How To Burn Yourself Out At SXSW

Memoirs From a Picture Show is a semi-regular column from the Merry-Go-Round staff chronicling memories, miracles, and anomalies from our time spent in cinemas around the globe. You’ve read about movies; now it’s time to read about seeing those movies in theaters.

I came to South by Southwest to work. The opportunity to cover the Austin-set film and music festival is the first chance I’ve had to travel to cover a movie-related event since 2017, when my alma mater, Chapman University, took a small group of us to Sundance. I have nothing but fond memories of that trip, but I was at a very different point in my life. I was writing for a publication, but publishing a couple of reviews was decidedly not a high priority. Having a festival fling with my small group of travelers was #1, but no luck there. Drinking was #2 (and I did plenty of that—I’m not sure if I was sober for a single screening). And writing was #3. I made a few stops at the cabin to scribble my thoughts on A GHOST STORY and THOROUGHBREDS, but the press pass was just a magic wand to get into those events faster. I think I was also supposed to network and angle for a post-grad job, but like all networking events these festivals throw for the rugrats, I collected a couple of business cards that were never used. It was one of the best weeks of my life, and one that I always hoped to re-experience.

Flash forward to 2026. 

My life is in a completely different place. I’m eight years post-graduation and have been living in Los Angeles for that entire period. I’m transitioning out of a full-time job that I’ve held down for nearly the entire time that has been flexible enough to allow me to build out a genuine career as a critic. For a while, it was just short-form content and lengthy Letterboxd entries under my “The King of Burbank” pen name, but I recently decided it was time to fully jump back into print, and late last year, I picked up two steady writing gigs. I applied to SXSW, and unlike other events where I’ve applied as an influencer, I got approved for a press credential on my first try. Hey, what do you know? These events just might respect print media more than social media talking heads after all.

The priority was to prove that I belonged there. I set up a 17-film slate from Thursday to Monday with plans to write full-length print reviews for each of them. From dusk till dawn, I was to either be in screenings or writing, so I gave myself a day to relax. I arrived in Austin on Wednesday afternoon and endeavored an entire day exploring. Frankly, this was one of my favorite days of the entire trip, walking into quaint novelty shops and art museums looking for souvenirs for my partner. Scarfing down about $50 worth of brisket, ribs, and peach cobbler at Cooper’s Old Time BBQ, discovering that you can buy weed at a Texas dispensary if it is grown in a “Texas legal” way, and watching the famous Austin bats make their daily flight from underneath the bridge, swarming the entire sky with black dots. Every local I spoke to welcomed me, and the prospect of a whole week of adventure ahead filled me with joy . . . 

. . . And then, opening night.

Boots Riley’s I LOVE BOOSTERS opened SXSW. It was a packed-to-the-gills opening night in the Paramount Theatre, the fest’s largest venue reserved for high-profile premieres. I sat in the front row. As the film’s immaculate cast walked on stage to hype the crowd up, Lakeith Stanfield got out a small digital camera and snapped pictures of the crowd. I made eye contact and he snapped me straight on. I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, until about 15 minutes into BOOSTERS when I realized that it was going to become one of the most disappointing films of the year.

The lights came up and the crowd roared with applause. They had been reacting in full force throughout the film, laughing hysterically at every joke and applauding at every jolt. I quickly learned that SXSW is the ideal venue to debut your film. Sure, there are plenty of jaded industry folk flying in from out of town, but the crowds are full of local cinephiles thrilled to see just about anything early. Regardless of the quality of the films, the audience reacted just as boisterously. I quickly learned that in order to maintain any objectivity, I’d have to entirely ignore audience reactions and purely focus on what organically made me react. If every review talked about how electric the energy in the screening was, I’d be giving Amazon Prime’s ballerina action movie PRETTY LETHAL five out of five stars.

As BOOSTERS set up the Q&A, I realized that I only had about two hours before line-up for KILL ME, starring Charlie Day at the State. I was eager to get started on my article, and was also feeling ambivalent about listening to the cast and director gas their film up as the most important cinematic achievement of the year for the next 30 minutes. I bailed and headed straight for the festival’s film and TV clubhouse, a pattern that I would sadly repeat. I enjoy a Q&A from time to time, but living in Los Angeles for so long has stripped away the magic they used to have. At the lounge, I banged out the review for BOOSTERS, pleased with myself for making the first of my many self-imposed rushed deadlines. As I kept telling myself and the friends I met along the way, “If I fall behind, it’s over.”

