Matt Dentler is the Film Panels & Festival Coordinator for South by Southwest. Senior editor Roxanne Bogucka spoke to him by phone after the dust of the festival had settled.

Roxanne Bogucka: First of all, what exactly is your title with South by Southwest?

Matt Dentler: It’s probably changing, but currently it’s Conference Coordinator.

RB: Now how are the films selected? And how are the film selectors selected?

MD: Right. Essentially what we do is, we try to put on or bring on a couple of dozen folks generally from within the Austin film community. And we create a committee and out of those couple of dozen—I figure this year we probably had about 30 to 40, I guess approximately 30—what we do is we get people form various aspects of the film community, whether it be film journalists, filmmakers, we have folks who work at local advertising agencies, we have local independent filmmakers, people who work at the Austin Film Society, as well as people who write for various publications in and around town. And they just kind of come together and, or people from the university, in the film school there, all the various film schools, and basically they all just kind of come together, and, based on a particular taste, we sort of create different tracks for people to focus on. Like we might have a documentary team. We might have a narrative team. A feature team and a shorts team, different concentrated areas. Occasionally you’ll have one selection committee member who watches various films of different genres, like there are those folks who watch just as many experimental shorts as they would documentaries but that is kind of rare. We do sort of keep it pretty distinct among the different selection committee members. And essentially what we look for are just people who a) have good taste is probably the most important requirement, and b) definitely we look for people who have a good sense of what South by Southwest is about, what sort of, people who can help South by Southwest deliver what we hope to deliver every year, which is unique original programming and strong programming and stuff that’s fun but doesn’t take itself too too seriously too much of the time. And that makes up a lot of the folks on the committee. They’re folks who really do have a good sense of humor. Also a great eye for ingenuity in filmmaking. Because that’s really the most important thing. We’re not the most, or rather, we’re not a festival that tries to play every film that we get that features a celebrity. We really look for content over star power and I think that’s what a lot of our selection committee members are in complete agreement on.

RB: So you have these teams—documentary team, narrative team, et cetera—and I’ve been wondering about that because this year, which was no exception to South by Southwests past, it seems like there’s always some theme or a couple of themes that will emerge in the programming.

MD: Uh huh.

RB: A couple of years ago, for example, there was a lot of stuff about films that were music-related. I think it was last year, was it last year, that there was a lot that was porn-related—The Annabel Chong Story, Ladyporn, and stuff like that. Well this year the theme that I observed, or at least one of the themes that we observed had to do with neighborhoods and gentrification. You had 156 Rivington, 7th Street, Flag Wars, and even to some extent the narrative Nosey Parker, about people coming into a neighborhood and making a different type of dwelling there. How… do people look for themes? And say, we’ve got a streak going here? How much of that is driven by… Are y’all that good?

MD: To be perfectly honest, and I wish I could say that we have this really precise group of people who are really conscious of a lot of these choices, but to be honest, a lot of it’s coincidence. It’s not so much a motif in our programming as it is a motif in the current space of strong independent filmmaking. So yeah, we do get that question from time to time. A lot of people kind of wonder why, for example, with the music docs. More than anything people think that, every year, because of the music festival that our documentary programming, our programming as a whole is bent toward music and heavy stuff. But to be perfectly honest all that really means is that we get a lot of music documentaries. And we also, we get a lot of strong films that also happen to be music documentaries. I think it’s the same things with films about any particular subject, be it the adult film industry or like you said with gentrification, that for the most part it’s not really something that we’re purposefully trying to do. It just, those are the strong films, that just happen to be about similar subject matter. Last year for example, we had Journeys With George, which is of course one of the bigger documentaries that we played last year, and in that same year, we also had the film Last Party 2000, which was about the 2000 presidential election. And we had the documentary People Like Us, which was about different social classes in America. And a lot of those films got lumped in together as sort of the political theme. When really it wasn’t anything intentional. It was just, that just happened to be the films that we were getting at that particular point. We do notice a lot of themes in our submissions from time to time. Of course after September 11, we got a lot of documentaries that were about September 11th. A couple of them we played, a lot of them we didn’t. And it’s really not an issue of whether or not we want to make any sort of statement about, this is the theme of the year. It’s just these are the strongest films.

