight time in the Episodic category. In 2019, the film festival kicked off with Jordan Peele premiering Us, his ambitious horror follow-up to the masterful Get Out, and we also got our first look at the What We Do in the Shadows TV series. This year is no different. The film festival brings us multiversal sci-fi exploration Everything, Everywhere All At Once (see our feature on page 14) and Sandra Bullock’s new action adventure The Lost City (read our chat with Bullock on page 54), while the TV end will feature a showcase on Amazon’s wild superhero deconstruction The Boys, the longanticipated premiere of Atlanta season 3 to close the festival, and much more. When you put it all together, it becomes pretty clear that if we don’t start making some noise in Austin the way we do in San Diego or our hometown of NYC, then we’re not doing our jobs. While movies, TV, and games are always core parts of our mission, there’s still the music and technology portions of the festival to contend with. And while these aren’t subjects you usually expect to find on Den of Geek, this is where we’d like to get into the spirit of the festival. We couldn’t wish for a better laboratory for all of this than SXSW. Mike Cecchini, Editor-in-Chief

MAG AZ I N E BY EXPERTS. FOR FANS.

Editor-in-Chief Mike Cecchini Print Editor Rosie Fletcher Editorial Director Chris Longo Creative Director Lucy Quintanilla Art Director Jessica Koynock Copy Editor Sarah Litt Sub Editor Richard Jordan Production Manager Kyle Christine Darnell

ON THE COVER

After two years without an in-person event, SXSW is back so we wanted to create a cover that reflected the energy and diversity of the festival. Of course we wanted to include Atlanta, Sandra Bullock and Halo (we have exclusive features inside). But as well as all the buzzy films, TV shows, and musicians that will be showcased we also wanted our cover to bring to life the spirit of Austin itself. To do so we enlisted the help of artist Neil Jamieson, who composed this photo illustration featuring iconic Austin landmarks. It’s one of our favorite ever covers! COVER PHOTO CREDITS: MATTHEW BAKER / FX / LIONSGATE / PARAMOUNT/ PARAMOUNT+ / A24 / SEBO (@YOITSSEBO)/ HIMANSHU BAISOYA

SPECIAL ISSUE | SXSW 2022 DEN OF GEEK IS A TRADEMARK OWNED BY DEN OF GEEK WORLD LIMITED, A COMPANY INCORPORATED AND REGISTERED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM WHOSE REGISTERED OFFICE IS AT THE BROADGATE TOWER, 20 PRIMROSE STREET, LONDON EC2A 2RS. DEN OF GEEK US INCORPORATION DETAILS: DOGTECH LLC, 601 HERITAGE DRIVE, SUITE 484, JUPITER, FL 33458, PHONE: +1 561-656-2377

DENOFGEEK.COM Editor-in-Chief Mike Cecchini Director of Editorial and Partnerships Chris Longo Managing Editor John Saavedra UK Editor Rosie Fletcher Associate Editors Alec Bojalad, Kayti Burt, Matthew Byrd, David Crow, Kirsten Howard, Louisa Mellor, Tony Sokol Art Director Jessica Koynock Head of Video Production Andrew Halley Senior Video Producer Nick Morgulis Head of Audience Development Elizabeth Donoghue CEO and Group Publisher Jennifer Bartner-Indeck Chief Financial Officer Peter Indeck Commercial Director Mark Wright Publisher Matthew Sullivan-Pond UK Advertising Director Adam McDonnell SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

SXSW 2022 | WELCOME BACK!

Janet Pierson poses on the red carpet with director Jordan Peele and the cast of Us in 2019.

COMING HOME SXSW IS NOT LIKE OTHER FILM FESTIVALS. Janet Pierson knew this to be true even before she took on the responsibilities of leading the film conference more than a decade ago. Whereas other cineaste gatherings across the calendar year may rely on the glamor and prestige of industry elitism, for Pierson, the secret of SXSW’s success is the reverse: it’s democratic and open, populist and inviting. As the SXSW film director sums up, “It’s Austin.” Which makes the realization that the festival is finally returning to a 10-day in-person event this year simultaneously thrilling and daunting. The festival was, after all, one of the first international events to be laid low by the pandemic in March 2020, with SXSW getting initially canceled mere weeks ahead of opening night 10

DEN OF GEEK | SXSW 2022

before moving online with a reduced staff. Pierson and the whole festival team, including director of film festival programming Claudette Godfrey, are proud of what they achieved in the virtual realm that year and in 2021. But with folks finally descending on Austin once again, it feels like something lost— and fundamental—is coming home. “Being in-person is in the DNA of SXSW,” Pierson says. “It’s the most amazing live event in the world, I think. It’s always been that this is what we do.” When Den of Geek sits down to speak with Pierson and Godfrey over Zoom, it’s less than a month before the first premiere, and the team is gearing up for the event during what they describe as the “final countdown.” Pierson is quick

to note that the world has changed since the last in-person SXSW, too: volunteering, traveling, and what people think is worth spending money on are all suddenly negotiable unknowns. Indeed, this month’s fest is still running at a reduced staff and with fewer screenings than in previous years. The dust is still being blown off. But the thrill of connecting people who just love movies? That’s never been stronger. “I think that it’s a heightened anticipation more than in other years,” says Godfrey. “That’s true for filmmakers who’ve been dying to have an in-person audience, but also for all of our wider film industry community which is used to meeting up for ‘summer camp’ all year round—they’ve been separated for so long that there’s anticipation for

IMAGE CREDITS: ISMAEL QUINTANILLA (PIERSON) / MICHAEL LOCCISANO (BROAD CITY, PARAMOUNT) / GETTY IMAGES FOR SXSW

How the SXSW Film Festival returned to where it always belonged: in-person. BY DAVID CROW

Abbi Jacobson (left) and Ilana Glazer take part in a Q&A following the premiere of the Broad City series finale at ZACH Theatre on March 10, 2019 in Austin, Texas.

An audience waits for showtime in the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas.

seeing your family and friends for the first time in many years.” Take the opening day festivities. Both Pierson and Godfrey suspect they’ll cry when the banners go up and audiences finally arrive, but one of the most exciting moments will be a barbecue luncheon for just the filmmakers who’ve gone down to Texas. “We’re so thrilled that they chose to come premiere their work with us,” Pierson says. “And Claudette and I would go to this welcome lunch and there’s no press or industry, it’s just a few representatives from each film, and we get to see them, and they’re so excited. They know they’re on the eve of something that could be life-changing, and we know that they’re on the eve of something that could be life-changing. They’re meeting each other, and they’re forming a community.” That community has composed a robust lineup in 2022. Among the films making coveted premieres is SXSW’s usually electric blend of tones and styles: thrillers and comedies, documentaries and dramas, plus a sci-fi opening night

genre-bender (the Michelle Yeohstarring Everything Everywhere All At Once) that’s creating great buzz among the festival staff. Godfrey notes, however, that on the indie side, all conventions are blurring, with submissions for the Midnighters relying as much or more on laughs as they do gore. Of course, comedy

“ONE OF MY FAVORITE COMPLIMENTS WAS SOMEBODY SAID THAT COMING TO SXSW WAS THE WAY THEY WATCH MOVIES IN THEIR REAL LIFE.” has been a distinguishing and core characteristic for this film festival since the beginning. “One of my favorite compliments was somebody said that coming to SXSW was the way they watch movies in their real life,” Pierson says. “To me, that’s what it is. We like a lot of

range in entertainment. Anything that’s well done on any platform. That’s why we embraced television really early.” Perhaps it’s why the SXSW film director is quick to point out that, unlike other fests, this is not just for cinephiles or industry types. They are here too, but SXSW started as a music festival, and each screening will hopefully see a cross-section of filmmakers, programmers, startup managers, and musicians. “It’s spring break,” Godfrey says. “Our audience is there to love things. They’re going to the movie because they’re ready to have the best time ever. If you’ve ever been to a press and industry screening, everyone’s like, ‘We’ll see! You’re going to have to win me over!’ Our audience is like, ‘I’m here; this is going to be awesome!’ It’s a different vibe. We don’t have press and industry screenings, so you’re in those same screenings with the general public who maybe came and bought this one ticket, and that’s the one film they’re going to see. Their excitement is kind of contagious.” And that excitement is spreading again in Austin, where it always belonged. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

SXSW 2022 | OPENING NIGHT MOVIE

DEN OF GEEK | SXSW 2022

MICHELLE YEOH VS. THE MULTIVERSE

Sci-fi epic Everything Everywhere All At Once sends Michelle Yeoh careening through multiple realities. We talk with the directors known as “the Daniels.” BY DON KAYE

(Left-right) Stephanie Hsu as Eleanor Wang, Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, Eleanor’s mother, with Ke Huy Quan as Evelyn’s husband.

THE LOGLINE FOR EVERYTHING Everywhere All at Once, which opens the SXSW Film Festival, describes the movie as “a hilarious and big-hearted sci-fi action adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman (Michelle Yeoh) who can’t seem to finish her taxes.” That’s being modest. Directors-writers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, billed collectively as “the Daniels” (Swiss Army Man), have fashioned a movie that, yes, is about a Chinese American woman trying to get her taxes done—as well as keep her laundromat business afloat and hold her family together. Yet the effort to do so takes her on a dizzying journey through an untold number of different realities, each featuring a different version of the befuddled protagonist. “I was driving to Big Sur with my wife,” says Kwan about the origins of the film. “For some reason my brain was just thinking about sci-fi, and we had been reading a lot about quantum physics and multiverse stuff. I was just trying to think of a fun excuse to create a sci-fi premise that would give us a playground, because a lot of our ideas are often taking a very simple idea and then extrapolating it to every possible direction.” Scheinert says that as soon as Kwan got home from his trip, he drew a diagram on the wall visualizing the multiverse and what “verse jumping”—which Yeoh does

throughout the film—was. Scheinert was impressed but not sure if he wanted to make the movie. But after a year of working on the script, new elements—a distracted adult woman protagonist, a Chinese American family—all made sense to Scheinert when combined with the idea of the main character jumping from universe to universe to save her family: “What if we took the multiverse to its nihilistic, terrifying extreme?”

“LIFE IS CHAOS, LIFE IS OVERWHELMING, AND THERE’S AN INTERSECTION OF 10 DIFFERENT WORLDVIEWS COLLIDING EVERY WAKING MOMENT.” — DANIEL KWAN

Of course, the idea of the multiverse is not a new one by any means. DC and Marvel have deployed it in their comics for decades and are now getting into it on film. And as Kwan points out, numerous sci-fi writers and television shows have utilized the concept, including the popular animated series Rick and Morty. But Kwan says that he and Scheinert had a SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

SXSW 2022 | OPENING NIGHT MOVIE

DEN OF GEEK | SXSW 2022

Jamie Lee Curtis with Michelle Yeoh, who appears to have a serious case of sausage fingers.

Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn, or rather one of the Evelyns, with Jing Li.

Dragon. She says that she wanted to get involved with Everything Everywhere All at Once because of her desire to work with younger directors who will “challenge me on a very different level.” Noting that she thinks everyone can relate to Evelyn’s quest to get her taxes done—the event that triggers her entire cosmic adventure—Yeoh also admits that she wanted to keep some distance from the character, asking the Daniels to change her name from Michelle. “I always want my audience to not be seeing Michelle Yeoh on the screen,” the actor says. “And if you hear the name you will just automatically relate it to Michelle Yeoh. Also, because the character in one of the universes does have a life

where she’s a movie star, I don’t want the audience to go, ‘Oh, wow, she’s just playing herself.’” When we first meet Evelyn, she’s perhaps at her lowest point—that is, until the universe starts fracturing around her and revealing all the other Evelyns that exist. “Poor Evelyn [is] probably the worst representation of herself from all the universes,” says Yeoh. “It seems that she has failed in the simple things in life. She wants to have a really great family; she wants to be successful, not in a big way, but at least have a business that is making money so they can be happy and she can show her father that she made the right choice in marriage. But it’s all imploding around her, and she almost doesn’t even realize it.”

IMAGE CREDITS: A24/ALLYSON RIGGS

specific idea for what the multiverse could represent in their story. “I think right now, for me, life is chaos, life is overwhelming, and there’s just an intersection of 10 different worldviews colliding every waking moment,” Kwan explains. “That’s what the multiverse represents in our film, just this feeling of too much. Too much information for us to process, too much information for us to make decisions and move forward. Looking at what Marvel was doing and looking at what a lot of other people were doing, I feel like no one was tapping into that feeling and using the multiverse as a metaphor for that. It felt like a really good excuse to play in that world.” Everything Everywhere All at Once is an independent film, although you might never guess that from looking at the bang that the Daniels get for their buck. But the lower budget meant there was somewhat more freedom to make the movie that the directors wanted to see. The Hollywood version of this story would be a $200 million behemoth starring a white male actor; by contrast, the Daniels always had an inkling who their star would be. They even named the protagonist “Michelle Yeoh” in early drafts of the script. “When we first started writing this, it was before Crazy Rich Asians had come out,” says Kwan. “This was before anyone was willing to imagine a world where Asian American-led films were bankable.” That gave the Daniels an opportunity to make the story more personal as well. “That’s another thing that converged with the other ideas that made us excited,” Kwan continues. “Let’s make this about a family that I grew up with, or the kinds of families I went to church with, or that kind of world, because that suddenly made [the film] that much more interesting and nuanced.” Yeoh first rose to fame in the early ’90s doing her own stunts in Hong Kong films including The Heroic Trio and Police Story 3: Supercop before arriving in Hollywood with groundbreaking roles in Tomorrow Never Dies and Crouching Tiger, Hidden

Michelle Yeoh plays a woman just trying to get her taxes done in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Stephanie Hsu struts her stuff as Eleanor Wang.

While Evelyn must contend with numerous enemies in the various universes that she jumps through, one of her chief antagonists in the different realities is played by the great Jamie Lee Curtis. Starting out as a stern, impatient IRS accountant in our entryway timeline, Curtis’ performance here is quite different from what we’ve seen before and marks the first time that she and Yeoh have appeared on-screen together.

