FADER TV presents Sundance Selects: Big Fan

Rob Siegel has a dream career. The former comedy writer left his position as editor-in-chief at The Onion to explore the more serious side of life. In doing so, he was responsible for what might be the best film ever made in the state of New Jersey, The Wrestler, as well as the best use of Guns N’ Roses in a movie soundtrack. Is there an Academy Award for that? The Wrestler is still in our hearts and minds, but new things are on the horizon for Siegel. Big Fan stars Patton Oswalt as a deeply obsessed New York Giants fan who gets beaten up by his favorite player. Set in various strip clubs, sports bars, and mothers’ homes on Staten Island, the film evokes the same classless grit that we loved so much in The Wrestler, and Patton Oswalt is kind of like a young Mickey Rourke with more back fat.

In our final episode of Sundance Selects, we caught up with Robert Siegel himself, relaxing at the hotel pool in Park City.

FADER TV presents Sundance Selects: We Live In Public

Director Ondi Timoner has a tendency to stumble upon the most batshit crazy people existing in society, and then spends years documenting their lives. Her wildly acclaimed DIG! won the Sundance Grand Jury Award for documentaries in 2004. This year, she was back with another joyous romp (and another Grand Jury winner) through one man’s delirium, and we got to sit down with the documentarian and her subject to find out what We Live In Public was all about.

The film documents internet entrepreneur Josh Harris’s attempt to quote/unquote LIVE IN PUBLIC. 80 million dollars rich off of the late-90’s e-boom, he set out to create a highly-documented underground society in lower Manhattan. The community was busted by FEMA after a month and deemed a “millennial cult.” In the same vein of human experimentation, he then wired his house with cameras and broadcast he and his wife’s own lives online. Now the dude’s living in Ethiopia, on the run from Johnny Law, with very little to vouch for living in public. Let that be a lesson, Twitterers.

FADER TV presents Sundance Selects: Stingray Sam

Back in 2002, a feature film called American Astronaut took the Sundance Film Festival by storm. Seven years later, writer/director Cory McAbee has returned with something a little different — a six-part episodic miniseries formatted for “screens of all sizes” — that doesn’t fail to follow through with the same cult appeal that got him there in the first place.

Stingray Sam is described as a “musical space western that follows two space-convicts as they earn their freedom in exchange for the rescue of a young girl who is being held captive by the genetically designed figurehead of a very wealthy planet.” In our own words, we would sum it up to feel more like eating an acid brownie and playing the electric air guitar in our underwear and a cowboy hat. Everything about this movie is homegrown and completely unique, from the soundtrack written entirely by McAbee’s band, American Astronaut, to the intergalactic locations shot in the greater New York City metropolitan area (Union Pool doubles as an outer-space saloon). In short, Stingray Sam is a treasure, and we are happy to introduce it to you on a screen of our own size.

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FADER TV presents Sundance Selects: Asshole

Last week we hit the slopes of Park City, Utah for a Sundance trip full of minor indie celebrity sightings, hot tub ventures and, of course, watching a shit ton of movies. To rest our eyes between full-length features, we check out one of the short film showcases. Sandwiched between six serious short narrative films about AIDS, elementary school shootings and Mormons, Asshole was a nice break from all the seriousness. Directed by two budding comedic filmmakers, Chadd Harbold and Bryan Gaynor (who are barely out of NYU film school), the film stars ex-VICE Magazine co-founder/current Street Boners and TV Carnage captain Gavin McInnes as an asshole who makes a trip to the doctor to figure out what’s wrong with his anus (aka asshole). McInnes improvised almost the whole thing. We sat down with Harbold and Gaynor after a screening to talk about their “process” and how to avoid fart jokes, though we’re not sure why anyone would want to do that.

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