The KILL ME screening brought about another critical realization: The State Theater is where the real ones spend their time. It is right next door to the Paramount, but smaller (the size of a lecture hall) and cozier. It fills just enough attendees, but not enough so people have to crawl through each others’ legs to stand up or summon X-ray vision to find a seat in a sea of them where jackets are somebody’s standby. KILL ME was one of several more edgy genre outings I’d experienced during my time there, and the audience was completely plugged in for the dark humor. It was enjoyable enough to help me recover from the pain of the BOOSTERS disappointment. We were on our way to turning things around.

Friday was the day where I truly figured out how to navigate Austin. I started the day walking across the bridge to my one and only screening at the Rollins Theatre to watch a documentary about real life “superhero” Phoenix Jones. He was there in his costume, but I still didn’t stay for the Q&A because I had to both walk to the Zach Theater across town and also stop at a coffee shop to spit out my review for this doc. “I just listened to this man rant for 100 minutes,” I told myself, “I don’t need to hear him talk more.” At the Zach, I wrote my review of SAVIORS on my phone in the line for FAMILY MOVIE, and barely looked upwards until it was time to head into Kevin Bacon’s homemade slasher take on Ed Wood, one of my favorites of the festival.

Afterwards, I had under an hour to make the trek all the way across town for PRETTY LETHAL. As I huffed and puffed towards the end of the bridge, it was apparent I wasn’t making it on foot. I glanced over to an e-scooter and took a deep breath. It was time to ride. With my phone in one hand to badly navigate across Austin, and a tote bag with a $3,000 laptop in the other, I somehow managed to glide across town just in time to run into the Paramount. I walked into that room drenched in sweat, chugging a mix of water and Diet Coke in the seat my friend had saved for me; all of this to watch painfully mediocre streaming sludge, a girlboss bruiser whose “ballerinas are badass enough to murder gangsters” conceit came along at just the right time to make the room explode into applause any time a positive sentiment about ballet was uttered. Exhausted, physically and from the Chalamet discourse, I didn’t stay for that Q&A, and I had two reviews to write before the sun came up. When I finally got to sleep, I was feeling positive. “Another day of updating my Letterboxd tomorrow,” I blissfully thought as my calming gummy kicked in. While I was putting myself through all of that, DRAG was showing over an hour later at the State, a Lizzy Caplan horror heist about a bank robber who breaks her back mid-job, and became one of the buzziest movies of the festival.

Saturday was my most exciting day on paper: READY OR NOT 2, POWER BALLAD, OBSESSION, and HOKUM. Sadly, this is when my spirit started breaking. The first two movies were practically back to back. I found READY OR NOT 2 to be a safely solid sequel to a modern classic, although most found it to be a trite retread. Meanwhile, I groaned throughout the entirety of John Carney’s poorly plotted “he stole my song” dramedy POWER BALLAD, which moved everybody else in my audience to the point of many proclaiming it an early contender for best of the year. Defeated, I banged out those two reviews. The Film and TV clubhouse was starting to drive me a little nuts upon realizing that I hadn’t been inside a local establishment for two full days. This routine was wearing me down. Falling behind wasn’t an option, but I also hadn’t found myself in any debaucherous late-night adventures, and no invites were pending. This trip was slipping by and I was on some kind of workaholic carnival ride that I had permanently strapped myself to. And then OBSESSION boosted me into the stratosphere, an outstanding horror debut that is certain to rank amongst the best of the year. Just over an hour later we were treated to HOKUM in the same screening room, a witchy slow-burn mystery starring Adam Scott. The crowd was astonished. It bored me back to Earth. As I walked back to the hotel, I realized just how badly I wanted to go home.

When I was a pre-teen, I was petrified to leave home. When my elementary school took us to the middle of the woods for sixth grade camp, I was the kid who demanded to call my mom even though we weren’t supposed to contact the outside world. In my teen years, I became vastly more independent and started traveling often, and ever since I had felt this reserved side of me fade away completely. As long as I’m keeping busy, home is usually just a fond memory that is waiting for me when the trip is done. But it had been five years since I last popped the Los Angeles bubble. As I reflect, the root of my despair was that I felt like I had forked over a bunch of money to do what I already spend most of my life doing: going to screenings, writing reviews, and schmoozing potential connections. Sure, I was in a slightly different city, but I was experiencing that culture through a distinct industry lens. I need to take a capital-V vacation that has nothing to do with movies soon. Hell, maybe I’ll get out of the country.