“I am such a huge fan of hers,” gushes Yeoh about her co-star. “She is so inspirational in that way, but the most amazing thing is when she walks in, she brings in such good vibes, such good energy. She’s generous in nature, she’s generous as a person, she’s always good.” Yeoh adds that Curtis was a constant source of encouragement throughout the arduous shoot: “You needed to have good people around you who make

you bold, who inspire you. And that’s what Jamie did for me.” “We feel so loved,” says Kwan about the cast, which also includes legendary character actor James Hong and Ke Huy Quan, best known as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. “There’s something very fun about this film because it plays on so many recognizable tropes and things that I think a lot of film lovers will identify and have fun with, and part of that is the cast. The cast also brings so much context with it, and we love to just play with those things and blow up the expectations… on top of that, they’re all just good souls.” Says Scheinert about the Daniels’ experience of making their second feature film together, “There were definitely things that were new, but in a lot of ways, we got to do it the same way we love making movies. We didn’t scale up that much in terms of how we make movies. It was just bigger, but it was a lot of our usual collaborators and making movies our way, where we get to be involved and touch everything.” Everything Everywhere All at Once opens in theaters on March 25. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

SXSW 2022 | FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT…

The crown jewel of Congress Avenue.

The Paramount Theatre was originally named the Majestic Theatre. A renowned venue hosting both live shows and silent films, it drew a variety of high-profile acts, such as burlesque performer Sally Rand. A 1930 renovation saw the installation of the iconic sign; the first film shown by the renamed theater was Marx Brothers’ farce Animal Crackers.

The theater has hosted countless notable names, from Orson Welles to Dr. Maya Angelou. Even President Barack Obama said that he had “finally arrived” when he spoke at the Paramount. But only one brought down the house—literally. In 1916, legend has it that escape artist Harry Houdini created a hole in the ceiling to perform a levitation illusion (it’s still visible).

DEN OF GEEK | SXSW 2022

BY AARON SAGERS

In July 1966, the Paramount hosted the premiere of the Batman movie. Congress Avenue was renamed Batman Boulevard, and the film’s stars, including Adam West, showed up in costume. The BatBoat was created by (at the time) Austinbased Glastron, and the story goes that the company agreed to have the film premiere in the city as payment for the work.

In 1963, the Paramount “blade” sign was set to undergo a renovation. But by 1964, the landmark had gone missing. Without architectural drawings—and with only colorized postcards and some archival video to determine the color scheme—the theater set about remaking the sign. The original sign’s whereabouts remain a mystery.

The theater was already notable for its haunted history, but in 2019, it was the site of an incredible ghost photo. Visiting composer Chad Lawson had just done a soundcheck for a live show when he snapped three photos of the grand theater. In only the second photo did he capture what looks like a spectral woman in white floating above the mezzanine. Interestingly, the wall in the theater’s alley is one of the oldest standing structures in Austin, dating back to 1839, and the stories may be connected to that. The live show Lawson was prepping for? The supernatural podcast, Lore.

IMAGE CREDIT: COURTESY OF THE PARAMOUNT THEATRE

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SXSW 2022 | TALKING STRANGE

KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD Our regular columnist investigates Austin’s spooky side.

DEN OF GEEK | SXSW 2022

AARON SAGERS PARANORMAL POP CULTURE EXPERT

Tonkawa Indigenous American spirits. Over at The Tavern there is a resident ghost, although the popular The Night Owl podcast came to believe there were actually three spirits in the bar: sex worker Maria, her daughter Emily, and a darker entity named Walter. Speaking of The Night Owl, the local show has become an acclaimed history-based paranormal series. But there are enough ghost stories to go around that Austin-based podcasts SkeleTales and The Real Ghosts Of… likewise explore the city’s famous, and lesser known, haunts. But it’s not just ghosts that contribute to Austin’s peculiar vibe. There are also possible ETs in ATX. Back in 2013, during The Cure’s performance of “Close to Me” at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, concertgoers reported seeing lights in the sky, in a triangle formation. In March of 2021, Cleveland Browns

quarterback Baker Mayfield and his wife saw what he called a UFO, a “very bright ball of light going straight down out of the sky towards Lake Travis.” Were they Chinese lanterns over ACL, and did the QB just see a SpaceX landing? Or are the numerous reports of phenomena in the sky above Austin, connected to aliens above the city? For those who look for the unusual in cryptids and legends, not too far from Austin is Palmetto State Park, a tropical park home to not only alligators, but perhaps also the stomping ground of a monster. Known as the Ottine Swamp Thing, lore says it is a large, hairy bipedal sasquatch with a knack for camouflage. The Swamp Thing is not to be confused with the Hairy Man of nearby Round Rock. He has a road named in his honor, an annual festival, and is said to be a feral boy from the 1800s, raised by animals. Red Wassenich had a point in 2000 when he first called for the city to preserve its oddball attitudes. But with so much of its lore connected to the supernatural, Austin is still weird. Find more of Aaron’s adventures at DenofGeek.com/paranormal.

The Driskill Hotel is one of the most notoriously haunted places in Austin. This picture was taken in 1888.

IMAGE CREDIT: PICA-05041, AUSTIN HISTORY CENTER, AUSTIN PUBLIC LIBRARY.

AUSTIN IS WEIRD. Y’all know that because “Keep Austin Weird,” coined by Red Wassenich in 2000 is a mantra for the Texas city. Red’s words were a chilled-out counterculture clarion call for his beloved home facing boomtown status, where life was increasingly less affordable and corporate interests threatened small businesses. Yet the weirdness persists. Austin holds onto the weird much like it holds onto a tradition of round-the-clock live music, debates about the best BBQ and breakfast tacos, its petfriendly rep, and sightings of Matthew McConaughey. There is still Nau’s Enfield Drug. There is still Lala’s Little Nugget. There is still the Cathedral of Junk. There is still the El Paso Street Bridge mosaic. There is still the city’s patron saint, Willie Nelson. And there are still ghosts, UFOs, and monsters—or at least tales of them. After all, let us not forget, my spooky nerds, the modern use of the word “weird” is associated with eccentricity and quirk, but has its roots in the supernatural, the extraordinary, fate, and the fantastic. The fourth biggest city in Texas, by population, Austin leads the state with haunted tales. Perhaps the dead love live music, because there are dozens of spots around town with a ghost story. The Driskill Hotel is the most famous. Built in 1886, the specters that linger in this landmark of Texas opulence are said to be namesake Col. Jesse Driskill, a pair of brides who took their own lives, and a little girl connected to a painting (although the painting itself is not rooted in the Driskill’s history, despite claims). The excellent Clay Pit Indian restaurant, located in the Bertram Building, built in 1853, hosts the spirit of a young boy and a murdered sex worker. At the 90-acre living history park Pioneer Farms, there are sightings of

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Heavy hitters

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PREVIEW

MUST-SEE ARTISTS

Excited to immerse yourself in SXSW’s live music scene, but not sure where to start? Allow us to guide you in the right direction.

While SXSW doesn’t have headliners in a traditional sense, there are always a few buzzed-about artists just on the precipice of full-blown stardom ready to take Austin and SXSW crowds by storm. These are the acts you’ll be hearing about for the next few years, so you’ll want to catch them before you're seen as a trend-hopper. Also, they’re almost certain to deliver memorable performances. These are the heavy hitters we wouldn’t dream of missing this year.

BY NICK HARLEY

STREAM THIS: “MAMA’S PURSE”

MAXO KREAM

Festivalgoers watch Chungha perform at Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater in 2019.

DEN OF GEEK | SXSW 2022

Houston’s Maxo Kream is the best young storyteller in the hip-hop world, full-stop. With an ear for lush, soulsampling beats, the husky-voiced emcee weaves tales about his family’s struggles and his adjustment to success with harrowing lyrics. On the surface, Kream effortlessly serves up tough tracks that sound monstrous coming out of your speakers, but those interested in the finer details will hear a writerly craftsman getting granular about trauma and overcoming it. There are good odds that Maxo Kream is your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper, and he just might become your favorite, too.

IMAGE CREDITS: SCOTT DUDELSON/GETTY (MAXO KREAM) / MATTHEW BAKER/ GETTY (WET LEG)/ DANIEL TOPETE (GEESE)

SINCE ITS INCEPTION IN 1987, South by Southwest has grown to include film, interactive media, TV, comedy, and even political experiences. But the festival has always mainly been about the music, man. Music lovers and industry professionals flock to Austin each year to witness performances from up-and-coming acts and established, even legendary, artists. After two years away, the hunger for live music is more ravenous than ever. SXSW’s music lineup isn’t limited by genre, region, or popularity. Over 2,000 performers from 60+ countries are represented at the festival, spread out through Austin everywhere from intimate spaces to massive stages. Navigating the festival and its plethora of options can be a little intimidating, so we put together a guide of some can’t-miss artists to help steer you in the right direction. From local favorites to international sensations, hip-hop groups to lo-fi troubadours, here are just a handful of acts you should make an effort to see over the course of the next 10 days.

STREAM THIS: “DISCO”

GEESE

Once a decade, it seems like we’re introduced to the new saviors of New York indie rock, and until a better band comes along, Geese have claimed that mantle for the 2020s. Fresh out of high school, the boys in Geese have all of the swagger of The Strokes but with a more unpredictable bent that pushes their sound into proggier, experimental spaces a la bands like Black Midi and Squid. Their debut record, Projector, is a wild ride filled with catchy refrains, but also chaotic moments that sound like the whole endeavor could fall off the rails at any moment. Honestly, what more can you ask for in a rock band?

WET LEG STREAM THIS: “WET DREAM”

Wet Leg have only officially released four songs, and they’re still one of the most talked-about groups playing SXSW this year. A breath of fresh air among the high-minded, booming U.K. post-punk and indie scene, the Isle of Wight’s Wet Leg combine tongue-in-cheek lyrics with hooky guitar lines that have garnered them comparisons to every cool alternative band with a sense of humor from the last 30 years. It’s hard to pin down a group that hasn’t even released their debut record (out April 8), but the initial impression they give is like if Wes Anderson was the creative director for The Breeders. This is a lot of preamble to say that Wet Leg make genuinely fun, interesting rock music and you’d be a fool not to hop on their hype train before it leaves the station. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

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PREVIEW

STREAM THIS: “HEAD CHEERLEADER”

Heart on their sleeve With acts like Olivia Rodrigo and Machine Gun Kelly bringing guitar-based pop music back to the charts and the announcement of the When We Were Young music festival setting social media on fire, there seems to be an appetite for punk and emo-leaning pop music among teenagers and nostalgic millennials. If you’re looking to cathartically scratch that angsty itch at SXSW, here are some acts to check out.

ENUMCLAW

One key factor that makes alternative rock so compelling is the accessibility; unlike classic rock virtuosos, the popular bands of the alt-rock world made picking up a guitar and bearing your heart seem like something anyone could achieve. Pacific Northwest band Enumclaw embody that better than any band at SXSW. Frontman Aramis Johnson had never played guitar and had no prior singing experience before forming the band, yet Enumclaw stand out with their mixture of reverby, prototypical Seattlian guitar lines and sticky pop hooks. They cite Oasis and Drake as influences, and if that’s any indication, then these guys have world-conquering ambitions. 24

DEN OF GEEK | SXSW 2022

STREAM THIS: MEGABEAR

ME REX

The brainchild of South London singer-songwriter Myles McCabe, ME REX packs a musical punch with wordy, searching lyrics that sail to the rafters in a near-religious tone. Thematically their music seems centered on the constantly shifting nature of the human experience; on

IMAGE CREDIT: SAMMY RAY (POM-POM-SQUAD)

STREAM THIS: “FREE DROP BILLY”

Internationally known POM POM SQUAD Mia Berren leads this Brooklynbased bubblegrunge outfit that mixes the theatrics of emo with the anthemic charge of the best early 2000s indie bands. If you were one of the millions rocking Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U” this summer, then Pom Pom Squad is a logical next step, offering something a bit more grown-up and sensual; if Rodrigo’s for the popular girls, Pom Pom Squad is for the ones getting drunk underneath the bleachers. Pom Pom Squad’s recent output also channels the bombast and cinematic qualities of ’60s girl groups, adding an out-of-reach ethereal element to the band’s soaring hooks.

While it’s fun to celebrate the local acts, SXSW is also a wonderful platform for international artists to gain exposure in the States. The festival is excellent at curating an experience that highlights undiscovered talent alongside worldwide superstars. If you’re looking for artists outside of the Anglo-American purview, we’ve got you covered.

STREAM THIS: “DÉJÀ VU”

CIFIKA

Dubbed “the Korean Bjork” by some, CIFIKA is a contemporary Korean artist blending the sounds of K-Pop, R&B, and indie music with her electronic-leaning pop songcraft. CIFIKA’s ambient vocal experimentations were used in the Men’s Fall-Winter 2021 Louis Vuitton campaign and she was invited to create and soundtrack an installation piece for ISM Berlin’s acclaimed Hexadome project alongside Thom Yorke and Brian Eno, proving that CIFIKA can excite club-goers and the high art world in equal measure. Both an accomplished musical and visual artist, CIFIKA’s Austin set will continue to tread new ground.

IMAGE CREDITS: STEVE ROGERS/GETTY (CIFIKA)/CHRISMAN (DUMA)

STREAM THIS: “CANNIS” their latest release, Megabear, they lean into this with a 52-track album full of bite-sized songs meant to be consumed in random order. It’s a hell of a gimmick, and even more impressive, it works like gangbusters. Finding out how well it translates to a live setting seems too enticing to pass up.

DUMA

Emerging like a bat out of hell from Nairobi's flourishing underground metal scene, Duma combine bone-crunching physicality and aggression with a gleeful lack of regard for genre conventions or styles. Their music is raw, industrial, frenetic, and boundary-pushing; needless to say, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But for those unafraid of these menacing metalheads, you’ll find something truly brutal and unique, a fresh combination of subgenres that leads to something terrifyingly different. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

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Bigger in Texas

While the festival is brilliant at spotlighting acts from all over the world, there’s something exciting about watching Texas natives tear it up in their own backyard. With over 250 live music venues in the city, Austin is the Live Music Capital of the World, and that directly impacts the identity of the acts that call Austin and its surrounding areas home. Check out our favorite homegrown acts featured in this year’s lineup.

JBABE

India’s Josh Fernandez, aka JBABE, is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer, guitarist, and vocalist who mixes lo-fi indie pop with R&B to create music that’s heady and irresistibly groovy. JBABE exists within the template created by artists like Frank Ocean and Blood Orange and provides the same sort of after-hours vibes. Catchy synth-based jams anchored by Fernandez’s hushed come-ons build until they explode into blissed-out, fuzzy guitar solos. The perfect soundtrack to a late night on 6th Street.

