It’s less than 24 hours after returning from Austin, Texas for the third annual ATX Television Festival. And while I’m still dead tired from the experience, I wanted to write up a few thoughts about it while memories are still fresh. I’ll have a lot more content coming from this festival in the upcoming days and weeks, especially in relation to the panels I moderated, but I wanted to get some quick Q&A in while the proverbial iron was hot.
How long did you go?
While the festival was four days, my wife and I actually stayed in Austin for eight.
Dear God: Are the lines for panels THAT long?
Nah. We took a pure vacation before the fest started. It was our third trip in twelve months to Austin, and we’re still about 300 visits away from achieving our goal of eating and drinking in every establishment within a ten-mile radius of the State House. It’s our home away from home…a sweaty, humid, makes-us-feel-old home away from home, but home all the same.
Can you sum up those days succinctly without boring us and/or oversharing?
I’ll say this: If you think you can do a two-hour hike, then lunch at the Salt Lick, and THEN do anything else for 24 hours, you are as dumb as us.
So when did the festival kick off properly?
On Thursday, June 5, with a screening of TNT’s upcoming summer drama “Legends” followed by an after-party. (You’ll hear “followed by an after-party” a lot here. I’m partially going to be bragging, but also confirming I can in fact stay out past ten pm on occasion.)
How would you describe “Legends”?
Think “24” meets “Perception” starring Boromir and Mac from “Veronica Mars.”
Is that…a good mix?
It is definitely not great. The germ of the idea (an FBI undercover agent is so good at maintaining cover because he actually starts to believe he’s the people he’s impersonating) isn’t awful. But the script is by-the-books, with most of the lines coming off as directly lifted from the Final Draft template for “basic cable thriller.” If you can literally predict the next line by imagining the most clichéd thing that character could say at that moment, that’s not a good sign. The introduction of an overarching mystery is OK but doesn’t salvage the project as a whole.
Will I be jealous about who you saw at the after party?
Probably? I guess? I dunno. I’ve been to so few of these types of events that I have no frame of reference. And given my general loathing of how name-droppy people who attend these shindigs can be, I don’t want to say that I walked right past Taylor Kitsch at one point while getting a refill on my cocktail, but I did, and he was very pretty, and now I might be into dudes.
Did you kiss Riggins on the mouth?
I mean, besides in my head? Nah.
What else happened?
Well, the same basic thing that happened over the next few nights: Because I was a panelist at the event, I got a snazzy badge that gave me access to all the parties in which talent was attending. Having some of these parties cut off from the main group of attendees was slightly odd, but only because I felt/feel some guilt. I’m always on the other side of these ropes, and there’s no way the festival could hold the 1,000+ attendees in any one Austin venue at one time. I don’t want to sound like I’m biting the hand that fed me in any way, shape, or form. But I won’t pretend like these events weren’t simultaneously great and stupendously odd at the same time for me. I got to talk shop (on and off the record) with actors, writers, and showrunners that make some of my favorite shows. And all the drinks were free. I don’t take any of that for granted. But as someone who usually interacts with television via my couch in the suburbs of Boston, this was not my world in the least.
If you think this makes me unable to objectively judge these shows, or anything about the festival, that’s fine. That’s your right, just as it’s my right to tell you to fuck off if that’s the case.
What did you moderate while there?
I moderated three screenings, all of which entailed showing at least one episode of the show inside the Alamo Drafthouse and then conducting a 35-45 minute Q&A session with talent afterwards. On Friday, I talked with Andy Blitz and Andy Daly from “Review,” a ton of talent from “Enlisted,” and a good chunk of the actors that make of “The Goldbergs” along with one of that show’s EPs.
Did you meet these people at the parties before the panels?
In the case of Andy Daly, I met him in the tiny hotel elevator as he was trying to get to his room after checking in.
Did you play it cool upon meeting the man who helped created one of the best ten TV shows of 2014, in addition to helping create the best podcast episode of this calendar year?
If by cool you mean, “I basically shouted at him about how excited I was to moderate his panel, semi-scaring both him and his wife and also Troy Gentile of ‘The Goldbergs’ who was ALSO in that elevator,” then yup, cooler than cool, ICE COLD.
What is moderating a panel like this like?
Pure terror followed by moving through time and space as if in a TARDIS and then suddenly realizing it’s all over and wondering why I am so tired. Each one gave me the heebies AND jeebies, because it’s my job to ask smart stuff that lets them seem smart and shine. So I poured over those questions for the two weeks leading up to the panel. I thought about them during the long hikes earlier in the week. I did NOT think about them while eating sausage in a BBQ joint in Lockhart, Texas, because I’m not a total goddamn monster. But I thought about them a lot. Many moderators at ATX have lots of experience. Two-thirds of my total moderating experience came from the second annual ATX festival. They were nice enough to include me then, and nice enough to include me this year. So I guess I did kind of OK.
Anything you can share about those panels as highlights?
Andy Blitz told the crowd that they actually killed Fred Willard in the “Best Friend; Space” episode of “Review” because he was terrible at acting like a corpse. Andy Daly revealed that every episode of the show was written before a single shot was filmed. (They only had Jessica St. Clair for a week and change.) According to “Enlisted” creator Kevin Biegel, Parker Young did not know who “Bill Cosby” or “Donkey Kong” was before filming this past Sunday’s episode. Wendi McClendon-Covy called young co-star Sean Giambrone “the second coming of Jesus” without a trace of irony. Most of all, getting the majority of the crowd assembled at the “Enlisted” panel to do “hands on heads” to honor the show and those representing it onstage. The cast and crew all whipped out phones to take photos, and it seemed to mean a lot for both sides. If that’s not what a festival like this is for, then I don’t know anything about anything.