It was Oscar Sunday and my wheels had finally fallen off. There was no party invite, just another group of screenings ahead. I bailed on my morning and afternoon screenings of SEEKERS OF INFINITE LOVE and BRIAN (a film I’d later heard was another missed festival highlight). I slept in, caught up with writing in the comfort of the hotel room, e-biked over a mile to try the deservingly legendary Terry Black’s BBQ (vastly superior to Cooper’s), and then went to the Film and TV clubhouse to get some drinks in me before my screening of Ben Wheatley’s Bob Odenkirk dad-action movie, NORMAL at the Paramount, a fabulous barn-burner with brutal action that had me just as happy as the Paramount audience. I should’ve quit while I was ahead, but I decided that I must press on to see the Gabriel LaBelle x Finn Wolfhard small-town stunt comedy, CRASH LAND, at the State. The line brought about the highlight of the night, where everybody simultaneously learned that Michael B. Jordan had triumphed over Timothée Chalamet for the Best Actor Oscar, resulting in cheers that felt like we had learned that Barack Obama was about to take office again. CRASH LAND ended up being the worst film that I saw the entire week, a painfully obnoxious celebration of arrested development that had me rolling my eyes against the backdrop of uproarious laughter for the entire 90 minutes. As was becoming routine, my slight recovery from NORMAL had backslid completely. I was even stir-crazier than before. It mystified me that I had one more day of this ahead.

I began Monday by e-biking down to Alamo Drafthouse to get in the standby line for the queer horror flick LEVITICUS, which had amazing buzz out of Sundance. This was the furthest distance I’ve had to travel yet, and as I sped through the city on my mini motorcycle, I felt the weight of how long I had been there. This only stint in a non-reservation line was one of my best queue experiences. It was freezing cold and everyone involved was barely holding onto the hope that two-to-three hours was early enough to arrive for their respective films playing in Alamo’s small auditoriums. We bonded and laughed together so genuinely that I was a bit sad when it was time to actually watch the movie. Thankfully, LEVITICUS rocks. I had another screening at Alamo scheduled, but I exercised some self-care and skipped it so that I’d have enough time to hang out before my early evening screening of FORBIDDEN FRUITS, which I subsequently entered in such a whacked-out mood that I didn’t enjoy the bubbly, campy horror comedy as much as the rest of the audience. I was bummed, because I could tell that I’d be having a better time if I were at home with my friends. Miffed, I went back to my hotel room and decided that I would in all likelihood skip my final screening of the night, the demented kids TV show slasher, BUDDY.

Something happened while I was sitting in that hotel room feeling sorry for myself. The initial peaceful thoughts of, “OK, it’s over now” slipped into, “It can’t end like this” as the edibles I drowned my sorrows in took effect. I was in the exact state of mind needed to enjoy a feature film from the man who brought us TOO MANY COOKS. I wasn’t sure if I was coming back to Texas, so it was time to man up and hit that final screening. I didn’t haul my laptop to the theater. I wore a concert tee. I met up in line with a newly made clique of friends and chatted with the two coolest fellow influencers that I met throughout the week, Slasher_Review and Peyton_JB. We talked shit and laughed for an hour as I got progressively more stoned, just in time to peak as we walked into the State. We sat down, and by happenstance, I finally met a colleague, Luca Mehta, who I had just barely missed seeing a handful of times. He asked if he could write the review for BUDDY instead for ForReel, and I ecstatically agreed. It was meant to be. It was time to let go. As this extremely oddball horror flick started, and the kids inside of Buddy’s Barney-esque talk show realized that they were trapped with a deadly killer, I found myself having just as much fun as the audience who I had largely been at odds with throughout the week. It was at this moment that I knew that the problem with my experience wasn’t anything to do with SXSW or Austin. It was me.

At one point, I was venting about my feelings to the closest friend who I made during the week. They told me something that finally clicked during BUDDY: “Your first South By is just a never-ending series of mistakes.” All of those mistakes became clear to me as I finally escaped into this ridiculous movie, laughing beside my friends. I should’ve admitted that the writing was tiring me out and just went to some movies for the sake of seeing movies. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that my portfolio wasn’t the only reason I was there. While I was outgoing enough to make some friends who were on a similar schedule, I was also too closed off to wander around and make more. I could’ve easily done another day or two with BUDDY vibes, but it was time to fly home.

As I write this, I feel much more bittersweetly about leaving SXSW than I could’ve imagined a couple days ago. I’m certainly ready to return home to my partner and cats. I miss my bed. I miss my friends (some of whom I should’ve invited on this trip). However, I’m now wistful for the kind of time I could’ve had if I embraced the festival’s energy. If I can impart one message to you, dear reader, it is that if you get a chance to do something like this, remember that any work achieved is good work. You are at film writing summer camp, not a work retreat. There’s certainly some balance between the two that I could’ve achieved, but that’ll have to wait until the next festival. Maybe I’ll go back to Sundance for its first outing in Colorado and bond with the entire film industry over our sheer confusion over where to go and what to do. If I can have a small part in building the culture of that new venue, maybe I’ll find the confidence to return to Austin and do South by Southwest right.