SIR WOMAN

Kelsey Wilson has found success with her folk-pop outfit Wild Child and Americana supergroup Glorietta, but with her latest project, Sir Woman, Wilson is tapping into her love of soul and R&B to showcase something that emanates good vibes. With a throwback sound, Sir Woman offers something comfortably familiar in the best way, with feel-good music that anyone can boogie to. Backed by impeccably precise musicians, Wilson can spread out and get funky in equal measure. Something tells us that their live set will tear the house down.

J SOULJA

STREAM THIS: “SUMMERSETBABY”

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A lyricist’s lyricist who delivers verses dripping with ambition and finesse, Austin rapper J Soulja is an SXSW regular who feels in line with past Texas rap greats while carving out his own space that feels authentic and soulful. His latest LP, More Than Nothin’, is his most polished work to date and finds the emcee gliding effortlessly over smooth and mellow, yet memorable, beats. J Soulja’s best tracks typically find the rapper spitting about preserving through his own struggles to reach hometown hero status. Don’t expect J Soulja to be an Austin secret forever, though—he’s poised for bigger and better things.

STREAM THIS: “NOBODY”

IMAGE CREDITS: JACKIE LEE YOUNG (KATY KIRBY)/SEBO (J SOULJA)/ HIMANSHU BAISOYA (JBABE)/ SIR WOMAN AND ME REX COURTESY OF ARTISTS

STREAM THIS: “HIGHROAD”

STREAM THIS: “JUNIPER”

Meet the locals These artists hail from the Live Music Capital of the World.

 Quin NFN

 Otis Wilkins

 Angélica

 alexalone

 Jackie

 Susannah

“Laid Back”

Rahe “Templo”

Venson “Rollin’ On”

Singer-songwriter Katy Kirby offers up perfectly laconic songs that are deceptively simple, yet addictively clever. She traffics in folk-leaning, laidback rock that feels right at home in the Lone Star state and she’s got a knack for stripping her songs down to their most essential elements, and then building them back up into beautiful, unexpected places. As a Texas native who was homeschooled and raised in the church, Kirby’s songs yearn for connection but contain details and introspection that only come from isolation. She can jump from witty and cool to vulnerable and yearning in the span of a guitar strum.

“Electric Sickness”

Joffe “Backseat”

 Magna Carda

 Motenko “Silhouette”

 Jane Leo “Tell Me (I’m On Your Mind)”

 The Western

 Shooks

 Bourgeois

“The Root”

KATY KIRBY

“Charlene”

“Rum!”

Express “Last Apology”

Mystics “Eureka! Cigarettes”

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SXSW MIXTAPE Check out this eclectic mix of artists who made the Den of Geek x SXSW 2022 Spotify playlist.

 Steve Gunn “Dust Filled Room”

 The Kernal

 Donna Blue

 No Swoon

 Barrie “Darjeeling”

 Squid

 Jenny Owen Youngs

“Merry Go Round”

 Walt Disco “Cut Your Hair”

 Pillow Queens

 Constant Follower

 Sunflower Bean

“Beside”

“U Do U”

“Desert Lake”

“G.S.K.”

BY NICK HARLEY AND CHRIS LONGO

SCAN THE QR CODE TO OPEN THE FULL DEN OF GEEK SXSW 2022 MUSIC PLAYLIST!

 Ceramic Animal

 Lunar Vacation

 Shamir “Reproductive”

 MANE

 Horsegirl

 Ezra Furman “Going to Brighton”

 Aaron Lee Tasjan

 Petey "Haircut"

“Sweet Unknown”

“Hi-Lo”

“Little Movies”

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“Shurg”

“Set Aside Some Time”

“Who Put You Up to This?”

“Billy”

 We Were Promised Jetpacks

“Blood, Sweat, Tears”

IMAGE CREDIT: ALL OTHER IMAGES COURTESY OF ARTIST

 2nd Grade “Favorite Song”

“Liffey”

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DOCUMENTARY PREMIERES Movie magic, art heists, and LGBTQ families in eight world premieres. BY NATALIE ZUTTER

MASTER OF LIGHT DIRECTOR: ROSA RUTH BOESTEN

In the past decade, George Anthony Morton has demonstrated his huge talent as a brilliant classical painter, making up for time lost in federal prison for dealing drugs. During his 10-year sentence, he developed his craft by painting portraits of fellow inmates. Following his early release, George became the first African American artist to graduate from the Florence Academy of Art, and went on to open Atelier South, Atlanta’s 30

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first workshop/studio based in six centuries of classical tradition. Called “a Rembrandt from the streets,” George has firmly established himself in the art world as a sought-after artist. Now in his 30s, George is mending personal relationships in documentary Master of Light, painting his family members in the style of the Dutch Old Masters. Working with Dutch director Rosa Ruth Boesten, George returns to his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, where he was arrested as a first-time offender at the age of 19. This intensely personal project will consist of three

key portraits: one of his mother, with whom he has a fraught dynamic; one of his 11-year-old nephew, in whom he sees himself; and a self-portrait, which confronts the intergenerational trauma that altered his life and, in turn, forced him to sketch a new path. Working closely together, director and artist illuminate how hope is just as likely to come from darkness as from light, and ponder how George and other artists can help support the next generation. As George asks in the film, “Isn’t it obvious there was some beauty in the ugliness of all of this?”

IMAGE CREDITS: JURGEN LISSE/DAVID SIEV/JOEL MULLENBACH/LOUIS DAI/SCOTT GROSSMAN

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THE THIEF COLLECTOR

DIRECTOR: ALLISON OTTO

BAD AXE DIRECTOR: DAVID SIEV Like many young people, David Siev returned to his hometown at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Asian American filmmaker temporarily left New York for rural Bad Axe, Michigan, where his family runs a restaurant, Rachel’s. His sister Jaclyn did the same, electing to help keep Rachel’s open while protecting their parents from exposure to the virus. During this time, David documents the generational scars between Jaclyn and their father Chun, who escaped to the U.S. as a refugee of the Cambodian

Killing Fields; in his marriage to their mother Rachel and the growth of the restaurant, they found a supportive community within the predominantly white town of Bad Axe. Another layer of tension is added when a Black Lives Matter-inspired march in Bad Axe brings members of The Base, a group of armed white nationalists, to town—and puts the Siev family at odds with their largely Trump-supporting community. Bad Axe witnesses the intersection of the traumas of enduring a pandemic after surviving a genocide, and shows how a small town can make small changes.

How did Willem de Kooning’s famous oil painting Woman-Ochre disappear from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1985 and reappear in the New Mexico home of an unassuming couple 32 years later? Allison Otto’s documentary recreates the incredible heist pulled off by infamous—and unlikely—art thieves Jerry and Rita Alter.

CLEAN

DIRECTOR: LACHLAN MCLEOD Australia’s empathetic entry follows Sandra, a middle-aged “trauma cleaner,” as she cleanses the sites of people’s most horrific moments: hoarders’ cluttered homes, the detritus of meth labs, grisly murder scenes, and nightmarish suicide aftermaths. But Sandra’s childhood contains its own particular trauma, which she sets out to excavate by searching for her birth mother.

IT’S QUIETER IN THE TWILIGHT DIRECTOR: BILLY MIOSSI

While billionaires like Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos have recently made sensational headlines for venturing to the edge of space, Billy Miossi’s (1960s space race doc Go: The Great Race) character portrait focuses on a space mission with greater staying power and far humbler subjects: the brilliant, quirky, aging flight-team of engineers behind the Voyager project—the farthest that humanity has ever ventured. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

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MAMA BEAR

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DIRECTOR: DARESHA KYI

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Sara Cunningham and Kimberly Shappley are two of the over 30,000 “mama bears,” or conservative Christian mothers who reconcile their fundamentalist community teachings against queerness with their unwavering support of their LGBTQ children. Mama Bears began as the Emmy-winning documentary short Trans In America: Texas Strong, which followed Kimberly’s six-year-old trans daughter Kai as she dealt with school discrimination. In this feature, Daresha Kyi captures Kimberly’s continued advocacy for Kai, and how Sara has become an ally for her son Parker as well as a “stand-in” mom for queer couples not supported by their biological parents at life events.

THE PEZ OUTLAW

DIRECTORS: AMY BANDLIEN STORKEL, BRYAN STORKEL

SPAZ

DIRECTOR: SCOTT LEBERECHT If you screamed when the T. rex stalked across the screen in Jurassic Park, or gasped at the liquid-metal T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 32

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then you have Steve “Spaz” Williams to thank. A digital animation pioneer at Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic in the early 1990s, Steve turned the computer into a tool for unprecedented movie magic, conjuring incredible

effects that had previously existed only in the imagination. The blend of art and technology was revolutionary for the time, long before CGI was commonplace in cinema. Yet Steve’s visual effects career did not continue into the 21st century, stalling after more ’90s blockbusters like The Mask, Jumanji, and Spawn. In Spaz, the eponymous animator reckons with the benefits and the drawbacks of his rebellious attitude during that pivotal phase in the industry, from breaking the mold to butting heads with contemporaries. Director Scott Leberecht also started at ILM (working on Flubber and Spawn, among others), which lends his direction a distinctly personal dimension: look no further than The Spirit of Spawn, the humorous behind-the-scenes short he directed in 1997 about Spaz’s work on what would be his final VFX credit.

IMAGE CREDITS: CAMERON MITCHELL/SEAN CASEY/ AMY BANDLIEN STORKEL/ BRYAN STORKEL

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it opened a path for the Pez Outlaw, a.k.a. Steve Glew: a small-town Michigan collector who went from Dumpster-diving for cereal-box coupons to visiting Eastern European factories in search of the most elusive Pez dispensers to resell across the Atlantic. Steve’s risky endeavors lifted his family out of poverty… and created a nemesis in The Pezident, a.k.a. Scott McWhinnie, the president of Pez Candy. This doc recreates Steve’s incredible adventure with the same whimsy as these iconic candy dispensers.

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MOVIE PREMIERES

The SXSW Film Festival makes its triumphant return with a sizzling lineup. Here are our picks of the features to look out for. BY NICK HARLEY, DAVID CROW, LOUISA MELLOR, AND ROSIE FLETCHER

A24’s new slasher movie promises plenty of bodies. It’s based on a spec script by Kristen Roupenian, who wrote the 2017 short story Cat Person, which was published in The New Yorker and later went viral. Sarah DeLappe has adapted Roupenian’s script into a screenplay. The set-up is a horror movie staple: a bunch of 20-somethings organize a hurricane party at a remote mansion, where things go rapidly wrong. Further details are scarce, though A24 has promised a “fresh and funny” take on the subgenre with a focus on backstabbing (literally?) and fake friendships. The buzzy young cast includes The Hate U Give star Amandla Stenberg, Borat 2 breakout Maria Bakalova, Shiva Baby star Rachel Sennott, and The Suicide Squad’s Pete Davidson, alongside Guardians of the Galaxy’s Lee Pace. Dutch director Halina Reijn takes the helm, following her acclaimed feature debut, Instinct, from 2019. Expect current themes, biting satire, and, yes, bodies.

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MOST FOLKS WHO ARE “extremely online” either grew up with Nicolas Cage’s movies or grew up with the actor as an internet fascination. It’s this notoriety—and the widespread goodwill for the actor—that Tom Gormican, the writer and director of the upcoming Cage film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, is tapping into. The movie finds Cage playing a fictionalized version of himself. Enduring a career slump and financial stress, he’s forced to collect a milliondollar check by attending a wealthy super-fan’s birthday. What Cage doesn’t know is that this fan (played by Pedro Pascal) is a dangerous crime boss. Soon the actor is roped into a CIA operation to take the criminal down, forcing him to channel the characteristics of some of his most famous roles. It’s a meta comedy that sees Cage embracing the aspects of

IMAGE CREDITS: A24 / LIONSGATE

BODIES, BODIES, BODIES

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT his real-life and on-screen personas that have made him an internet icon. Gormican wrote the script for Cage with no backup plan in place. He admits that the entire project hinged on whether the actor would be willing to poke fun at himself. “You don’t know what someone is going to be game for, and we didn’t pull any punches,” says Gormican. “Part of the pitch to Nic was, in a world where your identity is litigated in the public sphere constantly on a daily basis, and people have access to you, what would be interesting to us is to create things that are a mix of the two, reality and some sort of surreality, create a character that’s one-part real and one-part fiction.” The blending of the real and fictional Cage on set led to interesting clashes where Cage would insist that the “real” Nicolas Cage wouldn’t say a particular line, and Gormican would

remind the actor that he was playing a character. Stranger still was when the fiction of the film blended with the fiction of Cage’s past roles. “There’s a particular shot in the movie that I took from Leaving Las Vegas, where he’s at the bottom of the pool, drinking, and it’s Nic’s lowest point in our movie,” Gormican says, “and that [earlier role] was the highest point in his career. I was describing the scene on set. And I said, ‘So, you’re going to go to the bottom of the pool and that’s how you’re going to be.’ And he was like, ‘Tom, Tom, Tom. I know. I’ve already done it.’” While Cage has proven in films like Leaving Las Vegas and the recent Pig that he can deliver understated, restrained performances, audiences seem to gravitate toward Cage’s presence when he’s playing characters that are manic or unstable—like his turn in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation.

“I’m obsessed with the neurotic, anxious Cage,” Gormican says. “I don’t know that there’s anybody who plays neurotic or anxious better than Nicolas Cage. I love it. At one point he very neurotically said to me, ‘I’m not a neurotic guy.’ I was like, ‘Neurotic Cage is the best Cage.’” While critics and audiences know that Cage is capable of greatness, there were a few years in the late 2010s where it looked like the actor’s marquee status was behind him. But Cage’s career is like a pendulum, and when it swings in one direction, fans are ready and willing to embrace a swing back the other way. “He’s never been gone. He’s been doing more films than he’s ever done,” Gormican says. “I always thought that there would be a groundswell beneath him, because he’s an actor who has a lot of goodwill, and hopefully this will push that even further.” SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

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SXSW favorite Richard Linklater returns to the festival with this animated sci-fi set in 1969 against the backdrop of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. It follows the dual perspective of the astronauts and mission control preparing for this historic event, and an excited little kid who lives in Houston, Texas and fantasizes about being selected for his own personal secret mission to the Moon. Parts of the film will use a similar rotoscoping technique to A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life to realize a movie that’s part flight of fancy and part coming of age story. Zachary Levi, Glen Powell, and Jack Black star. This is the movie’s world premiere before its release on Netflix later in the year. 36

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IMAGE CREDITS: TK

APOLLO 10½: A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD

SPIN ME ROUND

At this point, it’s safe to say writer-director Jeff Baena has developed a small troupe of sharp improvisational talents for his movies. Which, after films like the devilishly fun The Little Hours and the surprising pathos of Horse Girl, makes Spin Me Round one to keep an eye on. Baena co-writes again with star Alison Brie in this story about a woman who manages an Italian restaurant. When the company sends her to an institute outside Florence for an “educational immersion program” it sounds like heaven. But the Renaissance City has always paired its comedies with Paradiso and the Inferno.

