I spent my morning at the Austin Film Festival conference chaperoning eight budding screenwriters – all girls – from the Austin Bat Cave, and we couldn’t have stumbled upon a better panel for rockin’ girl power than the Concept to Creation panel, in which screenwriter (and UT alum) Shauna Cross discussed the process of turning her YA rollergirl novel Derby Doll into the movie Whip It! with producer Kirsten Smith (a longtime AFF panelist who wrote Legally Blonde, among other self-proclaimed “girl” movies). I’ve been to a lot of these panels over the years, and this is the first one that made “networking” not sound like a dirty word. The pair recollected how they first started collaborating – by becoming friends first (and aided by a lot of mojitos, apparently). Cross recalled her first ever pitch, a thrown-in-the-deep-end meeting at CAA (a building not exactly affectionately known as the Death Star), pitching to a bunch of guys in “Men in Black suits.” Smith jumped in to say that Cross knocked the pitch out of the park, and that was pretty much the tenor of the panel – playful ribbing of each other (they each are dragging their feet on followups to their young adult novels; after Smith grilled Cross on how far she’d gotten – “I have a premise” – Cross shot back: “What do you have?”), tempered by a sincere singing of praises of the others’ talents – as writers, champions, and friends. Not at all a bad example to set for eight middle school girls wondering if there’s any room for them in the Hollywood’s boys’ club.

For those who wanted an insider's perspective on the bizarre world of Hollywood ratings negotiations, writer/director Jake Kasdan (Zero Effect, Walk Hard) was happy to oblige with a bit of MPAA-related absurdity at this afternoon's Writing Comedies: PG-13 vs. R panel at the Driskill Hotel: "Two 'fucks,'" he explained, "is the limit for a PG-13 movie. PG movies, obviously, can't have any 'fucks' at all. And three 'fucks' is cause for an immediate upgrade from PG-13 to R. But this rule only pertains to 'fuck' when it's being used as an expletive, not as a verb. Even one verbal 'fuck' - meaning participation in the sex act - will earn your film an R rating, no questions asked."

Breaking into the TV business may not be impossible but it’s hard. Real hard. It’s made even harder by the seemingly divergent advice given to the eager writers who showed up for Friday morning's AFF panel on TV Development to hear advice from two men who’ve found work in the biz.

On your work: Have fresh ideas, be unique, but make sure your characters are relatable.

On spec scripts: Sure, everyone wants to spec The Office because it’s popular. But beware — your script has to be better than anything the team of existing 10 to 12 writers can come with. Go with something that’s on the air, but maybe not flying so high on the radar (New Adventures of Old Christine, According to Jim, My Boys come to mind.) Write a stand-alone episode. Don’t take huge leaps with characters but still be unique. In short, spec a series you love. You’re likely to do your best work based on an understanding of the show, the characters, and it’s rules. As Stegemann said, writers are often good at mimicking the voices of the characters in their spec scripts, but not realizing their motives. When that happens, it shows.

Somewhere near 4am, I turned into an awful blowhard, didn't I? Congratulations, Josh:  You bring out the self-righteous, sanctimonious prig in me. (I bet you get that from all the girls.) It has, as ever, been an honor and a pleasure sparring with you. Win or lose – and let's not call this a landslide just yet; I'm about to mobilize the phone banks, maybe buy some airtime...plus there's that whole airport bathroom stall scandal I've been keeping in my back pocket – I look forward to shaking hands with you across the aisle at next week's Happy Hour. And then of course there's next weekend, when I'll be locking you in a room with me to watch 11 Hitchcock films in a row for our upcoming Halloween feature. Just you wait: Hitchcock will heal all our wounds.

That’s it. I can’t take it anymore. When somebody accuses me of being motivated by middle-class guilt first thing in the morning, that’s when I take my computer and go home. So I’m going to take my computer and go home. Metaphorically. I actually haven’t left my home in days. So, thanks to everyone who’s been reading. For those who've been voting, please continue to do. And for those who haven’t yet, please do. The polls will stay open until next Thursday, Oct. 23, at which time we invite you all to join us at SpiderHouse for the Austin Chronicle Film Fight happy hour, which begins at 7:30. We’ll have cheap drinks and cheaper conversation and the screening of a short film selected by whichever one of us has been declared the victor. And provided no one bothers to look into who exactly all those “voters” are, or why exactly the Austin Chronicle web server has been hacked into no fewer than four times over the past week, it looks like that victor may just be me. If elected, I promise to run a benevolent administration. And now, a little night music to wash away all the rancor:

If you saw the premiere of W as the Austin Film Festival got under way on Thursday--or even if you've just seen the film's trailer on television--you probably remember Jonna Juul-Hansen, who portrays Jan O'Neil, a real-life friend of Laura Bush who introduced Laura to George W. Bush back in the day. Juul-Hansen is--tell me if I'm wrong on this!--the only Austin actress with a speaking part in the film, which, naturally in this time of filming incentives, shot primarily in Louisiana. Her husband Lars offers the story of how she got the part: "Jonna drove from Austin to Shreveport in April for the audition and drove back two days later for the call back (with Oliver Stone). The casting director later told her that as soon as she had left the audition/interview Oliver Stone turned to the casting director and said 'I don't want to see anyone else for Jan O'Neil.' Of course it took almost 30 days after that call back to find out that she has booked the part. During that time she was on pins and needles. "Jonna started acting 20 years ago in San Francisco and moved to LA later. About 7 years ago we moved to Austin to raise our kids and she just got back into acting 2 years ago in Ben Taylor's Workshop. Her agent is Collier Talent and she's also going to be seen in Geoff Marsden's Mars playing the first lady opposite Kinky Friedman."

