David Milch ("NYPD Blue," "Deadwood"), Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) and Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, Three Days of the Condor) gathered Saturday for the Creating Classic Characters panel at the Austin Film Festival. The conversation quickly became a completely engaging discussion of the craft of writing, managing expectations of the studios, Dostoevsky and much more. Black was his general convivial and vulnerable self, while the affable Pollack spoke with great humility about......

We were relieved to find out that Austin's own "wandering moon howler" Red Hunter, aka Peter and the Wolf, made it back safely after his whirlwind national tour -- the final leg of which was traversed by sea. Accompanied by Jana Hunter, The Castanets, some eye-patch-wearing fellow from WFMU and other assorted pirate types, the motley crew successfully navigated their way up the East Coast's Intracoastal Waterway. Also, as Red mentioned in the interview......

"The book is a riddle, it's our generation's bible, and you have to guess the title with one clue: After photoshop was used only to remove certain letters, what remained were the words FACT and CON..."...

With national gas prices soaring past that dreadful $3-per-gallon mark, most of us at Austinist have had to rework our upcoming roadtrip plans. But what about our city's vast legions of musicians? Summer's a great opportunity for bands to get out for a bit of stateside touring, but it's hard enough for most indepedent artists simply break even -- especially when you've rented a jalopy of a gas-guzzling touring van to house all those damned......