Disclosure: KUT is a media sponsor of the Austin Film Festival.
The Austin Film Festival is underway. Many famous actors and filmmakers are in town for the event.
Update: If actor Paul Sorvino looks like a mobster to you, there's good reason. He's played those types of roles in movies such as "Goodfellas" and "Romeo + Juliet."
Sorvino was in Austin for the Texas Premiere of "Last I Heard." In the new film, he plays another mafia-type. But this story follows his exit from prison and his entrance back into modern life and into the lives of family and friends.
Update (Oct. 29, 7:20 a.m.): The new film by Joel & Ethan Coen had its Texas Premiere last night at the Austin Film Festival. The star of "Inside Llewyn Davis" – Oscar Isaac – was on hand to walk the red carpet. Music producer T-Bone Burnett also walked the red carpet outside of the Paramount Theatre. He's won multiple Grammy and Academy Awards for his work.
Original Story (Oct. 28, 12:38 p.m.): A legion of young women will remember Chad Michael Murray as the good son in "One Tree Hill." He plays an extreme party-guy in the new film "Cavemen."
"It’s nice to get away from the moral center which, in my life so far, has been a lot of the work I’ve done," Murray said. “It’s an opportunity to be that guy we all know in life and really just embellish certain things that we see in them. So it was a dirty job but someone had to do it.”
The film had its World Premiere in Austin over the weekend. Writer/Director Herschel Faber says it was a sort of homecoming for the film. The screenplay was a finalist in the Austin Film Festival in 2000.
“For me, it was sort of the first moment in my life where I had received some sort of validation that what I was writing was actually pretty good. And it’s very important for writers to hear occasionally," Faber said.
Faber says others weren’t sure if the film version of the script would do well on the festival scene. But he submitted it anyway – and was thrilled when he heard back from AFF.
"It was really gratifying because they didn’t know that the screenplay had been a semi-finalist. So they liked the film – the finished product – independent of the screenplay. So that was magic," Faber said. "I was like, ‘we’re going to Austin. I’m going back!’”
Will Forte of Saturday Night Live fame is probably best known for his character and film "MacGruber" – a mullet-sporting, inept MacGyver. Forte takes on a serious role in the new film "Nebraska." The black and white father-son road trip flick from writer/director Alexander Payne is plenty funny but also takes on serious issues such as alcoholism.
Several stars came to Central Texas for a "Special Staged Script Reading of 2 FACE." The script is by writer Vince Gilligan – who many know from "Breaking Bad." Gilligan brought with him "Breaking Bad" star Giancarlo Esposito, who played fast food-kingpin Gustavo Fring. Will Ferrell, Linda Cardellini and Thomas Haden Church also read parts on stage at the State Theatre.
Also this weekend: Directors Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie Nights," "There Will Be Blood") and JonathanDemme ("The Silence of the Lambs," "Stop Making Sense") screened Robert Downey Sr.'s "Greaser's Palace."
Take a look at our pictures in the player above.
