The film festival entrepreneur is alive and well at SXSW this year, specifically targeting the long lines that snake down the street prior to screenings.
I spent two hours around the corner from the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz on Monday night waiting to see John Dies at the End and encountered a guy wearing a sandwich board promoting his short film “Short Date,” which was rejected by South By Southwest. Then there was the guy selling bootleg SXSW t-shirts for $10 a pop. They looked great, but I didn’t see him close a single sale.
Outside the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday evening, a zombie promoted this weekend’s big premiere, concert doc The Big Easy Express, and boys with water coolers on wheels offered ice-cold bottles of water.
All this, and, hey, you got a cigarette I can bum?
This article appears in March 9 • 2012.