Yet another reason why I want to move to Austin, TX. Via Greencine:

"Burnt Orange Productions. It's an intriguing, potentially very exciting yet already legally sticky venture dreamed up by film prof Thomas Schatz: The University of Texas in Austin plans to make at least eight movies, the first co-produced by Terrence Malick. The idea, reports Randy Kennedy in the New York Times, is to teach the thousand students in the film program how to make movies by getting them to actually make movies.

On the advisory board: Richard Linklater, Matthew McConaughey and Mike Simpson, an executive VP at the William Morris Agency. Among the questions raised: If the kids make a hit, do they get paid? No. All rights are held by UT. What about sequels? Can they take their own ideas on to new projects? "We're still working on that issue," Ellen Wartell, dean of the College of Communications tells Kennedy. It's going to be messy and not everyone's going to be happy all the time and the very idea of a state school barging so blatantly into such a commercial venture will raise several questions, but as Schatz says, "It's been going on with technology for a long time. But we just don't think about the arts and humanities that way."

I don't know how such a cool city cropped up in Texas, nor how it continues to get cooler and cooler, but I wanna go. I don't think I'd be able to handle the heat, though. I'd have to take summer vacations in Newfoundland.

Schreibt Cynthia Rockwell, die irgendwas an der Harvard Universität lehrt.