Who else but Henri, Le Chat Noir won the first people’s choice award at the first Internet Cat Video Festival, held last Summer at the Walker Art Center?
Austin Chronicle: How has it been since you won the people’s choice award at the ICVF?
Will Braden: The Golden Kitty! Yeah, it was a huge amount of media. I actually booked my ticket out to the ICVF before I found out that I had won. And winning was great, but what I didn’t expect was all the different press inquiries. It really did catapult the video – I already had a book deal before ICVF, but it spurred me on to make more videos, and marketing.
AC: Do you get to follow these guys around?
WB: I can, depending on my schedule. I went to San Diego, but didn’t go to the Boston event. This is my first SXSW.
AC: How are you finding it?
WB: It’s a lot of fun, but it’s huge! I had no idea! People were telling me that SXSW takes over the city, that I wouldn’t be able to find taxis, but I’ve been to Oktoberfest in Germany; I know big crowds! No. I didn’t realize. The city just shuts down for this thing. I’m so happy I came here because this context is really fun.
AC: Tell me a little about what you’ve created for SXSW. I hear tell you’re debuting a new Henri video…
WB: It’s for the Animal Planet event, it’s a short, snarky one-minute thing. It’s about the process of me as the thieving filmmaker coming to SXSW and Henri being left in Seattle. It isn’t anything official, really. A lot of the Henri videos I have to spend a lot of time editing and thinking about the jokes; this was just kind of fun!
AC: Are you working on anything new?
WB: This has really taken over my life. My book is coming out at the end of April. How the book does decides if this keeps going for awhile or if it’s at its zenith. To be perfectly honest, I have a few ideas of what I want to be working on, and now that I have a little more time and money, it’s a really exciting prospect…
The Animal Planet Happy Hour takes place at Fadó, tonight at 5pm. Stay tuned for updates from the event, brought to you by in-house Cat Reporter Brenner.
This article appears in March 8 • 2013.