RB: Do you think that filmmakers have sort of a sense of South by Southwest film festival and to some extent… of course the submission process is self-selecting. Do you think that people, do filmmakers indicate for example, This type of film I think I’ll submit to South by Southwest, where I wouldn’t maybe submit it to this other festival?

MD: It’s an interesting question. I think, with that question in mind, I think we do get a lot of music-related films because people know that there is a very music-friendly audience, either in the music industry or just music fans. And they know that it’ll get a great reception. Like for example last year we hosted the restored print of The Last Waltz, and I think that was a decision made by the distributor to see if we wanted to do it because they knew we had a very music-heavy audience. I think that’s similar with a lot of film that we play. That a lot of people feel confident that they can get a great screening at South by Southwest because of the music association. I think politically, or in terms of political films, I think we’re starting to develop that reputation, thanks in large part to last year, with like I said, Journeys With George. This year we had the gentrification stuff as well as The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Valley Of Tears and a lot of documentaries that had—

RB: Weather Underground.

MD: Right. Yeah, Weather Underground definitely. A lot of films that had sort of strong political subject matter. So I think that might be something that is matching our renown in terms of music documentary programming. People are looking at their political documentaries. But yeah, people do tend to think that South by Southwest is one of those places that doesn’t necessarily go for themes and doesn’t go for the politics of film festival programming. And when I say politics of course I mean just in sort of the sense that, we’re only going to play this kind of film. Whether it’s about music or whether it’s about football or whether it’s about anything, that we’re only about one certain kind of film. I think people know that we’re open to all kinds of film. But that lately our reputation has definitely gotten stronger, thanks to certain films about certain subject matters. Which only helps. Like I know, Revolution Will Not Be Televised did extremely well, because people, well first of all, it’s a great film, but I think also people knew that, because of Journeys With George and films like that from years past, people knew that they were going to get a really good quality political documentary from South by Southwest. So I think that it certainly has helped our reputation over the years, but it’s really the films that are doing that and not really clever programming. I think the films always come first.

RB: I want to go back to touch a little bit on something you said about The Last Waltz last year and the distributor making that offer. A lot of the films, well not a majority by any means, but there are a lot of films at the South by Southwest film festival that are, that have distribution. They’re there, but they’re going to be in a theater near you in the next month or two, or later this year or something like that. And I was wondering what your percentages are on that. Does it just depend on what’s offered up by the distributors, year by year? Do you try to keep it to a maximum of maybe 20 percent films that have distribution, so that you can accommodate more, what should I say? Less exposed films, I guess?

