SXSW Film Preview: RSO [Registered Sex Offender]

On an average day, we reach into our mailboxes and pull out a bunch of junk circulars and credit card offers, possibly a bill or two. But then comes the fateful day when we retrieve something so seemingly benign: a small, white postcard. It's a notice that a registered sex offender has moved into our neighborhood. Our minds immediately flood with images of all of the horrible things that we hear about on t.v. and see on HBO documentaries, allowing the new possibility that we, or someone around us, could possibly be violated by this person whom we have never even met. Sounds like a prefect subject for a comedy, right? Director Bob Byington hopes you think so.

RSO [Registered Sex Offender], follows the unenviable life of one ex-convict, played by newbie Gabriel McIver, who must reintegrate into a world that has indefinitely deemed him a social leper. He must deal with all of the minutiae that all of these other sad, pitiful, white males that we love to capture on film must deal with, but with the dark cloud of criminal damnation hovering somewhere just above his brow, to humorous effect. We don't know what he did (just yet) but we are guessing that, in his case, the punishment and repulsion may not fit the crime.

Byington, whose last feature film, Olympia, was part of SXSW '98's opening night festivities, is a past winner of the Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest, so he can demonstratively craft a captivating narrative. Add to that the fact that he was recently awarded an Annenberg Film Fellowship Grant, which will provide financial and creative support for his next feature Harmony & Me, and something tells us that RSO is going to be a winner in an uncomfortably hilarious way. Plus the fact that it has the best tagline, like, ever.

RSO [Registered Sex Offender] will have its World Premiere Sunday, March 9th at the Alamo Ritz as part of the SXSW Film Festival. For more info, check out the Film Threat / B-Side SXSW Guide.