Richard Whittaker

Alejandro Hendricks Takes Airport BLVD From East Austin to Tribeca

The Canine Take on Literary Classics in What’s the Story, Wishbone?

The last place on Earth that Austin filmmaker Margaret Brown expected to be on Sept. 29 of last year was in the city of Austin Council chambers. She was supposed to be heading to the set of her next project, having recently wrapped the press cycle for her four-part true-crime HBO documentary series, The Yogurt […]

Bill Moseley is used to all kinds of scares. Forever synonymous with Austin’s film scene for his creepy and gruesome performance as Chop Top in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, he’s become a full-blown horror icon, on set for all kinds of mayhem, murder, and chaos. But has he ever seen anything really scary while […]

Owen Egerton may have left Austin for New England but his filmmaking heart remains here, as shown when he debuted his latest film, gory horror Whistle, at Fantastic Fest last year. Adapted by Egerton from his own short story and directed by Corin Hardy (The Hallow, The Nun), it arrived Friday on dedicated horror streaming […]

There’s something distinctive about a Manhattan hotel room. The fire door tight up against the bed. The mirrors on the closet to give the impression of space. So much for Hollywood glamour as Steven Soderbergh enters a second day of press interviews for his new film, The Christophers. “Yesterday I got to be in rooms […]

Austin Film Society has a studio: In fact, it has Austin Studios, seven soundstages on 20 acres in East Austin. But for one very special project, the event space at the AFS Cinema became the unofficial Stage 8. That’s where Austin filmmaker Michael Tully filmed Lover, Beloved, capturing sotto voce musical icon Suzanne Vega’s solo […]

On a big film, it’s not uncommon to have cast and crew members with the same name. However, for intimate queer BDSM romance Pillion, Alexander Skarsgård was in the unusual position of having both his leading man and the director be called Harry. Funnily enough, writer/director Harry Lighton said, distinguishing between himself and star Harry […]

Matty Wishnow wasn’t planning on becoming a documentarian. Even as a fan of what the Austin filmmaker called “‘old master in sunset’ documentaries,” like many serial entrepreneurs he was all set to write a business book. It was to center on startups – why they succeed, why they fail, and most importantly the value of […]

Nothing can cross divides and cultural differences like comedy. That’s part of how Megan Rico, a Catholic girl from Florida, found her place as a student at the Mormon-run Brigham Young University in Utah. “Two slightly different sects of Christianity,” she laughed. BYU is where she became a three-season regular on Studio C, the hugely […]

Don’t ask John Valley about the NBA. Basketball is just the latest in a list of failed distractions from the state of the world. He said, “Every year, I try to get into a sport, just to give myself something to fixate on, and it inevitably fails and I get deep into the weeds about […]

Many directors keep screenwriters off their sets, but Katie Aselton (Magic Hour) had the best reason ever for keeping Mark Duplass away from the filming of Their Town: Someone had to stay home to look after their youngest daughter. “It’s a pragmatic puzzle when you’re trying to deal with family filmmaking,” said Duplass. This wasn’t […]

For anyone that remembers Joe Swanberg at his prolific heights, crafting as many as seven lo-fi pictures in a year, it’s crazy to think that The Sun Never Sets is his first feature-length movie as a director in nine years. The Sun Never Sets, which receives its world premiere at South by Southwest, is the […]

See You When I See You is Jay Duplass’ second movie as a solo director, but it’s still a first: the first time he has directed from a project he didn’t originate. The film, which premiered at Sundance and now gets its Texas premiere as a Festival Favorite at this year’s South by Southwest, is […]

If you ask Brea Grant what her worst non-filmmaking job was, she’s got an easy answer: a certain now-defunct Austin Tex-Mex chain, where she worked as a kitchen expediter while she was in grad school at UT. “It was so tough,” she said. “Sometimes I’d be on shift until three in the morning and end […]

People make movies for many reasons – fame, fortune, artistry. Mor Cohen and her husband, Polaris Banks, ended up saving their marriage when they went to the middle of nowhere to film twisty meta-horror And Her Body Was Never Found. Premiering at South by Southwest this week, it’s a literal two-hander from the Austin filmmaking […]

If someone tells you there’s a film about two burnouts hired to take a kid to rehab, you might expect a feel-good story where life lessons are learned, and everything is solved with a hug. The Shitheads is definitely not that movie. Instead, writer/director Macon Blair said, “It’s a propulsive, berserk buddy comedy,” heavily influenced […]

If there’s one thing you can predict about Ben Wheatley, it’s that he’s unpredictable. Last year the British filmmaker took weirdo lo-fi romp Bulk to festivals. This year, he’s coming in all guns blazing with action-comedy Normal, which receives its U.S. premiere at this week’s South by Southwest. “They’re all a bit of a change […]

Not every protagonist needs to be likable. Take the married couple at the heart of cosmically tinged relationship horror Imposters. “I wanted to tell a story that was only possible with characters this selfish,” said writer/director Caleb Phillips. It all comes back to the idea that everyone loves a good mystery, but may not love […]

They always say, never meet your idols. That’s kind of impossible when you’re making a movie about a seminal event in your own life. For documentarians Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker, that’s the situation they faced with Summer of ’94, their documentary about the year that soccer broke in America. It was 1994, when the […]