Alpheus Goes Global

You may recall that we have a project right now that's sending us to shoot in five countries. After I posted about that trip, the countries changed, things got complicated at work, and we decided to sell our house and move. So it turned out to be impossible for Mat and I to go, although Mat did go on the first leg of the trip to Mexico City.

Anne and Wilson are representin' Alpheus on the trip and left on Thursday for Tokyo. If you are interested in seeing them go around the world in 19 days - check out the blog that we started for the trip here .

Operation Boycott: It worked!!!

Has anybody noticed that The Village Inn is closed?!?! Hah! I'm so glad. I'm going to start emailing Magnolia Cafe and Kerbey Lane everyday and invite them to move into that building so we can have another good restaurant in SW Austin. Now that it's closed I must admit...we did go there once. It was one of the times that Jackson got to pick. My review is that it was exactly as lame as I thought it would be. On another note...we walked into Chuy's the other night after I got home from Boston and the wait was 1.5 hours!! I think we'll wait until the new wears off before we go there. We'll just have to keep going to Taco Bueno for now. :-)

Marathon Day

WOW! The Boston Marathon was a blast! Yesterday we scouted our location for the shoot today and decided to camp out at Mile 21. We took the T (Boston's subway) out there this morning and spent most of the day there. It was right after Heartbreak Hill and right across the street from Boston College.



We got there early, but by noon or so there were hundreds (maybe thousands?) of spectators. Lots of them were Boston College students and their enthusiasm really made the event extremely fun. This video is the first time we saw the male runners start coming. Before this the leaders of the wheelchair racers had already zoomed past us, and a lot of the elite women runners had passed. But this was the first male runner.



Then for a couple of hours there was a steady stream of runners.





We stayed and shot Team LIVESTRONG runners and then shot some footage of the LAF president when he came by. All of this will be in the UNITE video that will go online next week after we edit it. By the time we got back downtown to the finish line it was all pretty much over.



It was a fun day. We ate dinner at this awesome local pizza joint.



It seems like I've been gone forever...I'll be happy to get home to all the boys tomorrow!

More pics from Boston

Niketown this morning.



Lunch on Newberry St.



Charles River, Boston Common and Shipyard in the afternoon. (We also went to Fenway Park and Bunker Hill, but I didn't get a shot of those.)









The North End at dinnertime.





We were working the whole time, but it was a fun day. We found an awesome cab driver this afternoon who took us all over the place to get footage. He was hilarious. He kept saying (in a thick Baahston accent), "Chaahlie, lemme take ya ovah he-uh. I think this will be a good shot. Look ovah he-uh Chaahlie. Now that's a good shot. Hop outta the cah and getta shot uh that Chaaahlie." I kept trying to get a video of him directing Charlie, but my timing was off. It was funny.

We planned to end up in The North End which is the Italian district. Just like every other part of town we were in today, it was packed. We found an AWEsome restaurant, though. Then we went to Mike's Pastry for dessert on a recommendation. The line was out the door, but we did it anyway and I'm so glad we did. SO good and worth the short wait.

Tomorrow we mosty have the day off. We're going to scout out our location for shooting the marathon and then go over to Cambridge to visit the Harvard campus. We're in the market for a Harvard onesie for Jen's baby-on-the-way.

Healthy Child Event in Austin

I wish I was in town so I could go to this event. If you're looking for something to do tomorrow afternoon, go to Bookpeople and pick up the new Healthy Child, Healthy World book. Here are all the details...

Date: THIS SUNDAY, April 20th
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Bookpeople
Event: Book signing with Christopher Gavigan - Healthy Child, Healthy World

Description: Nothing makes one more keenly aware of health risks than becoming a parent. Most know the importance of using cabinet locks and child gates, but research is showing many more ways we need to be childproofing our homes. Tens of millions of children now face chronic diseases and illnesses including cancer, autism, birth defects, ADD/ADHD, etc., as well as a host of lesser but disruptive ailments, and this number is continuing to get higher every year. More parents are asking why. A growing body of research points to unseen threats from chemicals found in everyday products like cleaning supplies, cosmetics, home furnishings, plastics, some foods and toys as contributing to these ailments. Healthy Child Healthy World offers parents a definitive guide to creating a healthy, nontoxic, and environmentally sound home.

Healthy Child Healthy World is the #1 book on Amazon's best seller list in three categories: Healthy Living, How-to & Home Improvements, and Child Development. And unbelievably, on our first day, we rose to #15 overall!

Here's a link to the book page on the website.
http://www.healthychild.org/book

Blogging from Beantown

I'm in Boston this weekend on a shoot for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. We are continuing our UNITE video series this month by highlighting members of Team LIVESTRONG which is a group of athletes who have been raising money for the LAF and are running the Boston Marathon together.

Tonight we went out to eat in the Quincy Market. I got clam chowder and a crab cake. Isn't that what you're supposed to eat in Boston!??!



This is Jennifer from the LAF and Charlie who is the DP (director of photography) on this shoot.



A very old cemetary by our hotel. I love how everything here is old.



More to come...

Last Week in H-town

This is before the screening of FG at the hotel. We are standing with Cara (our producer), her boyfriend Travis, and George Sledge who co-directed the film with Mat.



As we were walking to the theater, we were mobbed by several hundred well-dressed teenagers who were walking the other direction. It was kind of weird.



The ranchers from the Waco-area talking in the Green Room before the event.



Mat, George, and Mr. R. (Cara and I got to be in a picture with him, too, but I don't have it on my camera.)



Checking out the stage before the event. This theater is huge. It's the home of the Houston opera and ballet.





The panel: RR, rancher, Mat, former mayor of Big D, mayor of H-town, big-time lawyer, president of giant oil company, environmentalist.



Hanging out after the screening.



Times like this make all the hard work worth it. It was fun.

(To clarify a couple of things...I am just now posting this because after the screening we got quite of bit of press. There was even an article in the New York Times yesterday, and we've had 35 requests for additional screenings just since that article was released. So we have to make sure that when people google the name of the film or Mat's name or anyone else involved with the film they are directed to the film's website and not this blog! So that's the reason I'm using initials and things rather than complete names.)

This Weekend...

Go see The Unforeseen!! This is an amazing, beautiful documentary directed by a friend of ours, Laura Dunn. She and her husband Jef Sewell have spent the last 4 (or 5?) years working on this, and it is so good. I'm not even going to try to describe it or review it because that has been done many times by people a lot more eloquent than me. But I will tell you that it has been in about a million film festivals all over the world including Sundance and it won the Independent Spirit Award.

They extended its run at the Alamo South so you can see it this weekend! Do it!!!

Alamo Drafthouse

The Unforeseen

Two Birds Film