CraveOnline: Which talent are you out to for Sixteen Candles?
Sarah Pitre: For Sixteen Candles we are talking to Gedde Watanabe and we’re also talking to Liane Curtis. She plays Randy, Molly Ringwald’s best friend in the movie. Then also Debbie Pollack who plays Marlene, aka the sexy American girlfriend to Long Duk Dong.
Would Molly Ringwald really be such a long shot? Are you going to go for her?
Sarah Pitre: Oh, we tried.
Brandy Fons: We tried to offer her a lifetime achievement award because we thought if that hadn’t been done yet, then we would love to honor her in that way, but she wasn’t available. Maybe another year.
On your Kickstarter you already have a $1000 and $500 pledge, and we can tell our readers there’s still one of each left.
Sarah Pitre: We are feeling super thankful to those folks that donated those levels. I have to say, I think both rewards are pretty cool, the makeover party and the Ritz balcony [seats]. But we were thrilled when we got those pledges. It was really exciting.
What are some of the non-movie events at Forever Fest?
Sarah Pitre: We’re doing a show called Danceoke that we’ve done once before, that is seriously the greatest idea in the world. It’s basically like karaoke except instead of singing, we have local dance crews performing dance routines while the routine plays in whatever movie or music video that they’re emulating. We’ll show a scene from Dirty Dancing and then we’ll have the crew actually perform that dance at the same time. That one’s such a blast.
Then we’ve also partnered with BuzzFeed Animals and we’re doing something called The Cutest Show On Earth. It’s basically a clip show of literally the cutest things you can imagine. I just got the show order from Summer who I’m working with at BuzzFeed and I can tell you some of the categories that she’s come up with are so awesome. One is called Baby Goats are the Charming Jerks of the Animal World. Another category is Help, My Ovaries: The Giggling Babies Compendium. There’s Life Lessons From Interspecies Friendships. It’s just going to be so adorable I don’t think people are going to be able to handle it.
We’re also doing a panel of YA authors that I’m really looking forward to. We’re going to feature Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks who are also known as the Fug Girls. They write the site Go Fug Yourself and they have two YA novels that they’ve published. Plus Megan McCafferty who is the author of the super popular Jessica Darling series as well as Kirsten Smith who wrote the YA novel Trinkets but most people know her from her screenwriting work. She cowrote 10 Things I Hate About You and Legally Blonde.
Finally, the last one that’s not a film screening is what we’re calling The Wild Brunch. It’s going to be on Sunday and it’s basically a clip show saluting the hottest men in Hollywood, so you can imagine it will feature a lot of Magic Mike. It’s just a crazy wild brunch.
Brandy Fons: And that idea, which I think is a fun side note about The Wild Brunch, showing how we talked about this festival in advance with people just to get their temperature. So when I mentioned it to Janet Pierson who heads up SXSW, I was telling her about Forever Fest, she brought up the idea, not necessarily of the Wild Brunch, but celebrating men’s abs in cinema and how much impact it had on her when Brad Pitt showed his chest in Thelma & Louise. So I shared that idea with Sarah and I haven’t even been able to go back to Janet and say, “By the way…” I’m going to be sure to send it her way and say, “We actually took your idea and ran with it. Now you have to come.”
At what venues in Austin will those be?
Brandy Fons: Our location of the Alamo where we’re doing our screenings is at the Ritz location. Then for our parties and panels, we’ll be doing it at the Intercontinental Hotel which is right around the block from the theater.
Sarah Pitre: The author panel is actually happening at the Ritz. We’re doing two parties, one on Friday night, following the Empire Records screening, we’re having a Rex Manning Day party. Then on Saturday night, following Sixteen Candles, we’re having an ‘80s dance. Those’ll both be at the ballroom at the Intercontinental.
The Ritz is one of the smaller Alamo locations, so what’s the capacity for Forever Fest?
Brandy Fons: For the main theater, it’s 187 seats with the two balconies. We knew that that was a small capacity but we also wanted to keep the festival small this year and learn from it, see what worked and what didn’t work, if we needed to add more screens. We have single programming which means there’s no programming that’s competing with other programming, so you have an opportunity to go to all events. If we do see from ticketing that tickets sell out very quickly for that one theater, there’s a possibility we could interlock and add seats in another screen. Right now we’re concentrating on that one screen of 187 seats.
Sarah Pitre: For Sixteen Candles we are showing it in both the large and small house at the Ritz so that we’re able to accommodate more people for that particular screening.
Will there be room for more people at the Intercontinental?
Brandy Fons: Yes, we are selling separate tickets just to those parties so if folks can’t get into the screening, they can still join us for the party afterwards.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
