AFI Dallas Opening Weekend: Thompson Twins Edition

Because of the AFI Film Festival I spent a lot of time in Dallas this weekend yet I wasn’t robbed, raped, or murdered even once, nor was my car broken into or carsonized. It probably helps that I drive a ’98 Galant and I was cruising around streets populated by shiny new Lexi and Benzes and Escalades – if anybody picked my car to break into out of that crowd, I’d assume it was just for the practice. I was more worried about wandering into Highland Park and getting pulled over for Driving While Poor.

The movies I saw this weekend included “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson” and “Assassination of a High School President”, both of which I saw at the Magnolia, both of which I brought two bottles of Shiner Bock into, and both of which saw me kick an empty bottle of Shiner over in the middle of the movie but, hey, at least they were empty bottles of Shiner. No beer abuse here!

“Gonzo” was mostly good – entertaining and informative – review of Hunter Thompson’s dirty life and times featuring a lot of songs, some good and some not so good of the late sixties and seventies. Jann Wenner, founder and editor of Rolling Stone, was a prominent on-screen contributor; the documentary didn’t go into much detail about Thompson’s falling out with the magazine in the late seventies. The film also didn’t pay much attention to his life before writing “Hell’s Angels” or after about 1976 or so, and several classic Thompson stories were omitted, like his ride to the airport with presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon in 1968. Or maybe that was in there – I can’t remember now.

Incidentally, I think I saw Gordon Keith, the King of All (Dallas) Media, in the audience for this. I don’t think he kicked over any beer bottles.

“The Assassination of a High School President” was much funnier than I was expecting, although it wasn’t a comedy the way, say, “Dumb and Dumber” or "Old School" is a comedy. It’s a story first and then it’s a comedy; that is, as much attention is paid to the plot and characters as to the jokes. Afterwards three of the featured actors – Mischa Barton, Reece Daniel Thompson, and Gabrielle Brennan – did a Q-and-A about the film and its shooting, and it was nice to see the older actors steer some of the questions to Gabrielle Brennan, who’s eleven years old and was hesitant to insert herself into the conversation. So she could have wound up standing there the entire time saying nothing; it was generous of her co-stars to make she was included.

This theater was totally packed for this movie – they even brought in some extra chairs to squeeze a few more people in. As a rule, AFI programs tend to start late and the bigger the deal or larger the crowd, the later they tend to start. This was a very big deal and a very large crowd so it started pretty late but they put a lot of padding into their schedule so delays don’t tend to snowball.