IMAGE CREDITS: A24 / NETFLIX / I LOVE MY DAD LLC./SEAN MCELWEE

TI WEST FINALLY returns to SXSW with his first horror movie in nearly a decade. As with some of the genre-defining chillers he crafted at the beginning of his career, including The House of the Devil and V/H/S, it feels like destiny for him to be here. It’s also apt since X takes a page out of Leatherface’s playbook by being set in rural Texas during the 1970s. There, a group of young filmmakers —including Scream breakout Jenna Ortega—go into the country to make an adult film. But when their elderly hosts discover what they’re up to, they may end up with more than final cut.

I LOVE MY DAD WHEN CHUCK’S SON FRANKLIN refuses contact and blocks him on social media, Chuck comes up with a plan to check in on the boy. Posing online as pretty waitress Becca, the estranged dad strikes up a rapport with Franklin, who unexpectedly falls for his new crush. That’s how a father ends up inadvertently catfishing his son in James Morosini’s second directorial feature, the follow-up to 2018’s Threesomething. This dramatic comedy based on writer-director Morosini’s real-life experience stars Patton Oswalt (A.P. Bio, Ratatouille) as Chuck, Morosini (The Sex Lives of College Girls, American Horror Story) as Franklin, and Teen Vogue YouTube beauty vlogger-turned-actor Claudia Sulewski as the real Becca. Saturday Night Live’s Rachel Dratch and Transparent’s Amy Landecker co-star. The feature was filmed in Syracuse, New York in 2021 and receives its world premiere at SXSW. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

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THE COW WINONA RYDER takes a vacation from battling Demogorgons and shady government facilities in Hawkins, Indiana, to star in indie mystery The Cow. The film is the directorial debut of Eli Horowitz, the writer-producer of Prime Video’s psychological thriller Homecoming, which was based on Gimlet Media’s first scripted podcast.

In The Cow, Ryder (Stranger Things, The Plot Against America) plays Kath, a character whose boyfriend appears to have run off with a younger woman, until she begins to suspect that there’s more to his disappearance than meets the eye. Dermot Mulroney (Shameless, Hanna) co-stars along with It and The Stand’s Owen Teague, and Westworld

and 10 Cloverfield Lane’s John Gallagher, Jr. Production wrapped in September 2021 on the thriller, which makes its world premiere at SXSW—and is not to be confused with Andrea Arnold’s 2021 nature documentary Cow or Kelly Reichardt’s celebrated 2019 Western First Cow.

Sci-fi comedy drama Linoleum is writer-director Colin West’s second feature after ghost-mystery Double Walker. It’s the story of Cameron—the host of a struggling children’s science show—who attempts to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming an astronaut while trying to fix his failing marriage. Grammy-nominated stand-up comedian and actor Jim Gaffigan (The Jim Gaffigan Show, Bob’s Burgers) plays Cameron, with Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn as his wife Erin. The wannabe rocket engineer’s dream doesn’t take him to NASA, but to his own garage, where he tries to build a rocket ship under the watchful eye of his mysterious neighbor Kent, also played by Gaffigan. 38

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BITCH ASS

Bill Posley makes his big screen directorial debut in this perfect midnight madness setup: a gang initiation in 1999 goes horrifyingly wrong when four recruits break into a house belonging to an actor who played cinema’s first Black masked serial killer in the 1970s. Soon the initiates will be playing his games if they hope to survive the night. And the scariest part? Said Black cinema star is played by none other than the actual Black horror legend Tony Todd. Well, at least for their sakes they didn’t say “Candyman” five times.

IMAGE CREDITS: BOULDERLIGHT PICTURES/ BRAIN SCRATCH PRODUCTIONS/SHANE BROWN

LINOLEUM

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EPISODIC PREMIERES

Some of the hottest new shows around get their debut at SXSW. BY ALEC BOJALAD, KAYTI BURT, AND LOUISA MELLOR

SWIMMING WITH SHARKS THE TOXICITY OF THE Hollywood movie studio is well documented, both in news headlines and in fiction. Where better, then, to stage this darkly comic story of cut-throat ambition and youthful obsession? Inspired by George Huang’s 1994 film of the same name, Swimming With Sharks is a new half-hour series

starring Kiernan Shipka as Lou, the new intern to a domineering studio head. Diane Kruger plays Lou’s boss, to whom the young schemer will do anything to get close. This new imagining of Huang’s ’90s feature swaps Frank Whaley and Kevin Spacey for Shipka (Mad Men, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and

THE LAST MOVIE STARS

When so few Hollywood relationships survive the spotlight, what was the secret of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s 50-year marriage? How did the Oscar-winning stars of The Hustler and The Three Faces of Eve balance fame with family, charity fund-raising, and social activism? This new “six chapter” documentary from director Ethan Hawke explores Newman and Woodward’s careers and love story. Hawke uses archival interviews with the couple and their contemporaries alongside dramatized transcripts performed by Oscar Isaac, Laura Linney, Melanie Griffith, and more. Coming to CNN+ and HBO Max. 40

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Kruger (Inglourious Basterds), lending a cool, glamorous Killing Eve vibe to proceedings as two ambitious, ego-driven women circle one another in a bloodthirsty professional environment. Donald Sutherland and Finn Jones (Marvel’s Iron Fist) co-star in the six-part series, which premieres on streaming service Roku in April.

IMAGE CREDIT: A LOUIS GOLDMAN/PHOTO RESEARCHERS HISTORY (THE LAST MOVIE STARS), FOCUS ON SPORT (THEY CALL ME MAGIC)/GETTY, ROKU (SWIMMING WITH SHARK)

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DMZ WHEN VERTIGO FIRST published dystopian comic-book series DMZ in 2005, writer Brian Woods had dreamed up a future America riven by political and cultural division—a country at war with itself. Imagine that. In the decade since Woods and Riccardo Burchielli’s run concluded in 2012, enough has happened to make this screen adaptation feel urgent and timely. DMZ’s vision of America in the throes of a second civil war arguably makes more sense now than when it was conceived in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Trump-era headlines will certainly have added grist to the

SHINING GIRLS

creative mill of showrunner-writer Roberto Patino (Westworld, Sons of Anarchy) and producer-director Ava DuVernay (Selma, When They See Us). The four-part miniseries stars Rosario Dawson (Daredevil, Dopesick) as Alma Ortega. A medic separated from her son during the emergency evacuation of New York City, Alma is forced to journey through Manhattan’s lawless demilitarized zone (or DMZ) in the hope of reuniting with her boy. Along the way, she heals those in need while navigating her way through a complex hierarchy of warlords and outlaws battling for supremacy.

Elisabeth Moss headlines Apple TV+’s adaptation of South African author Lauren Beukes’ bestselling novel The Shining Girls, a metaphysical thriller about a time-traveling serial killer and the survivor who hunts him back. The book garnered criticism for its failure to capitalize on its ambitious premise and for its shallow depiction of violence against women. But with a stellar cast (including Jamie Bell) and Michelle MacLaren (Game of Thrones) directing, Shining Girls has the potential to be an adaptation that improves upon its popular source material. It makes its worldwide debut on April 29.

Dawson stars opposite Benjamin Bratt (Law & Order, Doctor Strange) as gang boss Parco Delgado, a popular leader who exploits the cynical opportunities of his war-torn country. Joining them are Hoon Lee (Warrior, Banshee) as Chinatown warlord Wilson, and When They See Us’ Freddy Miyares as gang member and artist Skel. Filming began in Atlanta on the DuVernay-directed first episode in pre-pandemic 2020, before production was forced to down tools. Things resumed in summer 2021 with Ernest R. Dickerson (The Walking Dead, The Wire) in the director’s chair.

BRENÉ BROWN: ATLAS OF THE HEART

Dr. Brené Brown’s research and writing on courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy have made her a bestselling author and a resource for many humans looking to navigate their way through a confusing world. HBO Max has adapted Brown’s latest book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, into an eight-episode series. Directed by concert film and music documentary maker Paul Dugdale, the Austin-based unscripted series is set to “take us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human.” SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

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Doctor Who’s Tosin Cole stars as Moses Johnson, a Black highschool athlete who is pulled into the notoriously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system after being taken in by police as a supposed gang member. Veteran public defender Franklin Roberts (Courtney B. Vance) takes on Johnson’s case—in spite of having told his wife he would retire—in the hopes it will have an impact on the larger Chicago judicial system. A courtroom drama set to explore systemic racism and institutional corruption, 61st Street premieres on AMC (and on AMC+ and ALLBLK) on April 10.

THE GIRL FROM PLAINVILLE ON JULY 13, 2014, 18-year-old Conrad Roy III died by suicide in Fairhaven, Massachussetts. Though this situation was already tragic enough, investigators soon found text messages on Roy’s phone that would catapult the case to national significance. Roy was engaged in a relationship with Plainville, Massachusetts 17-year-old Michelle Carter. The pair texted for years, with Roy sharing intimate details of his mental health struggles. In the weeks leading up to his death, Carter actively encouraged Roy to take his own life, creating a complicated legal dynamic that would play out in the subsequent trial Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter. Now, the eight-episode Hulu series, The Girl From Plainville, is set to dramatize the events of that trial and the teenagers’ relationship. Elle Fanning stars as Carter and if the show is anywhere as effective as Fanning’s physical transformation into her character, Hulu might have another true crime hit on its hands.

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH

The Man Who Fell to Earth has quite the sci-fi legacy. First published as a novel in 1963 by Walter Tevis, this story about a curious extraterrestrial visitor went on to become a 1976 cult classic film of the same name. That version even starred the ’70s resident starman himself, David Bowie, as the titular alien Earth-faller. Now, Showtime is bringing us another adaptation of The Man Who Fell to Earth, utilizing some real star power to remake this classic concept. Star Trek franchise czar Alex Kurtzman is showrunning the project with Chiwetel Ejiofor taking over from Bowie in the lead role. 42

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APPLE TV+ (SHINING GIRLS, WECRASHED), HBO MAX (DMZ, BRENÉ BROWN: ATLAS OF THE HEART), SHOWTIME (61ST STREET, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH), HULU (THE GIRL FROM PLAINVILLE)

WECRASHED “WEWORK ISN’T JUST A company. It’s a movement,” WeWork founder Adam Neumann (played by Jared Leto) says midway through the trailer for Apple TV+ series WeCrashed. He's partly right. WeWork wasn’t much of a company. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a movement either. Like many other firms that insist they’re really a family, phenomenon, or insert-buzzword-here, the workspace-sharing Silicon Valley disruptor was more of a fraud than anything. And now the story of that fraud is finally getting the big-time TV treatment it deserves. WeCrashed is adapted from the Wondery podcast series WeCrashed: The Rise and Fall of WeWork. As the show’s precipitous title promises, the eight-episode series will cover how

WeWork went from a global brand worth $47 billion to basically a penny stock in less than a year. Assisting in WeCrashed’s storytelling mission is an impressive cast featuring two Academy Award winners. Jared Leto taps into a God complex (where’d he find that?) to play narcissistic WeWork founder Adam Neumann. Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway plays Neumann’s wife, Rebekah. Also starring are Kyle Marvin as Miguel McKelvey and America Ferrera as Elishia Kennedy. Neumann co-founded WeWork with McKelvey in 2010. The company’s mission was a simple one: to provide flexible workspaces for tech startups and others who wanted to rent out an office to work in. It was apparently successful for much of the

decade, managing over four million square meters of workspaces by 2018. In 2019, however, WeWork filed paperwork to go public and that paperwork revealed some troubling financials. WeWork delayed its IPO, which jump-started the fall of the company and set in motion a stunning saga of greed and mismanagement. The New York Times described the failed IPO as “an implosion unlike any other in the history of start-ups.” Hulu premiered its own WeWork documentary last year, but when WeCrashed premieres its first three episodes on March 18 on Apple TV+, it will be the only WeWork game in town. As such, it will have an opportunity to craft the definitive take.

THEY CALL ME MAGIC

The legend from Lansing, Michigan’s birthname was Earvin. But when he stepped onto a basketball court, his game was so supernaturally smooth that the only logical thing to call the 6’9’’ point guard was Magic. Now a successful business tycoon and all-around cultural icon, twice-enshrined basketball Hall of Famer Magic Johnson will be the subject of two TV series in 2022. The first is the HBO dark comedy Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. Apple TV+, however, attempts to tell the full story with four-part docuseries They Call Me Magic which will follow the events of Johnson’s life from success at Michigan State to superstardom in Los Angeles to his stunning HIV diagnosis. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

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PREVIEW

TECH TO EXPLORE

Technology panels put the future of exploration and entertainment on display. BY MICHAEL AHR

FROM SPACE TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, a wealth of topics in the tech industry are waiting to be explored at SXSW. More than a dozen panels focused on the future of technology in daily life and entertainment will offer fans, speculators, and curious forward-thinkers unique opportunities to learn more about where the various fields are headed. There’s something for everyone interested in the latest innovations, with guest speakers and panels on just about every topic imaginable. Here are some we think Den of Geek readers will particularly enjoy. This magazine was finalized several weeks before SXSW. View the latest panel schedules at SXSW.com.

IS THE INTERNET REALLY ROTTING? MONDAY, MARCH 14, 4:00 TO 5:00 P.M. CT, HILTON AUSTIN DOWNTOWN | SALON K

Ideally, the internet would be a free and open space designed to foster a worldwide community that understood each other’s differences, but that hasn’t been most people’s experience. A panel of web experts from Harvard, GitHub, the Software Freedom Law Center, and the OpenJS Foundation explore why fake news and lack of accountability have led to a toxic online atmosphere, and discuss what we can do to turn things around and transform the internet into a force for good. 44

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The Creator Economy vs Media Death Stars SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 4:00 TO 5:00 P.M. CT, HILTON AUSTIN DOWNTOWN | SALON J

As streaming services gain power and media conglomerates merge, it’s those making the actual content who are feeling the squeeze. Producer Evan Shapiro and NYC Media Lab executive director Steven Rosenbaum will discuss the creative limitations of working in this increasingly polarized environment, where artists are more beholden to the new platforms than they ever were to the traditional studios and networks.