As if we needed any more evidence that the gloves were off but good, you attack my beloved This American Life? Christ, man, have you no shame? I’m not going to linger too long on this, for one, because this isn’t RADIO Fight (but wouldn’t Terry Gross versus Click and Clack make a delicious kind of death match?), but also because I’m not sure you’ve ever actually listened to the program, otherwise you wouldn’t have just knee-jerkedly confused its listenership – which I reckon probably is mostly middle-class and white – with its content, which is far-ranging and far more substantial than the musings of the occasional self-deprecating contributor. (And what’s so wrong with self-deprecation? David Rakoff and Jonathan Goldstein do a crackerjack job of it.) Quiet desperation isn’t limited to “the charmingly insecure chattering classes” – and I think This American Life does a fine job of limning desperation of all class, color, and creed – but neither should the desperation of those so-called chatterers be shunted aside as meaningless. Jaysus, we’re all in the gutter – if that isn’t cause for unification in commiseration, I don’t know what is. And yet, to go back (and read back to know exactly what Josh is talking about): “They're tiny little demons, but they'll eventually eat you alive with imperceptible bites.” I think that’s beautifully put, Josh, and it made me stop in my tracks. Which, embarrassingly, doesn’t happen all that often – the rising to the surface of a stirring idea, an elegantly worded thought, one that puts a temporary brake-stop to the constant consumption – thanks, Internet! – of words, facts, figures, images, polemics, parodies, and icanhascheezburger forwards. Let’s go back to movies, okay? I’m starting to worry we’re leaving bruises here.

Well, that makes two of us who think I have a dumb philosophy on life. But I've been on this planet 32 years now, and it's all I've managed to come up with, so I think I'll stick with it until something better (and even more displeasing to you) comes along. Then I'll have two philosophies on life I can choose from depending on which better serves my purposes under any given circumstance. In the words of the immortal Groucho Marx (who, I don't know if I've mentioned yet, I'm a great fan of): "These are my principles; if you don't like them, I have others." Here's the great thing about movies. Try as we might to write off our affection for them as simply matters of aesthetic whim or tonal affection or adrenal response, when it comes right down to it, the films we love are the films that speak to us on a fundamental, philosophical level. Whether they introduce us to new ways of looking at the world or simply back up the ways we've already stumbled upon, the movies that move us are the movies that provide us the greatest understanding of ourselves. Either the selves we are or the selves we want to be. And, of course, what we want to be says as much about who we are as who we are does. Or not. Who am I to say? The same goes for books, plays, songs, poems, paintings, and radio shows. For example, This American Life, with its clever, self-deprecating little tales of white, middle-class foibles and monotone nostalgia, drives me nuts. All those hushed voices and ironic asides, all that self-effacing charm and opinion-free observation, all that asexualized sweetness, all that liberal delicacy and self-conscious quirkiness - makes me wanna holler. The older I get, the less patience I'm able to muster for the quiet desperation of the charmingly insecure chattering classes. What's wrong with being grabbed by the throat, or grabbing others by the throat? With giving voice to the devils inside rather than trying to miniaturize them with literary allusion and dispassion disguised as ironic post-modern affectation? With shouting our opinions to the sky? With grabbing our measly little socially acceptable worries and insecurities and shaking them around until they grow into enormous untamable beasts. At least then they'll provide us with some energy, some fuel, something of substance that we can use. Climbing into the ring and jabbing at our regrets and disappointments for 15 rounds strikes me as a self-destructive waste of time. They're tiny little demons, but they'll eventually eat you alive with imperceptible bites. You won't even realize you're dead until you wake up one day to find yourself writing your own precious little obituary for McSweeney's.

I want to jog back to something Josh said late Tuesday night – something I meant to address yesterday, until I went to see Synecdoche, New York a second time and then lost the better part of my day to its lingering effects. (It's unfair to spend much time talking about it, since most of the world hasn't seen it yet, but, world, I'm really ready for you to catch up because I'm dying to talk about it. So I'll leave it at this: I am in love with this movie.) Right, so back to what you said on Tuesday, Josh: "The self-help gurus have it all wrong: We don’t become better, happier people by improving ourselves or working through our issues; we become better, happier people by giving in to all our competing, contradictory impulses – consecutively, contiguously, contemporaneously, convivially, cantankerously, consumptively, concurrently, or all at the same time." I'm almost reluctant to open up this particular line of argument, because we've been down this path before, Josh, and it's the kind of late-night conversation best accompanied by a couple of drinks, and not necessarily with the world wide web watching. Also, if I get into it too much, then I'm likely to get foot-stamping mad at you before it's even noon.