'Serious' Adam Sandler headed to Austin for Reitman flick

This just in: Jason Reitman will shoot his adaptation of Chad Kultgen's book Men, Women, & Children in Austin in December with Adam Sandler starring along with Jennifer Garner and Rosemarie DeWitt. And don't expect funny Sandler in this naughty tale. News of the planned film first leaked during the Toronto Film Festival last month.

The story as described on the book, "explores the sexual pressures at work on a handful of troubled, conflicted junior-high students and their equally dysfunctional parents. From porn-surfing fathers to World of Warcraft-obsessed sons, from competitive cheerleaders to their dissatisfied, misguided mothers, Kultgen clicks open the emotionally treacherous culture in which we live—in his most ambitious and surprising book yet."

Scouting has been quietly going on in Austin since June, with some local crew already hired and a production office location set.

Casting agent Vicky Boone has been scouting for seedy area motels and trailer parks, according to her Facebook page. She's also on the lookout for high school students to work on casting with her:


Austin High School Students: I am looking for casting interns who are currently attending an Austin or surrounding area high school, to work on the Paramount Pictures feature film MEN WOMEN AND CHILDREN, directed by Jason Reitman (JUNO, UP IN THE AIR, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING). Especially looking for students at: LASA, Anderson, Lake Travis, Round Rock, Pflugerville, Austin High, Crockett, Reagan, McCallum, Bowie, Griffin or other suburban schools. If you are currently a high school student and interested, please email me at vickyboonecasting@gmail.com. Thanks!

Time Warner's news channel YNN also reports a casting call this Saturday in Austin for some pretty meaty roles:

Casting agents are looking to fill six roles with real high school students. Local agency Vicky Boone Casting lists the following roles available with an open casting call set for Saturday at Austin Studios.

•    TIM: Age 15-17; Caucasian or Hispanic. Tall and athletic. Ideally over 6'2" tall with broad shoulders. He is the star of the football team.
•    DANNY: Age 15-17; African-American. Quarterback of the JV football team.
•    BRANDY: Age 15-17; Any ethnicity. A non-traditional beauty. She is smart, witty and thoughtful.
•    BROOKE: Age 15-17; Caucasian. Cheerleading captain and perfect looking.
•    RORY: Age 15 -17; Any ethnicity. Likeable, male cheerleader, spotter.
•    BRANDON: Age 16-18; Any ethnicity. Older, unsympathetic jock.

The open casting call is Saturday, October 19 from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Red Building at Austin Studios, 1901 E 51st Street.

Casting agents said while it's not required people can email a picture in advance to mwccasting@gmail.com, and applicants will be seen on a first-come, first-seen basis.

Striking a nerve for (Southwest) Texas State

For several years I've been blogging college football over at The Austin Chronicle. (I'm a former Chron film columnist and have been writing for them for almost a decade.) For the most part it's been about the Texas Longhorns, but last year I decided to write weekly about Texas State University's first year in FBS football.

This year I've been lukewarm about continuing, but a Facebook back-and-forth led me to whip out this piece. Then I discovered the sports editor had changed in the interim and the new guy was already out at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. It took  a few emails to even find out who he was, then a couple more to find someone to post it online.

In it I make a couple of points: It's time for Texas State to be taken seriously by the area media (both Austin and San Antonio), the Bobcats are a good team with a solid defense and a freshman quarterback who is capable of doing magic, and--most important--they play on Austin TV today against the Ragin' Cajuns!

Oh, and I urged Longhorn fans to consider watching because, frankly, their team is going nowhere this year. (For the record, I've been a UT football fan since age 8 when my Dad started taking me to games. I'm also a two-degree grad of the school that shall always be known as Southwest Texas State University, and that's my license plate above.)

Then BANG. The post spread like wildfire through Twitter and Facebook, particularly the latter where it has racked up 4.6 4.8 4.9 thousand likes as of this moment (the number keeps climbing). I can only credit that to a potential fan base (the team's, not mine) that is untapped and ripe for the taking. 

It's an interesting reminder of the power of social media. Thanks for reading. Now go watch the game!

'Evacuation Plan' in Award-Winning Books Week

The folks over at Storyfinds.com are highlighting the new e-edition of my novel-in-stories Evacuation Plan today on their site as part of their Award-Winning Books Week. The novel won the North Texas Book Award and garnered some good attention. (Look on the right of this page for more info!)

They've got an excerpt of the book here. Check it out and spread the word.

On the 'Revolution' set in Bartlett

 My report for The Austin Chronicle on NBC's Texas-shot second season of Revolution:

Evan Cauduro, 11, heard about it from friends at school. Then his family was at a dinner party where a woman talked about the call for "weird people." At home, Evan rushed to the computer and began to sign himself up. His father Paul uploaded two photos – one of Evan in his baseball uniform and another from the boy's school science fair. Soon Evan was staying up all night in grungy clothes. He ran dangerously close to an oncoming horse. And you might just see him as a background extra on Sept. 25 when the NBC series Revolution debuts its second season, its first as a Central Texas-shot phenomenon.
 
The show is headquartered in Austin for a 22-episode sweep that will continue into May, says Gary Bond, head of the Austin Film Commission, but cameras have been popping up at Decker Lake and in Maxwell, downtown Taylor, Cedar Park, and elsewhere. The conventional wisdom is each episode results in $1 million in local spending. "That's the wonderful thing about television," Bond says. "It's the gift that keeps on giving. The potential for them to be here five years is there."

Read the rest in The Austin Chronicle here.


See photos from the Bartlett set here.

David Gordon Green: third Austin-area film and counting

How many films has Richard Linklater shot recently in the Austin area? I suppose there's Boyhood, his 12-year indie project that shot in yearly spurts and Bernie filmed a few years ago. Robert Rodriguez quietly pumps movies out in his secluded bat cave (with occasion trips out to block downtown Austin traffic.

But compare that to newish Austin resident David Gordon Green who has two Central-Texas shot films done: Prince Avalanche shot covertly in Bastrop last summer (he's learning from his secretive mentor Terrence Malick) and Joe shot all around the area last fall.

Now add something called Mangelhorn that will shoot in Austin this fall featuring Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, Harmony Korine (director of Gummo) and Chris Messina (Greenberg).  Manglehorn is about "an eccentric man who tries to come to terms with a past crime that cost him the love of his life."

Three films in about two years? It's probably premature to crown a new king of Austin indie-ish film, but Green might want to come in for his royal fitting.

First look at JFK assassination film 'Parkland'

Austin State Hospital's turquoise brick walls look all shiny '60s-like in the trailer for the film Parkland. ASH stands in for Parkland Memorial Hospital, where President John F. Kennedy was taken after he was shot in Dallas. Check it out, conspiracy theorists.

'Reality Bites,' the TV series?

As odd as that sounds, odder still is that Ben Stiller is behind an effort to make the 1994 dudes hanging out in angsty, grungy (?!) Houston movie Reality Bites into an NBC television series. The show would be also set in Houston and in the '90s. That is if the pilot is picked up (and, we hope, shoots in Houston, not New Orleans). I'm just hoping Stiller resurrects his Peter Frampton-loving character.

According to Deadline Hollywood, the show "centers on recent college graduate Lelaina Pierce, the character played in the movie by Winona Ryder, as she struggles to make her way — romantically and professionally — in the recession-plagued, pre-Internet early 1990s."