Filmdom's funky and beautiful people made deals, dropped names, and slurped cocktails this month at the South By Southwest Film Conference in Austin, the city that's become Texas' hippest movie industry locale. Austin's buzz ricochets to Los Angeles, and the SXSW film and music festival attracted the likes of Russell Crowe, Tatum O'Neal, Dennis Hopper, Peter Bogdanovich, and Ethan Hawke. Some stars have much shorter distances to travel. Actors Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey and trend-setting filmmakers Robert Rodriguez and Richard Linklater call Austin home.

An international media throng routinely documents SXSW, and the public-relations value is priceless. Last year, Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino creeped everyone out with a confusing speech at the Texas Hall of Fame ceremonies, which serve as an unofficial opening to the festival. He was later seen leering at cameras with his head nestled between two vixens. Rodriguez, meanwhile, bragged about Austin and told how his actors in Spy Kids appear to travel worldwide even though filming never left central Texas. This year, former Gov. Ann Richards opened the ceremonies by mocking Tarantino's speech and then introducing Hopper, who was equally incomprehensible. Press coverage like that keeps gossip-mongers happy, while the conferences, discussion panels, film screenings, and networking keep filmmakers returning to Austin.

Meanwhile, a bumblebee could drown out Fort Worth's buzz. The city's cultural patrons pour money into museums, symphonies, ballets, and other fine arts, but tend to let popular arts fend for themselves. The city's primary outlet for screening independent films -- Gourmet Cinema -- closed without fanfare a month ago. Directors who once favored the Metroplex have switched to other locales. Film production is stagnant. The local film commission's web site lists current projects in the area, and the only things missing in that virtual ghost town (www.dfwfilm.org) are tumbleweed graphics and the sound of a lonesome wind.

In filmspeak, the Metroplex has been left on the cutting room floor -- and a bunch of angry local filmmakers and film workers think they know why. Film people can be volatile -- they are artists, after all -- and members of those beleaguered ranks are screaming for the head of Roger Burke, director of the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Film Commission.

The commission is designed to attract movie projects and to work with local producers to find locations, crews, equipment, and permits. Funding and organizational problems, however, have turned the commission into a reactive rather than proactive group. The commission's four fulltime employees scout movie locations and hustle up crews when filmmakers come calling, but time and money constraints prevent them from doing much to market the area or recruit filmmakers. The commission doesn't even have a marketing budget this year. "Our entire livelihood is based on this business, and I see it fading away right now," said John Schrimpf, regional operations vice president at Panavision, a company that has rented cameras, lights and other production equipment to local filmmakers for 25 years.

Cries for blood are louder in Dallas than in Fort Worth, where the film industry has grown moderately through the years. Dallas has three art-flick movie houses, and Fort Worth has none, although Magnolia Pictures is talking about opening an art-foreign-indie boutique theater here. NEXT »

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