This is Not a Person (Ce n’est pas une personne) TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 4:00 TO 5:00 P.M. CT, FAIRMONT | MANCHESTER B

What is the difference between a 3D rendering of a person using volumetric video and a digital double using an avatar? One is a real-time representation, while the other presents an ideal. Panelists from Double Eye, Cloudred, and Microsoft talk about the pros and cons of the authentic versus the artificial when presenting a virtual person, whether controlled by an actual human or by artificial intelligence, in the digital space.

How will Artificial Intelligence Change the Future of Film and Television? WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 4:00 TO 5:00 P.M. CT, AUSTIN CONVENTION CENTER | BALLROOM D

Artificial intelligence is poised to take television and movies to the next level. The founders of Wonder Dynamics and a computer science professor at UC Berkeley gather to discuss how the AI technology currently used in robotics and autonomous vehicles can transform visual storytelling in the digital age.

IMAGE CREDIT: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY RAFAEL HENRIQUE/ SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES (INTERNET)

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SPACE EXPLORATION FOR ALL: YOU CAN DISCOVER SPACE SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 11:30 TO 12:30 P.M. CT, AUSTIN CONVENTION CENTER | ROOM 18AB

IMAGE CREDITS: DANAI JETAWATTANA/ GETTY IMAGES (AI), KEVIN M. GILL/NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS (JUPITER)

Just months ago, an amateur astronomer recorded an asteroid impact on Jupiter, and many other novices have done the same over the years. Panelists from NASA, SETI, and Planet Labs will join Star Trek: Voyager’s Tim Russ for a discussion of how, in the age of New Astronomy, anyone can participate in the exploration of space. Discoveries, innovations, and solutions to potential problems are coming from hobbyists as often as professionals.

Under His AI: Human Consciousness and Technology

The Ethics of Deepfakes: Are They Always Bad?

TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 11:30 A.M. TO 12:30 P.M. CT, AUSTIN CONVENTION CENTER | CREATIVE INDUSTRIES EXPO, NEXT STAGE, EXHIBIT HALL 5

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2:30 TO 3:30 P.M. CT, HILTON AUSTIN DOWNTOWN | SALON J

The singularity is coming, but it isn’t a Skynet-like artificial intelligence we should fear. Instead, artists from Seyhan Lee and the Niet Normaal INT Foundation ask whether humanity can be trusted with the responsibility. Will we use the digital tools at our disposal to further cut ourselves off from each other, or can we find a way to use AI to extend human consciousness in more creative endeavors?

Many of us enjoy seeing deepfake videos of celebrity faces superimposed on famous movie roles they never enacted, but the technology has often been perceived as being quite dangerous as well. Panelists from Metaphysic and Adobe discuss how context is everything when it comes to deepfakes, and how the community called Synthetic Futures seeks to use the new medium to express creativity simply and ethically. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

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GAMING’S NEXT GEN

Technology panels put the future of exploration and entertainment on display. BY JOHN SAAVEDRA

NEW XBOX AND PLAYSTATION CONSOLES aren’t the only way the video game industry is ringing in the next generation of creation and innovation. This year, SXSW is highlighting the people, technology, and trends helping to push the art form forward.

Redefining the Mainstream: Indie Games in 2022 & Beyond MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2:30-3:30 PM CT, FAIRMONT | MANCHESTER E

Indie studios have become a major touchstone of modern gaming, and the space is only growing, thanks to a surge in mobile gaming in the last decade as well as new business models such as on-demand gaming subscription services that allow small developers to get their titles in front of as many players as possible. Recent indie hits such as Fall Guys, Hades, and Valheim show that these scrappy game developers and big dreamers are here to stay, and this SXSW panel will track where this exciting space is going next. 46

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IMAGE CREDITS: MEDIATONIC / LUKAS SCHULZE/GETTY

This magazine was finalized several weeks before SXSW. View the latest panel schedules at SXSW.com.

Meet the Women Evolving the Gaming Industry TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 11:30 AM-12:30 PM CT, FAIRMONT | MANCHESTER F

Gaming is no longer just seen as a boys’ club. Hosted by Jill Kenney, CEO of content and social platform Paida Gaming, an organization striving to create more inclusive spaces in the gamer community, this panel will share the experiences of women who have worked in the gaming industry, including streamers Makeda Loney and Alanah Pearce as well as video game journalist Shannon Liao from The Washington Post. This discussion will chart how the industry can continue to evolve into a more welcoming space.

How Video Game Technology is Influencing TV and Film TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 11:30 AM-12:30 PM CT, FAIRMONT | MANCHESTER E

If you’ve watched hit shows like The Mandalorian, you’ve witnessed one of the many ways production studios are using the latest in video game technology to bring cutting-edge visuals to the movies and TV shows you love. And with next-gen game tech like Unreal Engine 5 launching this year, the lines between gaming and showbusiness are about to blur even further.

LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE! THE NEW ERA OF ESPORTS

Game Changers: Black & Indigenous Voices in Gaming

TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 10:00-11:00 AM CT, FAIRMONT | MANCHESTER G

It’s no secret that a lack of diversity is one of the key issues that the gaming industry must address. Tanya Depass, founder and director of I Need Diverse Games, a non-profit organization that supports marginalized developers, leads a conversation about the work that still needs to be done for people of color in the industry.

Esports aren’t just for games like League of Legends, Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Halo anymore. Major real-life sports organizations are now getting in on the action, forming their own esports leagues, such as the NBA’s own NBA 2K League, or starting teams to compete in today’s most competitive video games. Join members of the Golden Guardians, the Golden State Warriors’ official League of Legends team, for a discussion on this massive shift in competitive gaming.

TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 4:00-5:00 PM CT, FAIRMONT | MANCHESTER E

SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

DOnALd GLOvEr

has been thinking about stories lately… and death. But mostly stories. The creator, lead writer, and star of FX’s Atlanta has been crafting stories for most of his adult life. After getting his start in comedy as part of the internet sketch group Derrick Comedy at NYU, Glover was hired by Tina Fey to join the writing staff of 30 Rock at age 23. The saga of his life since then is one of the most impressive pop culture runs of our era. Glover had a successful multi-season acting run as Troy Barnes on the beloved NBC sitcom Community. He appeared in films including The Martian and Spider-Man: Homecoming. He embarked on a Grammy awardwinning music career under the nom de plume Childish Gambino. He was LANDO-FREAKING-CALRISSIAN. All of that, however, isn’t the story of his life. Because there’s no such thing as a story. That which we call a story is just an evolutionary coping mechanism in the human brain to create a coherent narrative where there is none. Everything is a moment, according to Glover. The realization came once he realized he was going to die one day. “There’s no actual story. You might be like, ‘I was born, and then I smoked and then I ate and I got married and then I had a dog and then I got sick and then I died.’ Those are just things that happen. It’s not a story. Stories make sense. They help us understand what’s happening, but they’re not actually what’s happening.” Understanding what’s actually 48

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THe AFTER A LENGTHY HIATUS, MODERN TV MASTERPIECE ATLANTA RETURNS FOR ITS THIRD SEASON. CREATOR, WRITER, AND STAR DONALD GLOVER REVEALS WHY THE THEME OF THE YEAR IS CURSES.

IMAGE CREDITS: MATTHIAS CLAMER / FX

Left: (Left to right) Donald Glover as Earn Marks, LaKeith Stanfield as Darius, Zazie Beetz as Van, and Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in Atlanta.

BY ALEC BOJALAD

LIFE

happening without the psychological crutch of narrative is what Glover and the impressive team behind Atlanta have been doing for two, going on three seasons now. First premiering in 2016 on FX, Atlanta follows the “story” of ascendant Atlanta rapper Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles (Brian Tyree Henry), his friend Darius Epps (LaKeith Stanfield), his Princetondropout cousin-turned-manager Earnest “Earn” Marks (Glover), and Earn’s on-again-off-again girlfriend Vanessa “Van” Keefer (Zazie Beetz). The arc of Paper Boi’s music career provides the framework for the moment-mining that Atlanta is known for. When tuning in to a new episode of the series, no viewer can have a reliable expectation of what they’re about to experience. Any given installment could feature Earn working out the logistics of Paper Boi’s latest concert, presenting a dispatch from a fictional local cable channel, or sending Paper Boi into the woods for a journey of Georgian magical realism. One episode in particular, season 2’s “Teddy Perkins,” has become something of a modern horror TV classic. That half-hour finds Darius visiting the mansion of the reclusive titular musician to buy a piano only to become a prisoner to the man with a pale, mask-like face (played by Glover under sheets of corpse-white makeup). “The honest truth is a lot of the times when we’re talking about these things [genre episodes], they don’t feel that different from anything else that we’re doing,” explains writer Stefani Robinson. “‘Teddy Perkins’ is a great example. That episode for us was more funny than it was scary. It was more about how eerie this character was and how ridiculous we could conceive of a character.” Intentional or not, the surreal intersection of horror and comedy continues apace in Atlanta’s longawaited third season. Though the show hasn’t been on the air since May 2018, due to Glover’s busy schedule SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

followed by the Covid-19 pandemic interrupting production, when audiences tune in to season 3’s first episode, they won’t see Earn, Paper Boi, Darius, or Van… at least not right away. Instead, season 3 opens with a quiet moment shared between two fishermen on a lake in the Georgia countryside at night. The moment is dark, eerie, and effectively sets up season 3’s themes of curses, whiteness, and the curse of whiteness. “‘Blackness’ or ‘whiteness’ doesn’t exist,” Glover says of the season’s point of view. “It’s an idea that’s made up, all of it. It’s something that we all just kind of agreed to. It was interesting to play with the idea of ‘What if you 50

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I lEArNED YoU dO pUnK tHInGs, YoU GET PUnk REsUlts. ” - DOnALd GLOvEr

IMAGE CREDITS: COCO OLAKUNLE / FX

Left: Donald Glover as Earn Marks and Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in season 3 of Atlanta. Above: LaKeith Stanfield as Paper Boi’s friend Darius and Zazie Beetz as Earn’s on/off girlfriend, Van.

built this system, but you can’t see it?’ That would be kind of scary if you built this thing to help you, but you didn’t realize that it was also hurting you, but you’re the only one who can turn it off.” According to Atlanta writer and Donald’s younger brother, Stephen Glover, Donald was adamant upon the moment’s conception that it should be season 3’s opening salvo. “Because I just wanted to do some stuff that other people don’t do, and I just wanted to be brash, honestly,” the elder Glover explains. “I just feel like most people were too scared to do something like that, so I was like, ‘Fuck it.’” Atlanta season 3 isn’t scared to do

just about anything. Despite the show’s provincial title, nearly the entire season takes place in Europe, following Paper Boi’s international tour through London, Paris, and Amsterdam. Filming during the tail end of European Covid restrictions gave Atlanta certain opportunities that few shows have ever gotten. Per longtime series director and frequent Glover collaborator Hiro Murai, production received access to public areas that would otherwise not accommodate filming due to loss of tourist dollars. “We shot a whole scene in the Red Light District of Amsterdam, which was nuts because it was completely shut down at the time,” Murai says. “There were no tourists there, and Amsterdam was this strange tranquil ghost town—we had to repopulate it with our people and with our decor and lights.” Though the city of Atlanta is an ocean away, the influence of the show’s title location remains as vibrant as ever as its residents make their way

through an unfamiliar European landscape. The journey mirrors several of the writers’ experiences. Stephen Glover recalls graduating from college, moving to L.A., and traveling around the world to discover that the world was far different from his Southern home. “The clubs felt weird, the parties felt weird, the people felt weird,” the younger Glover says. “I remember one time I was like, ‘Maybe we’re the weird ones?’ Maybe Atlanta is the weird place and everywhere else is more of the same. I came to realize it’s kind of true.” Much of Paper Boi’s tour in season 3 also reflects upon the high strangeness of traveling through the world as Black Americans. In Amsterdam alone, Earn and Paper Boi encounter the awkwardness of the Dutch Christmas tradition of Sinterklaas and his unfortunate helper “Zwarte Piet,” a.k.a. Black Pete. The inescapable surreality of being Black in a world that doesn’t know quite how to act around Black folks has always been a narrative feature of Atlanta, but the show’s European side quest brings it into sharper focus. “Some of the experiences as a writers’ room, specifically a Black writers’ room of people of a certain SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

age, when you say them out loud, they sound surreal,” Robinson says. “There are some things that do feel very clear cut and racist. But what always fascinates us is that while there are those horrible things that seem very black-and-white, there’s also that more nuanced gray area.” Robinson points to the season 1 episode “Juneteenth” as a prime example. The installment, which was many white viewers’ introduction to the now-national holiday, finds Earn and Van at a party hosted by an older white man who is reverent of Black American culture. The man encourages Earn to visit Africa for a life-changing experience, not realizing that Earn barely has enough capital to take care of himself, Van, and their child, let alone embark on a transcontinental self-actualizing trip. “You have someone who is so apologetic and reverent of your culture, but he’s experiencing it in a way that you will never experience because you haven’t been given the tools to experience those things. Some of those stories present more questions than answers. Being Black in America is hard to explain,” Robinson says. According to Glover, however, the show’s exploration of the Black experience in America—and now Europe is just part of a larger storytelling mission, moment-bymoment. “I’m not really into things being just about race. I want to make something that’s really good and interesting,” he says. “We went into (season 3) this way because we just knew people were just seeing it as a ‘Black show,’ on some level. So we were like, ‘Well, let’s just do this season about white people, and just skip over that.’” Suffice to say, conversations about Atlanta become abstract rather quickly. The show’s third season, however, isn’t all just vibes. There are plenty of concrete character moments to latch onto. Paper Boi’s burgeoning worldwide fame as an artist will be more apparent than ever, with Stephen Glover, behind-the-scenes writer of Paper Boi’s self-titled hit, promising more music to come. Earn 52

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Right: The core cast of Atlanta—Brian Tyree Henry, LaKeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz, and Donald Glover—are reunited in the show’s third season.

and Van have come a long way from their cash-poor beginnings. And Darius? Well, he’s still Darius. It also must be said that all of these moments, abstract or otherwise, are entertaining. “To be honest, I’m pissed because I just feel like people aren’t going to know how good this is,” Glover says. “I want people to watch it. Sometimes things are just good.” Though the wait for Atlanta’s third season has been a long one, the wait for the fourth—and final—season will be much shorter. FX renewed both seasons simultaneously, giving Glover and the writers’ room a chance to pen their swan song in two acts, the second of which has already been shot in its entirety. “Weirdly, I was aiming for season three to be the best season and season four to land the plane well,” Glover says. “But I think now that we’re going through it, it’s like, ‘Oh, season four is actually probably better.’” With the Atlanta experience about to be in the rearview, the folks behind the show are already on to their next moments. Stanfield, Beetz, and Henry all have thriving film careers, with Henry having just joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Eternals. Murai is also highly in-demand, recently directing several episodes of HBO Max’s Station Eleven, and the Atlanta writers’ room has been raided—with Stephen Glover, Stefani Robinson, and more moving on to other big-time television projects. As for Donald Glover, he’s got a lucrative overall deal with Amazon to pursue new projects. The experience on Atlanta, however, came with some important lessons for him, beyond the nature of life as a series of surreal impermanent moments…. “I learned you do punk things, you get punk results.” The first two episodes of Atlanta season 3 premiere on March 24 on FX. The first episode will screen on the closing night of SXSW.