Any other experiences from the festival that you wanna share?
Just about every panel I attended other than those I moderated were a lot of fun and well worth attending. The “Orange Is The New Black” panel screened the premiere (which played like gangbusters) and had a robust discussion with Uzo Aduba, Danielle Brooks, and Lea DeLaria. Later that day, Kyle Killen (creator of “Lone Star,” “Awake,” “Mind Games”) led a great discussion on the intersection of ratings, reviews, and recaps with several high-profile TV critics. On Saturday, I got to sit in a small room and hear Carlton Cuse talk about his career and dodge outrigger questions from Alan Sepinwall. That night, I watched the upcoming episode of “Fargo” with a rapt crowd before ducking out of the theatre before the premiere of “The Strain” because F$CK that creepy poster with the worm coming out of the eye. KILL IT WITH FIRE.
Oh, and on Sunday I created a news story for which I got no direct credit but generated content for dozens of websites. If you have the chance to do this yourself, I highly recommend it. It’s fun and refreshing in that “stepping on a rusty nail” sorta way.
Say what?
OK, so the last event of my ATX experience was also the very last event of the festival: a screening of the upcoming Fall FOX comedy “Mulaney.” On the panel for this screening was Nasim Pedrad, one of my favorite and underutilized performers on “Saturday Night Live” for the past five seasons. While it seemed unlikely she would return to “SNL” now that “Mulaney” got picked up, no one had really said anything either way. But it was only when another panelist noted that further season one episodes would be filmed between “August and October” did I start to wonder if there was any possibility Pedrad might simply join the show in mid-October, missing the first 2-3 week stretch of the season. Maybe THAT explained why not only was there no long, drawn-out goodbye in the press akin to Bill Hader or Kristen Wiig leaving (which wasn’t THAT weird, to be certain, given their relative cultural importance to the show), but also explained why there wasn’t even a HINT of anything in the season finale’s closing goodbyes that suggested this was her last episode.
So I asked her point blank if she was on the show next year.
At first, she either didn’t hear what I said or was delaying for time. I honestly don’t know. But then she admitted that yes, she was living in LA now, and as far as she was concerned, she was all in with “Mulaney.” Her answer made it sound like I was a little dumb for asking, but not only had no one in the room asked her, apparently NO ONE IN THE PRESS HAD EITHER, because after leaving the panel and dropping off the rental car at the airport, I saw that Buzzfeed had run with the story, which then led to the typical domino effect of sites reporting what other sites have reported, sometimes with attribution, oftentimes not.
None of them referenced me, but why would they? I’m honestly not mad about this anymore, even though in the Austin airport I was all Hulk smash-y about it for no legitimate reason whatsoever. Entertainment websites have to report on stuff like this, and I could have written up something here on the blog before heading to the airport. But I was hot and sweaty and 74% brisket at this point and just wanted to go home. Them’s the breaks. No one had to attribute the question to me. I’ve beaten myself up a lot on my journalism skills over the past few years. But this was a good, valid, newsworthy question. It got a nervous, but honest, response. That response in turn led to countless news articles that have demonstrated I’m far from alone in admiring Pedrad’s talents and loathing the way “SNL” never quite knew how to use her. I’ll take that and call it a win in the end.
So will “Mulaney” give her the career boost that “SNL” didn’t?
If every episode is like the one screened at ATX…nope. Because this sucker won’t last terribly long if all episodes are on that level of quality. That depresses me to say, since Mulaney is a gutbustingly funny comedian, but the show in its early stages is…well, an early-stage sitcom. Eight minutes were funny enough to give me a sliver of hope, but the other 14 were so jawdroppingly bad that I thought I was having a stroke or out-of-body experience. “Mulaney” the panel was great. “Mulaney” the show right now has major issues. So it goes.
Any other advice?
Sure, but it’s kind of specific: If Corey Stoll sits down on the ground next to you on a patio bar because there are no more remaining chairs, and refuses to take the seat you offer him, and you want to say something nice and honest like, “You know, you were the only good thing about season one of ‘House Of Cards,’” make really fucking sure that the showrunner of “House Of Cards” isn’t actually sitting right next to him when you say that. Because THAT would be super hella awkward.
Did I know Beau Willimon’s name? You betcha. His face? Nope! Luckily, I pieced things together via context clues before getting up the guts to praise Stoll. So, crisis averted. Willimon was a fantastic conversationalist, and I haven’t a thing personally against him. But I never blame anyone involved in any television show for taking my antipathy personally. If they didn’t, that would actually be weirder, no?
Are you going back next year to ATX?
I assume so? I have thoughts on the festival itself, which was very well-run for the most part and overall a smoother operation than season two. But after eight days in incredibly humidity and heat (especially compared to Boston, which still thinks it’s March for some reason) and crowds and the self-imposed stress of those panels, I need to take a break, regroup, and refocus. The festival is entering a crucial phase: In its first year, it wasn’t even big enough to have a closing night event. This year, Guillermo del Toro was a featured panelist during it. ATX has grown by leaps and bounds, and then organizers should be proud. This introvert just needs to recharge for a few weeks on the couch before announcing that of course I’m going back because beer, brisket, and badges is what June is all about.
