SXSW Film

Cat Dancers

D: Harris Fishman

"I knew Siegfried before Roy," declares Ron Holiday in the process of telling his life story here. He and his wife Joy were entertainers who performed live in the Sixties with exotic cats before the more famous Vegas duo achieved their fame. The Holidays preceded Siegfried & Roy in other ways, too: in their spangles and spandex costumes, as well as in the violent way things can go awry between human and beast. Years before Roy Horn's onstage catastrophe, the Holidays experienced their own at the paws of their leopards and white tiger. This documentary allows Ron to gradually reveal the pair's career arc, complete with all the tenderness, vanity, archival footage, and mementos the story requires. Ron's love affair and working relationship with Joy expanded when the couple took on Chuck Lizza as a third trainer and began a ménage à trois that became the epitome of eradicating the lines between work and love. Theirs is a remarkably candid story, one that director Fishman chews on yet never reduces to cud.

1:45pm, Austin Convention Center