ATLanTa: The ESsentiaL EpISoDES EACH EPISODE OF ATLANTA IS FILLED WITH SURREAL, INDELIBLE MOMENTS. HERE ARE THE SERIES’ HIGHLIGHTS.

SE ASON 1 EPISODE 6

VaLUE

Atlanta spends an entire episode with Van learning to “know her value” as she goes to astonishing lengths to pass a drug test. The installment culminates with one of the most bizarre and striking images in the show’s history.

SE ASON 1 EPISODE 5

SE ASON 2 EPISODE 1

Paper Boi gets into a fight with a sideways-world Justin Bieber at a charity basketball game, and Darius causes a scene for using the silhouette of a dog at a shooting range.

In the season 2 premiere, it’s “robbin’ season” as Darius introduces us to the legend of the Florida Man. A pitch-perfect Katt Williams guest stars as Uncle Willy and an alligator guest stars as itself in a show-stopping performance.

nOBODY BEAts THE bIEBs SE ASON 2 EPISODE 4

IMAGE CREDITS: OLIVER UPTON / FX

� HeLen

Earn accompanies Van on a trip to Helen, Georgia, for a Fastnacht event to celebrate her German heritage. This episode is a perfect two-hander that delves into the duo’s relationship. But beware the Schnappviecher!

ALLIGAtOR MAn

SE ASON 2 EPISODE 9

NORTH of tHE BOrDER

After Paper Boi performs at a college campus, he, Earn, and Darius spend an awkward night with a local fraternity that features bad rapping, hazing, and a Confederate flag. Few episodes better capture the surreality of the Atlanta experience. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

H U N T I NG FOR

Sandra Bullock and producer Liza Chasin reveal how they brought adventure comedy The Lost City to life.

EFORE THE WORLD WAS TURNED upside down by a global pandemic, Sandra Bullock and Liza Chasin were on the hunt for hidden gold. A script that had been sitting on a shelf for seven long years had just come into their possession. And while not perfect, something shiny and vital was glittering under the surface. “We knew there was a reason it was sitting on a shelf,” Bullock says. Then came the lightbulb moment. “Oh my God, I see it! I see it! I know what it should be,” she declares. “Then you get really excited, then you panic because you’re absolutely convinced that there are no writers out there that can then bring it to the level we had in our head.” Luckily for star and producer Bullock and co-producer Liza Chasin, that writer did in fact exist, and her name is Dana Fox. Soon the trio was holding virtual meetings, going through the pages, and shaping their vision for The Lost City. 54

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When Den of Geek catches up with Bullock and Chasin, they’re excited to be in the home stretch and only a matter of weeks out from their SXSW world premiere. As Bullock exclaims, “This is fun!” This being the first time that the star is able to talk about the movie she and Chasin worked so hard to bring to audiences. It’s a journey that felt special and unusual in the landscape of Hollywood. “Being allowed to do that is very rare. We always have to fight for things,” Bullock says. “But for a while, we were left alone to see if we could bring this movie to where we wanted to and get it greenlit.”

Crafting the story of reclusive author Loretta Sage (Bullock) and her unexpected adventure to the mythical city she’s famous for writing about was an inspiring process for the creative team. It allowed Bullock the space to “vomit out” all the things that she had always wanted to see in action comedies. And when it came to excavating the truth of their own life stories for laughs, Bullock and her co-star Channing Tatum were fearless. “We used a lot of real-life stuff, we don’t care,” she laughs. “Channing and I have no shame!” With Fox on board, Chasin and Bullock also began to dig into Sage and the journey she would go on throughout the film. Though audiences meet her as a romance novelist, that wasn’t always the case for the character. Once a historian with an archaeologist husband, Sage is passionate about preserving the past. But, as Bullock explains, “Sex sells! That wasn’t sexy enough, so she put in a little sex, and you have a romance novel that has some secret history surrounding it.”

IMAGE CREDIT: PARAMOUNT

BY ROSIE KNIGHT

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum lead a star cast including Daniel Radcliffe, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Brad Pitt in The Lost City.

Novelist Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) and cover model Alan (Channing Tatum) navigate their way towards a mythical city.

Struggling between her passion and profit, Sage quickly became even more intriguing and funny to Bullock. “To me, funny isn’t funny unless it’s someone between a rock and a hard place,” Bullock says. “Funny isn’t funny unless you have the balance of pain and loss to show you, ‘Oh, this is funny, because that was so tragic.’” So what did the creative team behind the film decide was the best route forward for Sage? “We put her in the jungle with a cover model,” Bullock laughs. That cover model is Alan (Tatum), who graces the front of Sage’s novels as the romantic hero Dash. “Imagine the pairing of somebody who’s stuck in their head,” Chasin says, “and somebody who is just completely stuck as far away 56

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from their head as they can be. It’s a recipe for success.” Though, as Bullock points out, what’s hilarious for us is a recipe for disaster for the characters, and that’s the point. “We all love to see people fighting, people who shouldn’t belong together,” says the star. That element of the unexpected fish-out-of-water buddy comedy—which both Bullock and Tatum are so adept at bringing to life—looks to be at the heart of The Lost City. There was another aspect of the project that appealed to both Bullock and Chasin: being able to make an original movie not based on another property. Both are clear that the film has what Bullock calls “sentimental tentacles” back to other adventure

movies, most notably 1984’s Romancing the Stone. However, The Lost City is an original, non-franchise story, which almost feels like a rarity in 2022. “I don’t think that freedom comes easy,” says Chasin. “You elbow your way through the rooms a bit to get to the point where you can prove it. There is a lot of fear around originality.” The producer is also quick to note that they’re happy The Lost City pays homage to the great movies that came before, films that the pair both clearly love. And to the women behind the film, the time is right for another such story. “We haven’t had something like this for a while,” Chasin tells us. But the journey to The Lost City was longer than expected, thanks to

IMAGE CREDIT: KIMBERLEY FRENCH / PARAMOUNT

the Covid-19 pandemic that shut down the world as we knew it. For the team behind the movie, though, it didn’t stop them or their passion for the project. “We got even more motivated,” Chasin says. It was exhilarating for the team to envision The Lost City as a journey audiences could go on after the devastating toll of the pandemic. So they made sure that their movie got made. “We were the only film at Paramount that didn’t shut down that year,” Bullock says, “because we ran a tight ship.” Crafting their comedy actionadventure movie thus became a fittingly outrageous caper of its own. Even though Covid-19 was kept at bay, the production faced its own health crisis when a large swath of crew members were struck by a parasite while shooting the film in the Dominican Republic. “We almost lost our first assistant director!” Bullock exclaims. “Channing and I were on IVs. People were crapping themselves, and it was just horrible. Yet everyone got up every day really happy because we were working, we got to interact with each other, and we were on a little adventure that we just really hoped and prayed worked out.” That shared passion was driven by the connection between Bullock and Chasin. “Liza is such a badass at what she does,” says Bullock. “It’s such an honor to work with people who, when they open their mouths, experience and knowledge come out.” The feeling is clearly mutual, as Chasin describes her relationship with Bullock as that of an old married couple. Between the two, the film was clearly in good, if competitive, hands. “If you put two type-A workaholic driven perfectionists together, it doesn’t stop.” Chasin shares. During production, the pair would often compete to see who’d stay up later and who’d be on set last, with their colleagues regularly wondering, ‘‘Oh, who’s gonna win?” In spite of that friendly competition, they had a rule about the production that was intentional, important, and

should be a lesson for others. “What’s in the sights all the time is making a great film and making sure that people have a good experience,” Chasin explains, “Leave a place better than we found it; make sure people arrive home safely, the way they left their homes.” That holistic approach to film production was also of vital importance in approaching The Lost

I’M NOT A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS. I WOULD LOVE TO BE THAT, BUT I HONESTLY CAN’T. — SANDRA BULLOCK

City’s impressive cast of characters, beginning with Sage and Alan. “You have two human beings who are on a ride and who come out the other end having grown and been validated as human beings rather than it being about boy saves girl, girl falls in love,” Bullock says. “I’m not a damsel in distress. I would love to be that, but I honestly can’t. So what I loved about this was the roles were reversed. And nobody but Channing

could have stepped into that role and accepted it with such honesty and genuine love.” After years in varying stages of isolation, both Chasin and Bullock are cautiously optimistic about the notion of people getting to watch The Lost City together in a theater. They are both lovers of the cinema experience, with Bullock recalling her last pre-pandemic viewing of Magic Mike XXL, with rowdy friends and champagne bottles included. Bringing that special kind of popcorn-movie joy to audiences is exactly what both women hope for. “We’re not going to be embarrassed that we want you to feel good,” Bullock smiles. “There’s no shame in that. I’m not cynical anymore. We just need a nice warm hug, we need to laugh our asses off, and we need to just have some fun!” For Bullock, who has deep connections to Austin as a longtime resident, bringing The Lost City to SXSW for its world premiere is nothing short of a dream made real. “It’s the best!” Bullock enthuses about her current hometown. “It’s a community of awesome, excited film-loving people who just come ready to have a good time. The industry has really exploded there and belongs there, because there’s such an appreciation for film current and past.” Though her reverence for SXSW is clear, it might come as a surprise that cinema heavyweight Bullock was legitimately worried about not getting into the festival. Luckily, that wasn’t the case. “It made me so happy when we got in,” she says. “And we’re really excited.” So what is it about SXSW that Bullock loves so much? It’s all about the magic of movies and the intangible enchantment of being around like-minded people. Says Bullock, “You go to Austin for the love of film—the excitement of film, the love of having conversations about film—and the town just gets engulfed in the spirit of it.” The Lost City premieres at SXSW on Saturday, March 12, and opens nationwide on March 25. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

Diabolically

he irreverent world of Amazon’s smash-hit superhero series The Boys is getting bigger, as the new animated anthology show Diabolical highlights tales of various unsuspecting people affected by Vought’s Compound V serum, including everyone’s favorite maniacal Supe, Homelander. Invincible showrunner Simon Racioppa spearheaded the ambitious eight-episode series, where every installment boasts its own animation style and eye-popping talent. “We had a cast of incredibly talented people, who we just let do their thing,” Racioppa says. “We trusted them, and they gave that trust back with incredible work. Everybody gave 110 percent. I can’t speak highly enough about the crew, our directors and designers, our cast, animators, and everyone on our post-production team. Everybody just came together to get this done.” Awkwafina, Kumail Nanjiani, Justin Roiland, Michael Cera, Andy Samberg, Don Cheadle, Giancarlo Esposito, Kieran Culkin, Ben Schwartz, Kevin Smith, Simon Pegg, Christian Slater, and Aisha Tyler are just some of the names attached to these unique stories. Racioppa says that The Boys’ executive producer Seth Rogen was key to bringing them all on board, making calls to notable creators and celebrities who he knew were fans of the live-action series. 58

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The show unveils a string of wild stories that fans of The Boys will love sinking their teeth into. There’s an episode that focuses on a home for kids with underwhelming superpowers, an episode devoted to exploring what happens when a girl discovers she can control turds, an episode that lets the iconic “laser baby” from the live-action show have a Looney Tunes-style adventure, and even an episode written by The Boys comic book co-creator Garth Ennis, where the comics-style versions of Billy Butcher and Hughie Campbell are on a mission to whip up some very public carnage at an event celebrating a murky Supe’s “achievements.” With such a broad range of stories to tackle, Racioppa, who grew up reading and watching anthology fare such as The Twilight Zone, 2000 AD, Heavy Metal, and The Animatrix, says that his team’s decision to choose different animation styles for every episode of Diabolical meant there was a lot of hard work involved in realizing their vision. “We knew we wanted to shoot high,” Racioppa says. “And as we started to go out to our writers, who are other creators, other celebrities, they started to pitch us their stories, and we realized that there wasn’t a way to do them all in the same style. Could you do a Justin Roiland wacky episode next to an Andy Samberg episode about the emotional breakdown of an older couple dealing with cancer? We felt like picking

IMAGE CREDITS: AMAZON

The Boys gets an animated spin-off that’s unlike anything you ever would have expected. BY KIRSTEN HOWARD

Awkwafina voices Sky, who takes Compound V and discovers she can control her own poop.

one [animation] style, or even two styles, wouldn’t do the show, the stories, or the scripts justice.” The project was created on a tight 10-month schedule, and writing each episode always led to pinpointing the appropriate talent for all the other aspects of it. But Racioppa reveals that there were almost no rules set out for Diabolical, with writers simply asked what kind of story they’d want to tell in the world of The Boys, and then instructed to “go bananas.” It made for a kinetic environment that presented fresh challenges. Every decision that Racioppa and his team usually would make over on Invincible had to be made eight times on Diabolical. “Because we had eight composers and a different cast on every episode, there was no overlap. Every design had different directors.” The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke was also on hand to help build those eight stories, as other characters from the “mothership” series occasionally pop up in Diabolical, such as The Deep and Black Noir.

