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Panel wrap: David Wain
People love the Austin Film Fest for its casual nature, for the opportunity it affords you to get close to filmmakers and screenwriters without the pomp and circumstance that surround some other fests. That dynamic is as evident in the casual chats in the Driskill Victorian Balcony room as anywhere.
With the couches pulled from the room, 75 folks pulled up some carpet Sunday to listen to/engage with funnyman David Wain. Probably best known for his work with sketch comedy troupe The State, Wain, a repeat visitor to the fest, has had a relatively large cult success with his films “Wet Hot American Summer” and “The Ten.”
He visited the festival this year to screen his first major studio comedy, “Role Models,” starring Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott.
Wain entered the room on the quasi-secretive Malkovich floor at the hotel without escort and nobody present to introduce him and took a chair at the front of the room, making a funny observation about the floor-bound attendees and promising a “freewheeling, intimate discussion.”
“It’s a hotel. I’m sure they have chairs … like 1,000 chairs,” he said. Oh, Austin, you casual charmer.
In a faux wistful tone, Wain noted that “it all began back in 1969,” the summer of love and year of his birth. He then took the audience through a brief rundown of his life and career, which included a childhood in the Shaker Heights neighborhood of Cleveland; an aborted dalliance with magic (“the more I did magic, the less a chance I would ever lose my virginity”); an education at NYU, where he would eventually join up with the folks who would form The State; and his stint at MTV, which led from the show “You Wrote It, You Watch It” to “The State.”
The biggest thing I took away from the pleasant chat was the fact that Wain and his partners have endured over the past decade close to 40 failed projects. It is a testament to his (and their creative) energy and ability to work through rejection and frustration that he finds himself in the envious position of directing “Role Models.”
He was brought on to the film late in the game after receiving a phone call from Rudd (one of the stars of “The Ten”) saying they had lost their director. Wain, former State member Ken Marino, and Rudd took the barebones script and reworked it along the way, finding ways to add their own absurdist voice to scenes throughout the mainstream movie. The end result … a somewhat formulaic movie that features the intelligent and biting wit for which Wain and Rudd are famous. (Check out Chris Garcia’s thoughts on the film here.)
Beyond discussion of his own career (which currently includes his own web series, “WainyDays” and voice work on Adult Swim’s “Super Jail”), Wain also touched on the sad state of independent film and the difficulty getting distribution, as well as an impassioned reaction to Gen. Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama earlier in the morning.
In such casual settings, with a funnyman at the helm, the members of the audience, feeling like they are part of a special comedic clique, often feel the need to crack a few jokes and match wits with the talent. But, such is the nature of these casual chats, and one of the reasons AFF is such an enjoyable fest. And, the disarming and witty Wain, apparently appreciated the back-and-forth, writing today on his blog that Austin “consistently has the coolest audiences anywhere.” That’ll go to our heads.
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