Is Texas ready for the Northwest?
Are moviegoers at SXSW — a film festival on par with Sundance and Toronto for the way it helps make deals and careers — ready for documentaries about a Redmond middle school teacher’s near-mythic quest for the Donkey Kong world record, lawyers who almost lose their minds trying to pass one of the most difficult bar exams in the country, bestiality in Enumclaw and the murder of a punk rock singer?
While SXSW (it used to be called South by Southwest) is better known for its music extravaganza, its film and star clout is steadily increasing, enough for filmmakers to pull out all the stops for a good showing.
When local screenwriter Mike Thompson flies to Austin for the film festival’s opening today, he hopes to sell “A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar.” sure, the movie’s got plenty of people who hate lawyers and lawsuits, but there are also comic relief and well-known commentators who back up the need for attorneys in a free society. But the real focus of the documentary is on six candidates who are going through the California state bar exam, including one man who’s failed it 41 times during the past 26 years. Only 39 percent of test-takers passed the exam in February 2006. in Washington at the same time, 73.7 percent passed.
Passing rates for California tend to be higher in the summer exam, which has more recent law school grads among those who put themselves through the six hours per day, three-day ordeal.
“A friend took the California bar and it was a nightmare experience,” said executive producer Thompson, speaking from his lakefront house in Skyway. “People have near nervous breakdowns, they lose weight and have stress on a level that’s really entertaining.”
Thompson, 38, who wrote the short-lived Fox series “John Doe” and the Kevin Costner film “Dragonfly,” is using the film to launch Camel’s Back Films, the company he co-runs with Brandon Camp, his Los Angeles-based writing partner.
“We’ve been working in the studio system for a long time and it’s hard to maintain control over your destiny,” Thompson said. “We’re always on a lookout for way to circumvent that.”
Texas investors helped propel this first effort, which has the same style as pop-culture favorites “Spellbound” and “Supersize me.”
“It’s a Rocky story with six Rockys,” Thompson said.
A native of Bellevue who went to Newport High School, Thompson has worked in the film industry since he graduated from NYU’s film school and landed a job as an assistant for Hollywood big-shot producer Scott Rudin — whose lengthy list of credits includes “The Queen,” “The School of Rock,” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.” Thompson started writing when he was 25 and returned to his Northwest roots three years ago after a decade in Los Angeles.
Kong king
Thompson will also appear at SXSW in “The King of Kong” as the real-life childhood friend of Steve Wiebe, 38, a math and science teacher at Finn Hill Junior High in Kirkland.
Four years ago, during a layoff from his engineering job at Boeing, Wiebe re-ignited his love of Donkey Kong after finding out he had unofficially broken the world record years earlier when he was a student at UW and the game’s home was in his frat room.
“I thought I’d do it to cheer myself up,” Wiebe said.
He bought another Donkey Kong arcade game (the full-size kind) on eBay and after a month of playing in his garage, he beat a record held for more than two decades by Billy Mitchell with a score of 947,000. Donkey Kong is the game that launched the Nintendo gaming empire. Classic game players call it one of the most difficult games.
It wasn’t long before Wiebe became embroiled in controversy, as hyper-technical details disqualified his achievements in the gaming world. But that didn’t stop Wiebe from embarking on a quest to confront his arch-nemesis in a head-to-head showdown.
“I just knew I could break it again,” Wiebe said. “I felt like I was getting the short end of the stick so I wanted to keep going for it. I don’t want to lose knowing I had a real legitimate score, but there were times it would have been easier to let those guys win.”
But then it wouldn’t have been as compelling a story, and then it wouldn’t have attracted the attention of Ed Cunningham and Seth Gordon. Cunningham, who played on the University of Washington co-national championship football team, produces movies. Gordon, who directs movies, is a former P-I delivery boy who was raised in the U District by his professor parents.
Cunningham and Gordon, who both live in L.a., had already worked together on the critically acclaimed documentary “New York Doll” but found another reason to team up once they’d heard the story about Wiebe through Thompson, a mutual friend.
“The King of Kong” resonated enough with New Line (especially one of its execs, who watched it repeatedly) that the company bought it and plans to make a feature-film version with actors subbing in for the doc’s characters. Picturehouse acquired rights for the documentary’s limited theatrical release this summer.
Other documentaries at SXSW with Northwest connections include “The Gits” by Kerri O’Kane in her feature film debut, and “Zoo,” co-written by the Stranger’s Charles Mudede and Robinson Devor, which made an appearance at Sundance.
The former is an examination of the underground Seattle punk rock band the Gits and the 1993 murder of lead singer Mia Zapata, while the latter takes an unusual approach to the 2005 Enumclaw bestiality scandal that began with the death of a man who had sex with a horse.
Can you handle that, Texas?
WEB SITES ABOUT THESE FILMS AND SXSW
alawyerwalksintoabar.com
thekingofkong.com
thegitsmovie.com/gitinfo.html
2007.sxsw.com/film/screenings/date/2007-03-09.html
Seattle filmmakers are pushing at Austin's city limits
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on Seattle filmmakers are pushing at Austin's city limits
Or, do you have any other recommendations to short-circuit the time needed to take the exam? I’m based in California, but will travel.Should mention, I have many years of experience doing borderline legal work, and a graduate degree in an unrelated field.
I read somewhere that you dont need to go to law school to take the bar in Virginia and a couple other states, Is that true?Also if I went to Virginia, took the Bar, and passed, could I take the bar in another state to practice law? Or would Virginia be the only state I could practice in?
The Texas Board of Law Examiners anticipates the release of July 2009 Bar Exam results on Friday November 6th. this information, and a good deal more, is provided at this terrific 
For those of us harbouring notions that Indians aren’t entrepreneurial enough, think again. 
(2 of 3)
If you pass the california state bar exam, can you practice in other states with it? in other words, does it transfer to other states (or maybe fulfill part of the bar exam in other states)?