“Nobody knows the world of The Boys better than Eric does,” Racioppa says. “Wherever it logically and organically made sense we integrated those characters. Many episodes don’t have any characters from the mothership, but they are connected by Compound V. It all exists in that world.” But it’s Homelander who gets a finale spotlight with an uber-violent and disturbing story called “One Plus One Equals Two” that takes us back in time to when the messedup Supe first joined The Seven and was sent on a mission to rescue hostages during a tense standoff. Needless to say, nothing goes to plan, and Homelander shows his truly psychotic side. A second season of Diabolical hasn’t been confirmed yet, but Racioppa hopes the fun will continue and we’ll get to meet even more new characters caught up in Vought’s web. “The Boys is a well-crafted, linear story, but Diabolical is more of a grab bag, and I think that’s what makes it fun.”

“We felt like picking one animation style, or even two, wouldn’t do the show, the stories, or the scripts justice”

Diabolical is out now. The Boys SXSW panel is on March 12. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

Episode Highlights  EPISODE 1

I’M YOUR PUSHER

The first episode looks more like The Boys comics than the TV series, and it’s written by The Boys co-creator Garth Ennis. Diabolical showrunner Simon Racioppa explains how it happened. “We told Garth Ennis that we wanted to do a comics version of The Boys [for Diabolical]. He was really into that, [and said] ‘I was thinking about this thing about a drug dealer story, and he spikes the Supes’ drugs.’ I think we talked to him on a Thursday, and he emailed the script on Sunday. He just sat down and did it, and it was awesome. We sent him designs along the way [and] he would give notes. We love the writers to be participatory through their episode’s completion. He was super responsive and was just a joy to work with.”

 EPISODE 2

AN ANIMATED SHORT WHERE PISSED OFF SUPES KILL THEIR PARENTS The weirder episodes of Diabolical are tougher to resolve within the context of The Boys TV show. Racioppa explains what fits and what might not…

“We have episodes going in a lot of different directions. We have comedic episodes like Justin Roiland’s, which is super weird and wacky. No one’s going to think that’s canonical with [The Boys]. It has a guy with a speaker for a head! Maybe there’s elements that come across [like it might be canon]. The home for the kids is called Red River, and there are Vought facilities in The Boys that are called Red River. So there is still a connection, even if it’s a little weirder.”

 EPISODE 8

ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS TWO

Racioppa tells us about what went into creating the wild Homelander origin story episode. “It’s a story created just for Diabolical. I’ve read the whole run of the comics, even before I worked on the show. It’s more based on Eric Kripke’s version of The Boys. I mean, there’s some overlap, but I worked with Eric on the script just to make sure it matched up with what his version of Homelander was from the TV series, just to make sure that it fit with that world. It wasn’t adapted from any specific incident in Garth Ennis’ scripts. Certainly, the idea of a superhero who’s been raised by a corporation… nobody’s gonna come out normal under those circumstances.”

EPISODE 2

EPISODE 4

EPISODE 1

IMAGE CREDITS: HULU

EPISODE 8

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 EPISODE 4

LASER BABY’S DAY OUT

“Laser Baby’s Day Out” not only looks like an authentic, classic cartoon, it sounds like one too. Racioppa explains… “One of the highlights for me was ‘Laser Baby’s Day Out.’ We wanted to make sure it felt as authentic to an old school Looney Tunes-style cartoon as possible. So we found these two incredible composers, Steve and Julie Bernstein, who worked on Animaniacs and Tom & Jerry, and they were delighted to come on board. They ended up doing a 29-piece live orchestra recording for that episode. Things like that were some of my favorite things to do. If we’re gonna make a Looney Tunes episode, let’s really make a Looney Tunes episode, let’s get the orchestra, let’s do it the way they used to do it. So that was a treat.” SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

HALO WILL EXPLORE THE HUMAN SPACE COLONIES ONLY BRIEFLY MENTIONED IN THE GAMES.

aster Chief is one of the most recognizable characters in gaming history, but 20 years since his Xbox debut, he remains a stranger in a strange land when it comes to live-action. Fortunately, after several false starts, Master Chief is finally crash landing on a whole new medium as the star of the Halo series on Paramount+. While Halo has experimented with live-action ads and web series in the past, it has never attempted a production of this scale. But that’s not for lack of trying. In 2005, Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox partnered with Microsoft to adapt Halo into a movie, with Neill Blomkamp directing a script written by Alex Garland and Peter Jackson producing. The film project didn’t work out. Microsoft next turned to director Steven Spielberg to executive produce a TV series with his Amblin Television production arm in 2013. Several delays and changes in the creative team later, Halo is finally coming to our screens in March. 62

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But a big question remains: can a video game franchise as exalted as Halo actually work as a long-form live-action TV series? Kiki Wolfkill, executive producer and head of Halo transmedia at game studio 343 Industries, the studio in charge of making Halo games and writing the lore, says that “both successes and failures” in the shorter live-action projects showed 343i how this series could work. “We’ve done a lot of live action TV ads and trailers, which was really good at helping distill a Halo message, but the scope and scale of this TV series is exponentially bigger,” Wolfkill says. “In terms of working with creative teams, a lot was learned from those previous two, but in terms of scope it’s very expansive, and that’s fresh.” Length is a major difference between those earlier efforts and this TV series, but so is the show’s place in Halo canon. The TV series is set in “the Silver timeline,” outside of the established continuity in the games. It’s basically a permission slip for the show to tell stories with familiar

IMAGE CREDITS: PARAMOUNT+

Stars Pablo Schreiber and Jen Taylor, as well as producers Kiki Wolfkill and Steven Kane, take us behind the scenes of the long-awaited Halo TV series. BY MEGAN CROUSE

PABLO SCHREIBER BECOMES THE FACE OF THE MYSTERIOUS MASTER CHIEF ON THE SHOW.

characters without getting bogged down in video game lore. “From the very beginning, it was clear that in order to let the story evolve and grow the way it needed to, in order to really go deeply into these character arcs, we would need to make some changes,” Wolfkill says. “Sometimes it was even just a perspective change. Sometimes it was something you just didn’t get a view into from the game or even the books. We knew we needed to let the story breathe on its own.” That means being true to the core message of the characters, storylines, and world-building, but not necessarily telling events in the same order. For example, the fall of Reach, a major battle that directly sets up how the heroes discover the titular Halo ring, takes place before the original game, but it hasn’t yet happened on the show when we first meet Master Chief. “At the end of the day, it all comes down to being able to make moment-to-moment decisions,” Wolfkill says. “Every day there were decisions to be made about: do we do something exactly as it was done in the game or are there good reasons to do it differently? And, if so, how do we keep it true to the spirit of Halo but at the same time keep the voice of all these incredible creators coming through?” It’s no secret that this is a risky approach. Diverting from the established formula or canon will please some fans but could alienate many others. Just look at the outrage when Halo 5: Guardians turned Cortana into a villain, or when

Halo 2 introduced an unexpected new main character. Gamers, and fans in general, tend to not like change. But Halo showrunner Steven Kane thinks the new medium will ultimately justify the changes that are coming.

BREAKING THE STORY “You don’t want to just tell the game in television form,” Kane says. “You want to have a conversation with the material. The game has been around for so long, the canon is not only deep but wide. There are opportunities to dig into the canon and find characters that were only hinted at and stories only half mentioned, and dig in and invent new stuff.” That mix of old and new is showcased in the cast and setup of the story. Humanity in the 26th century is under threat from the Covenant, an alien empire ruled by religious zealots. But there’s also trouble brewing at home between the Earth-based United Nations Space Command (UNSC) and its outer colonies. It’s this threat of war that leads scientist Dr. Catherine Halsey (Natascha McElhone) to create the top-secret Spartan program that birthed enhanced super soldier Master Chief John-117. As in the games, Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) and his AI partner Cortana (Jen Taylor) headline the story. But along the way, we will also meet shrewd teenage SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, IT WAS CLEAR THAT IN ORDER TO LET THE STORY EVOLVE AND GROW WE WOULD NEED TO MAKE SOME CHANGES” –KIKI WOLFKILL, PRODUCER colonist Quan Ah, a new character portrayed by Yerin Ha; Bokeem Woodbine’s Soren-066, a Spartan who’s only previously appeared in a tie-in short story; and Makee (Charlie Murphy), an intriguing character created just for the show—a human orphan who was raised by the Covenant and now hates humanity as much as they do. Since Spartans were originally made to fight Insurrectionists—a fact most people in the games conveniently forget when the aliens arrive—they aren’t symbols of hope for Quan. Instead, they’re the oppressors. “She has an animosity against the Spartans,” Kane says. “She begins as our eyes on the Spartans, what we expect them to be. As she learns more about them, her ideas will change. But she stands on her own as a character on the outer planets who feels she’s meant for something else.” Unfortunately, that “something else” comes in the form of a tragedy, according to Kane. “[It] hits her and she’s off on her own, and has to discover what her true purpose in the galaxy is.” Quan—along with Makee—was created as a potential “in” for people watching the show who aren’t necessarily familiar with the games. “The other thing we get from her is a very human perspective on the Spartans and these events and all these large-scale elements,” Wolfkill says. “Quan is a grounded human perspective on that, which I think is definitely unique.” While the show’s creators had the freedom to come up with new storylines and play with timelines, it was still

important for Kane and his team to learn and understand the Halo canon. So 343i held a “boot camp” for the show’s creative team. “For me, the boot camp really had two levels to it: what does Halo mean and what’s the emotional resonance of Halo, and what are the core values and deeply seeded aspects of Halo,” Wolfkill says. “[These] are at the very heart of anything we do. Regardless of lore or making sure weapons are named correctly or look the right way, there’s a very basic understanding of what Halo is about and why it means certain things to certain people. Why, after 20 years, do we have the fans and audience we do?” Two answers to that last question for a start: Master Chief and Cortana.

BECOMING MASTER CHIEF “I was very aware of the Halo franchise. But I am not a big gamer myself. I grew up without TV in rural British Columbia,” says Pablo Schreiber, who explains that he first really learned the story of Halo and the history of the Master Chief at 343i’s boot camp. Casting a known actor in the role of Master Chief is another big risk. Both Kane and Schreiber point out that in the games, Master Chief has remained faceless for 20 years for a reason: he’s designed as the hero avatar that represents the player. His identity isn’t as important as how stepping

THE SHOW WILL SHED MORE LIGHT ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE TOP SECRET SPARTAN PROGRAM.

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MASTER CHIEF ONCE AGAIN FACES OFF AGAINST THE ALIEN RELIGIOUS CULT KNOWN AS THE COVENANT.

into his armor makes the player feel. But by necessity of the medium, the protagonist of a TV series needs to be more fully fleshed-out. That includes revealing the mysterious character’s face for the very first time in franchise history. “The difference between a first person shooter video game and a television series is huge in terms of the immersive experience of an audience member,” Schreiber says. “In a TV show you’re no longer putting the audience member in the center as a character, you’re allowing them to step back and experience this world they have spent hours and hours in in a new and different way.” For Kane, this TV series was a chance to uncover secrets about the Chief ’s past that had never truly been explored in the games. “The key is that Master Chief is a bit of a cipher,” Kane explains. “In the game you are Master Chief. If you don’t read the books, you don’t know the backstory, but in general he stands in for all of us as we play the game. So this is a chance to get in under the hood, so to speak.”

PABLO SCHREIBER IN THE SPARTAN ARMOR THAT WAS ACTUALLY MADE UP OF “50 OR 60 POUNDS” OF PLASTIC.

In Halo lore, John-117 has hints of personality, but doesn’t stray much from the wry, straightforward soldier. On the other hand, the show needed to dig in a bit more. “The first season explores John’s character by approaching John discovering himself,” Kane says. “He is a man dedicated to honor, integrity, courage, and serving humanity. But he isn’t fully formed out, at least in our description of him. He’s not fully aware of himself as a human being.” The Silver Timeline’s Chief will interact with an artifact that digs up buried memories from his childhood, which leads him on a quest to try to discover his own history. “Without giving too much away, what [Master Chief ] wants is going to be a constantly shifting tapestry based on the new information he’s being faced with and how it challenges his sense of self and his sense of duty and honor,” Schreiber says. Exploring Master Chief’s past means digging into the Spartan program itself. The show’s deep dive into Dr. Halsey’s secret initiative—which stole children from their families to turn them into super soldiers tasked with saving humanity—is one way it could tell a unique and pointed story about the underpinnings of this universe. “If you know the canon, you know the history of how he became a Spartan, and it’s not a pretty history,” Kane says. “That’s what I think actually makes the world of the game so interesting. He’s not just a clean cut superhero type. His past is sort of dark. He’s both a victim and a hero at the same time.” Schreiber kept this tension in mind in his performance. “We know the UNSC kidnapped and essentially conscripted child warriors, who they then modified into super soldiers,” he says. “While we know the end result—they ended up SpartanIIs, which have been our best weapon against the alien invasion—it also opened up a host of moral dilemmas and question marks as to whether it was a moral decision.” Along with their surgical modifications, the stolen Spartans also wear the iconic Mjolnir armor. The real-world equivalent of Spartan training was required before putting on the costumes, which were made up of around 50 or 60 pounds of plastic, according to Schreiber. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

LIKE IN THE GAMES, THE COVENANT IS RULED BY A TRIUMVIRATE OF HIGH PROPHETS.

MASTER CHIEF’S JOURNEY TRULY BEGINS WHEN HE COMES INTO CONTACT WITH AN ARTIFACT THAT AWAKENS LOCKEDAWAY MEMORIES FROM HIS PAST.

“The challenge is huge for us as the Spartans. We had to get in the best shape we could to be able to manipulate the costumes in a way that looks believable,” Schreiber says. “The onus, of course, lies in production and the visual effects department to make these suits look super capable.” It also took some lower-tech solutions. “The fact is, when we put on the armor, none of us could fit in the cast chairs,” Schreiber says. “And they brought in these hilarious fold-out chairs four or five times the size of a normal camping chair. And if you sit in these Texas-sized chairs without the Mjolnir, you look like [you’re in] Alice in Wonderland.”

