The fourth day of the ATX Television Festival Season 10 kicked off with The Daily, where festival co-founders Emily Gipson & Caitlin McFarland gave their live update from Still Austin as they enjoyed some bourbon coffee drinks. They briefly discussed yesterday’s events, previewed today’s panels, and showed a video of their bourbon tasting with Still Austin tasting room manager Mary Santo. Then they brought in live guest Fiona Dawson to talk about the proof of concept episode of her show Now With Fiona, and her documentary TransMilitary.
Later in the day there was a live Happy Hour, where Caitlin & Emily were joined by special guest Wilson Cruz.
This was followed by two topical panels, a panel about original music on TV, and a look back at the HBO series Oz to close out the day.
Indigenize the Narrative presented by The Syndication Project
The panel, which was moderated by Vincent Schilling of Indian Country Today took a look at how Native American and Indigenous storytellers are becoming a more central part of the industry and making sure their stories are told in an authentic way. The panel featured Sierra Teller Ornelas, the showrunner/executive producer/co-creator of Peacock’s Rutherford Falls, along with director Sydney Freeland (Rutherford Falls, The Wilds) and actors Michael Greyeyes (Rutherford Falls) & Kimberly Guerrero (Rutherford Falls, The Wilds).
Television in an Era of Racial Reckoning presented by ACLU
This panel moderated by ACLU of Texas Communications Director Darryl Ewing, took a look at building “Systemic Equality” in TV production, both on and off screen. The panel featured Kay Oyegun (writer/director/co-executive producer, This is Us), Little Marvin (showrunner/EP, Them), Monica Macer (writer/producer, Gentefied, Queen Sugar) & Ashley Nicole Black (Writer/Actor, A Black Lady Sketch Show).
TV Mixtapes: Original Songs
This was one of the panels I was really looking forward to. Dan Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter moderated this panel with the creative minds behind all those amazing original songs you see on TV shows these days. The panelists included Loren Bouchard (creator/showrunner/executive producer, Central Park, Bob’s Burgers), Chris Kelly (showrunner/executive producer, The Other Two), Sarah Schneider (showrunner/executive producer, The Other Two), Nida Manzoor (showrunner/executive producer, We Are Lady Parts), Jeff Richmond (composer/executive producer, Girls5Eva) & Siddhartha Khosla (composer, This is Us).
The panelists discussed their favorite iconic movie songs, the challenges of creating original songs that sound believable for their characters, casting for a balance of singing and/or acting, writing songs for a cast with different levels of musicality, and releasing the music on soundtracks commercially. Loren Bouchard talked about relying on his writers to write for the fake boy band in Bob’s Burgers since that’s not his genre, and discussed the massive trial-by-fire of creating a full-blown musical series in Central Park, after just doing a small number of silly songs and the occasional musical episode of Bob’s Burgers. Chris Kelly described the interesting progression of the songs in The Other Two and how they helped to serve and propel the story for the main characters. Siddhartha Khosla mentioned the challenges of creating a pop song from 30 years in the future for This is Us, and talked a lot about the different abilities of the various cast members and how that affected the songs they were given.
OZ Retrospective
HBO’s Oz was one of my can’t miss favorite shows when it debuted in 1997. The cast and creators of the series looked back at the groundbreaking show in this panel moderated by NPR’s Eric Deggans. The panelists included creator/executive producer Tom Fontana, and stars Terry Kinney (director, “Tim McManus”), Lee Tergesen (“Tobias Beecher”), Dean Winters (“Ryan O’Reily”), Harold Perrineau (“Augustus Hill”) & Kirk Acevedo (“Miguel Alvarez”).
Given the tone of the series, you wouldn’t expect this to be one of the funniest panels of the festival so far, but the guys were constantly laughing and making me laugh as they shared their hilarious stories about working on the show. It started off with a humble Tom Fontana saying that Oz didn’t really change television, just that HBO gave him the freedom to make the show he wanted and not what they wanted, which allowed others like David Chase and Alan Ball to follow. However, the others disagreed, giving him their overwhelming praise, and even blaming him for things like The Real Housewives. Tom said that in 6 seasons, he only ever received three notes from HBO, one of which was just to cut 2 seconds from a scene where a gun was being pointed at a child. He also talked about killing off the lead character in the first episode, and how the actors would all nervously flip through new scripts to see if they survived. He also admitted that the only time he cried while writing was while working on the scene where Augustus Hill dies.
The panelists discussed the ridiculous attempts to film airplane/network TV safe versions of the episodes. Lee talked about his penis-biting scene (it was a hot dog) and how he was worried that it would be shown at the wrap party. Dean talked about nearly quitting the business before he got this part, and working with his brothers on the show. He also shared a story about how he was tricked into doing the Hole scene naked in episode three, which ended up setting the precedent for the rest of the series. Kirk talked about his audition process, and the collaborative input they were able to give for their characters. He also shared some hilarious stories of working with Chazz Palminteri and Matt Dillon as his directors. Harold talked about playing a character with a disability, and the reaction to his character, saying that people still come up to him as exclaim “It’s a miracle, he can walk!” He also discussed his monologues and filming in the rotating box. While no one liked the box, all of the directors were forced to use it in every episode in order to justify its exorbitant cost. Terry talked about working as both an actor and director on the show, and how he used the box in his episodes.
The panel finished out with everyone talking about the lasting effect working on the series had for them. It was a very entertaining panel and made me want to revisit the series. ATX also made a new 15-minute short available to watch. In “Zo”, which was filmed after lockdown in New York City, we get a follow-up, seeing Tobias Beecher and Ryan O’Reily out of jail, having a conversation on their cell phones as Ryan makes his way through the city towards Tobias, threatening to get his revenge. Tom said that, depending on the success of the short, there will be future shorts with other characters. It was a lot of fun to see these characters again on my TV screen!
Virtual Festival Badges and Day Passes for Season 10 are still available. To purchase a Badge, Pass, or learn more, visit atxfestival.com/attend.