MD: There really isn’t a rule for us. Really the way it works in terms of programming films with distribution is, it goes two ways. One, one way is, we’re offered them by the distributor, and the other is we solicit them. We seek them out. And it’s pretty even. I’d say it’s about 50-50 between films that we actively seek out and films that were offered. For example, this year, Assassination Tango was a film that we sought out. Whereas the Joel Schumacher movie Phone Booth was one that we were offered, you know, things like that. It’s really pretty 50-50. And I think what a lot of people… as a film festival we certainly try to expose people to a lot of films that they may not otherwise see. I think that’s one of the reasons people go to film festivals. But at the same time, it’s all about good programming and having a strong program. So for example if we have what we think is going to be a really strong program, we’ll play it whether the film has distribution or not. For example, the film Stevie, the documentary Stevie. That’s a film that has already played a couple of festivals, played Sundance, played Toronto… and has distribution with Lions Gate, is going to be in theaters in the next few weeks. But that is an incredible film. And without a doubt, it was one of the things where we saw it. I personally saw it and was like, “You know what? It doesn’t matter that this is going to be out in theaters.” This is just a great film, it has to be part of the festival. So really I wish it was more complicated than that, but really it’s as simple as just saying “This is a good film. We need to have it as part of our festival.” And we certainly, and that’s why we create the different programs. That’s why we have the competition program, the first films programs, the special screenings programs. And the way that’s broken down is, the special screenings program is where you’re going to find those films with distribution, whether they be documentary or narrative. We will not put a film with distribution in the first film or the competition category. We reserve those programs for the films that are by emerging filmmakers or really unique films that probably deserve some nice exposure. And that’s, there are films without distribution in the special screenings program as well, but really what we try to keep it pretty distinguished so that people know, these films have distribution. It’s a special screening. It’s not a competition film. It’s not up for an award. Because the film has probably got an extra boost thanks to its studio and the film probably will be in theaters in a few weeks. We do get sometimes people wanting their film-for-distribution in the competition program, and that’s really not something we do just because we want all of those films to be on the same plane, or on an even playing field. We want all those films to have the same shot, whereas if you were to put Phone Booth in competition versus Sexless, which won the competition, it might be kind of tricky. It might seem unfair and it probably would be unfair because obviously 20th Century Fox has the promotion to market that film a lot stronger than, say, Alex Holdridge with Sexless. And so really, I… I’m probably rambling but we don’t really have any rules about we’re only going to play so many distributed films and so many non-distributed films. We try to play as many as we like. We definitely give priority to films that haven’t been seen. That’s a very important thing that I think people should know about the festival, is that we really are about, we really try to accommodate the filmmakers and their films as much as possible. For example if a film is a world premiere, never been seen by anyone, the odds of getting a really good time slot with the maximum amount of people in attendance are a lot better than, say a film that’s played half a dozen festivals around the world.

RB: Well now that’s another question that I was wondering about. Once the films are selected, the scheduling of the programmming. How… So there is some sort of deliberation about that I see. I wonder about films for example and about the scheduling of films and the venue selection for films. Because I can look at something, for example, like Bubba Ho-Tep, which at the time of the screening I attended, Don Coscarelli said that he couldn’t say if it had distribution, but that there would be news in a few weeks. But all of the screenings of Bubba Ho-Tep were in some of the smaller venues. And two of them were at midnight. So it was almost creating a certain amount of supply that would be far less than the demand. And I was wondering about how deliberate that was.

MD: Well no see, really what that boiled down to was, in the case of Bubba Ho-Tep, was… basically the way that worked was that was a midnight film. We have the midnight films program, which consisted of four films this year and that was one of them. And I believe it played midnight twice and didn’t play midnight once when it was playing the Millennium. And really the reasoning behind that was, our only midnight venue is the Alamo Drafthouse. Or the only venue that we use for midnight screenings is the Alamo Drafthouse. So that’s why it screened at the Alamo Drafthouse—

RB: Oh okay.

MD: It was a midnight movie. It’s really that simple. It wasn’t so much an issue of size. Really unfortunately there are too many films and too many screenings to have sort of a simple formula for what makes one film play one theater and what makes another film play another theater. Of course if it’s something like Phone Booth or Assassination Tango, for the most part we will try to accommodate those films by putting them in the Paramount, which is our biggest venue, because we know it’s probably going to attract a big, big crowd. And we don’t want to, we want as many people to see the film as possible because we want to accommodate all of our badge, pass, ticket buyers.

RB: Okay now bearing that in mind, what determines, and I assume this is stipulated for you from outside, what determines films that only show once. For example in this festival, My Flesh And Blood only showed once. Or A Mighty Wind showed only once. Is that, are those things that have to move on to another festival, or…

MD: There are a lot of factors.

RB: Like what?

MD: There’s a lot of factors. One might be that, if it’s a special screening by a distributor that they just want to do a special screening, they don’t want it to play throughout the whole week. They just want to, here’s a kind of sneak peek at this film, rather than keep it in the festival for the whole week. Or, in some cases, yeah, it might be that the film is playing another festival so we only logistically can schedule it once or twice as opposed to three or four times. Or, yeah I would say it’s either the decision in that case is either the distributor’s request that it’s only going to screen once or twice, and/or scheduling prints with print traffic to get the prints out the to other festivals, things like that.

RB: I see. Okay. Well listen, I really appreciate it.

MD: Absolutely.