INSIDE THE MIND OF CORTANA As the voice of Cortana for over two decades, Jen Taylor is in a unique position among the show’s actors. She sees better 66

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than anyone else in the cast how the show is taking the Halo story in new directions, both similar to and different from the games. “The writers were always asking me, ‘Does this feel right to you?’” Taylor says of the process of bringing Cortana to the TV series. “I don’t have a ton of experience on TV shows, honestly, but that felt really respectful to me. And if there was a no, I could say ‘Could we talk about this? Because this feels weird.’ People were marvelous about it.” Sometimes that involved conferring with on-set narrative experts: “We have big old Halo game nerds walking around to ensure that we’re being true to the game as much as we can within our storytelling,” Taylor says. “It was such an interesting journey with Jen,” Wolfkill says, “because she was experiencing in real time that intersection of coming from the games and all of that historical detail and the story that was moving us forward.” Taylor filmed her motion-capture scenes at the same time

as the other actors. However, because of the technology used to film Cortana (including an “umbilical cord”-style wire connected to her mo-cap suit when the set had Wi-Fi trouble), she played her part just to the side of the rest of the scene. This created challenges with matching eye lines and synching up with the rest of the actors. “So I’m next to the key grip and the crew. I have to memorize what everybody’s doing physically in the scene so I can follow them with my eyes,” Taylor explains. “I remember one scene where there were maybe four people and I had to figure out where all of them were moving and who I was looking at in each moment.” It took “every technical skill she had,” according to Taylor, “to be in the same emotional space with the urgency I needed to have” while essentially looking at a wall instead of another actor. Cortana often travels with and helps Chief. But she’s also her own person, with her own motivations. What she wants “shifts greatly throughout the season,” Taylor says. “It’s so fascinating because she’s a computer, right? So she has more knowledge just in the instant we first meet her than any human does. So how to carry that around is pretty remarkable. She wants to be of service. That’s really what she wants to be.” Taylor has enjoyed watching Cortana evolve over the last 20 years, and is excited to see that evolution continue in a new medium. “Throughout this journey she’s morphed in such a remarkable way,” Taylor says. “It’s scary to do that. I have to trust in the writers. I have to trust in what I’ve laid down before so that I can continue to maintain this with integrity. It’s a little scary because I want to honor her at all times. I feel like this TV show does that.” Cortana’s connection to Chief will still be an essential part of the story, if perhaps not exactly in the ways fans recognize: “We’re at a different place in their relationship, and so it will evolve as the season goes on,” Schreiber says.

AI HERO CORTANA IS ONCE AGAIN VOICED BY JEN TAYLOR.

JOHN IS A MAN DEDICATED TO HONOR, INTEGRITY, COURAGE, AND SERVING HUMANITY. BUT HE ISN’T FULLY AWARE OF HIMSELF AS A HUMAN BEING.” –STEVEN KANE, PRODUCER

G O I N G S I LV E R The beauty of Halo’s Silver Timeline is that it gives the show a chance to revisit things Halo fans may know a lot about, such as the Spartan program or the Covenant, from a different perspective. “Those who know the lore know the Insurrection and the battle between the outer and inner colonies took place well before the events of the games and is something we have pulled forward a little bit,” Wolfkill reveals. “So, you get that perspective on the UNSC and Spartans, which is very different from what we get in the games.” Halo’s Spartans—simultaneously children without a childhood and military-owned killing machines—have fueled the game with a mix of butt-kicking action and glimmers of empathy. The TV show’s focus on Master Chief as a person is a chance to sharpen that concept to a point. Meanwhile, new characters like Makee give extra insight into the Covenant. But the point still stands: live-action video game adaptations are infamously difficult to get right. Halo will have to battle against the video game industry’s legacy of flops on the big and small screens. But then, what’s a Spartan mission without long odds? “We want people to see that John is the most lethal weapon a human can be, but in trade for that he paid the price of his humanity,” Kane says. “That’s the story of everyone in this season. Everyone is discovering the limits of their own humanity or what was lost of their humanity because they’re all in this giant existential war.” Halo premieres on Paramount+ on March 24. The world premiere takes place on March 14 at SXSW. SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

Build a heroic collection The universe’s most action-packed trading cards are at ebay.com/tradingcards

With The Pez Outlaw documentary debuting at SXSW, we look back at the history of the popular candy collectible. BY CHRIS CUMMINS

This article is part of Collector’s Digest, an editorial series powered by eBay. To paraphrase Huey Lewis and the News, the power of PEZ is a curious thing. Invented in Vienna, Austria in 1927 by Eduard Haas III as “an alternative to smoking,” the ubiquitous candy’s name was derived from the German word for peppermint—its original flavor. The various iconic dispensers not only helped make snacking on sweets more portable, but also fueled a collector’s frenzy around the globe that continues undeterred to this day. Legend has it tech entrepreneur Pierre M. Omidyar founded eBay in 1995 to provide a way for his fiancée to trade PEZ candy dispensers. While this was later found to be a fabricated story, it’s still a sweet one 70

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that illustrates the possibility of what can happen when necessity turns into a hobby. Omidyar achieved his goal of bringing together buyers and sellers in an honest and open marketplace. And since its inception, collectors, flippers, and investors have turned to eBay to buy and sell ultra-rare, hard-to-find and scarce items—like PEZ—to fulfill their passions. To many, eBay has become a collector’s fairytale— a single marketplace filled with vast inventory of rarity, meaning, and value. Unveiled in 1949, the first PEZ dispenser resembled a cigarette lighter (furthering the candy’s nonsmoking agenda) and doled out 12 sweet, flavored tablets. The low price of PEZ candy along with the reusable dispensers and an easy accessibility to refill candy packets kept consumers

EBAY BECAME A COLLECTOR’S FAIRYTALE—A SINGLE MARKETPLACE FILLED WITH VAST INVENTORY OF RARITY, MEANING, AND VALUE.”

IMAGE CREDITS: EBAY/ANTIQUES NAVIGATOR/WORTHPOINT/ERIN CADIGAN/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

CHANGING THE WORLD, 12 PIECES OF CANDY AT A TIME

coming back. The original candy and dispenser designs remain more or less unchanged to this day, with the exception that PEZ struck upon the idea of adding character heads to make the dispensers more eye-catching. Releases inspired by Halloween, Easter, and Christmas remain perennial favorites, and these days a license getting its own PEZ dispenser is indicative that it has made the Pop Culture Big Leagues. It’s a feat to maintain a longstanding presence in the pop culture collectibles market, but these plastic figures are unique for turning people with a sweet tooth into collectors. For those wondering, the first PEZ dispenser head was that of a witch in 1957, with Popeye being unveiled a year later as the company’s first licensed character. These were immediate hits with consumers, with both parents and children being captivated by the colorful dispensers

TEN UNMISSABLE PEZ DISPENSERS 4

1. THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON ($525) Collectibles based upon the Universal Monsters are an island unto themselves, so just let us say that this Gill Man dispenser from The Creature from the

and the treats they conceal in their slender, plastic bodies. To this day, PEZ continues to make its own mark on history. Even if you aren’t a fan of the candy’s various flavors and blocklike textures, it’s more than likely that you have owned or been charmed by one of the dispensers at some point in your life. In fact, The Pez Outlaw—debuting at this year’s SXSW Festival—is a documentary from directors and producers, Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel. It is a story about Steve Glew, a smuggler who spent much of the ’90s sneaking rare PEZ items into the United States, making himself rich in the process. With the release of this film and the conversation the unforgettable candy continues to inspire, PEZ will once again take center stage. But really, has PEZ ever left the spotlight? The appeal of PEZ for many collectors lies in the fact that the dispensers reflect the times in which each was released, making them souvenirs of decades long past. From the space age optimism of the 1950s to the psychedelic wonders of the 1960s to Mickey Mouse and Darth Vader, PEZ has been there. What started out as a smoking alternative soon became a symbol of nostalgia available for purchase on the eBay marketplace— ancient gems bringing back memories to folks around the world.

Black Lagoon is a thing of such considerable beauty that it should be on display at MOMA.

licensed characters—like this Star Trek one that allows you to eat candy straight out of the Enterprise crew’s necks. Rule 34 suggests that some of you are super into this.

6. WITCH ($25) Fact: PEZ witches are cool.

7. SNOOPY ($20) 2. PSYCHEDELIC EYEBALL ($499) The most memorable of PEZ’s 1960s dispensers is this psychedelic freakout. Is this a statement on how we collectively hold perception in the palm of our hand? Or was someone just really hopped up at the factory?

3. PEZ ASTRONAUT ($400) Trapped behind a yellow visor, gazing coldly at the wonder and terror of space, this Pez Astronaut looks like the physical embodiment of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

There have been numerous Snoopy PEZ dispensers over the years, but our personal favorite is this one in which the erstwhile Joe Cool is either quietly judging you or he’s ridiculously high.

8. CLOWN ($5) To know the gaze of Clown PEZ is to know despair.

9. GONZO ($5) The most underrated Muppet gets an underrated dispenser. This seems cosmically right somehow.

4. PEZ SPACE GUN ($250)

10. GARFIELD ($2)

Continuing the cosmic ennui, here’s a PEZ Space Gun from the 1950s that kids could use to shoot Martians and then enjoy a sugary snack as a reward.

The cheapest entry on this list is also the most relatable. Garfield is over it. As are we all.

5. STAR TREK COLLECTOR’S PACK ($20) In the early 2000s, PEZ started releasing collector’s packs of

SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

ADVERTORIAL IN PAID PARTNERSHIP WITH EBAY

EBAY EXPANDS AUTHENTICITY GUARANTEE TO TRADING CARDS Available for single, ungraded trading cards sold for $250 and over this month. BY ARAM LEIGHTON

With $2 billion in transactions in the first half of 2021—equal to all of 2020—and popular categories like Pokémon and Marvel growing by 536% and 437% respectively, eBay’s trading cards category is getting larger at a significant pace, so it’s no surprise that it is expanding its authentication service to include trading cards. Initially rolled out for high value categories including sneakers, watches, and handbags, eBay’s Authenticity Guarantee service has now expanded to include single, ungraded trading cards sold for $250 and over this month. “Our goal at eBay is to be the most trusted source in the business and we’ve heard directly from our community that Authenticity Guarantee for trading cards is valuable,” says Bob Means, Director of Trading Cards at eBay. “Our authentication service is designed to deliver total reassurance to trading card enthusiasts buying and selling high value cards on eBay.” While the service currently only includes single, ungraded cards, eBay plans to expand the Authenticity Guarantee service to include graded, autograph and patch cards sold for $250 and over by mid-2022. “Collectibles is an incredibly popular category on the marketplace and we’ve seen interest in trading 72

DEN OF GEEK | SXSW 2022

cards continue to surge as people have shifted to view their collector items as valuable alternative assets,” Means says. “You can see why it made sense to introduce Authenticity Guarantee for trading cards.” The calculated rollout will ensure that eBay can meet the large demand; however, Means does not see turnaround time as an issue for the company the way it was with grading companies such as PSA, which were forced to halt services in order to catch up.

VERIFIED RETURNS: For sellers who offer returns, eBay’s Authenticity Guarantee service for trading cards will verify that the exact item initially sold is returned to the seller through a verified returns process. Returns will be shipped back to the authentication center, where authentication experts verify each item and its condition before returning to the seller.

HOW WILL IT WORK?

The launch of Authenticity Guarantee for trading cards is just another example of how eBay has continued to expand its offering for the growing collector community. Authentication for trading cards comes after the company debuted its Price Guide, Collection, and Image Scan tools in 2021. So far, close to a quarter-million buyers have used eBay’s Price Guide tool to visualize trends for their favorite trading cards, and more than 4 million cards purchased on and off the marketplace have been added to customer Collections. Image Scan was also designed specifically with the trading card community in mind. The tool speeds up listing times for trading cards by up to 50% and is currently available for Yu-Gi-Oh!, Magic: The Gathering, and Pokémon. Next, eBay plans to

INSPECTION: Service-eligible cards will be inspected by Certified Collectibles Group (CCG)—including its affiliates, CGC Trading Cards and Certified Sports Guaranty (CSG)—to check the condition and quality. The overall condition of each card is checked against the auction listing description to ensure accuracy and authenticity. PROOF OF AUTHENTICATION: The e-tag will feature a unique QR code attached to the card’s protective packaging. The packaging is then placed in the cardholder to finalize the process, reaffirming confidence in collectability and resale value. Use any mobile device to scan the QR code to learn more about the card and its authentication journey.

DOUBLING DOWN ON TRADING CARD GROWTH

IMAGE CREDITS: EBAY

This article is part of Collector’s Digest, an editorial series powered by eBay.

expand the feature beyond these collectible card games to include sports and more in the future. “eBay is known for actively listening to and engaging with our community

of collectors,” said Means. “We will continue to explore and introduce ways to improve the buying and selling experience for trading card enthusiasts, with our current tools

built to scale to other categories as well in the future.” You can read more about eBay’s Authenticity Guarantee rollout at eBay. com/authenticcards.

SXSW 2022 | DEN OF GEEK

SXSW 2022 | MOUNT GEEKMORE: THE TOP FOUR OF EVERYTHING, SET IN STONE.

AUSTIN MUSIC ICONS

The cream of the crop from the Live Music Capital of the World. BY NICK HARLEY ILLUSTRATION BY JESSICA KOYNOCK

Willie Nelson

Janis Joplin

Daniel Johnston

Stevie Ray Vaughan

A cultural icon who has written timeless American standards that have jumped genre lines, Nelson is one of the most recognizable figures in music. He’s widely credited with the creation of the modern Austin music scene, with his Armadillo World Headquarters shows in 1972, which helped garner more visibility for artists such as Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. A humanitarian, pro-cannabis legalization mainstay, and proponent for biodiesel, Nelson helped prove that country music could thrive away from the restraints of the Nashville scene.

One of the most influential voices of the 1960s, Janis Joplin blended her early experiences of singing in her small-town Texas church choir with her love of blues, taking inspiration from legendary vocalists Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith to create the forceful, raspy wail that took the rock world by storm. Honing her skills at Austin folksings— casual musical gatherings where anyone was welcome to perform—Joplin went on to captivate audiences at legendary festivals such as the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock before her untimely death in 1970.

Though he wasn’t born in Texas, Daniel Johnston embodied the “Keep Austin Weird” ethos. The cult singer-songwriter peddled tapes of his freak folk music on the streets of Austin, eventually accumulating a fanbase that included Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and Tom Waits. Singing in a quivering high tenor, Johnston’s songs were painfully earnest, deeply human expressions about love, life, and his mental health struggles. Also an accomplished visual artist, you can find his famous “Hi, How Are You” frog mural on The Drag.

Dallas-born Stevie Ray Vaughan moved to Austin at the age of 17 and took the city by storm with his blues acumen and flashy showmanship. Vaughan was the best kept secret in Texas, cutting his teeth at venues like Antone’s, until his band Double Trouble wowed an audience of music industry insiders and stars like David Bowie at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival. Global acclaim and rock-star hedonism followed until his untimely death in 1990. Vaughan was an explosive talent that set the template for the modern-day guitar hero.

DEN OF GEEK | SXSW 2022