Entertainment

AUSTIN – If Carrollton's John Gordon III isn't the youngest filmmaker at South by Southwest this year, he's close. The 15-year-old R.L. Turner sophomore's short film, To the Ends of the Earth, was accepted into the Texas High School Shorts competition and screened to a receptive house of parents and students Friday night at the Dobie Theater.

The five-minute film follows a father (John's father, John Gordon II) and son (John's younger brother, Taylor) as they travel to the airport, where the boy wanders off and gets lost. There's no dialogue in the film; instead, a contemplative narrator speaks of the uneasiness of separation.

"The film comes from the feelings that you have when something we value is lost," John said during an interview Monday morning, as his beaming mother, Benita, sat nearby. "It really came from my younger brother, who gets lost all the time. It's such a deep impact – I know how I feel."

Heady stuff from such a young filmmaker. But don't mistake him for a newbie – he's been making short films since middle school and is in his second year of the Academy of Media Arts and Technology at Turner, where he is learning all aspects of video production.

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John Gordon III

And he says he's settled on an idea for his next film, titled Cloudburst, which will involve tornadoes. But before he moves on to that, he says he's looking forward to the film awards ceremony tonight and a screening of To the Ends of the Earth with his family Saturday night.

"I have lots of ideas that I want to get done, but most aren't finished products. But this film was one that I was happy with the finished product."

The Promotion, a comedy about two grocery store assistant managers (Seann William Scott, John C. Reilly) competing for the same job, enjoyed a raucous reception Sunday night during its world premiere at the Paramount Theatre. The film marks the feature directorial debut of Steve Conrad, best known as the writer of The Pursuit of Happyness .

It's a marked departure from Pursuit, with several moments of broad, laugh-out-loud comedy. If you think the idea of Mr. Reilly trying to fight Mr. Scott while wearing tap shoes sounds just absurd enough to be funny, you'll like the movie. Afterward, Mr. Conrad and Mr. Scott took questions from the audience. The highlight was Mr. Scott talking about how he drew from his experience working in the plumbing department at Home Depot, where he spent most of his time hiding inside one of the shower models, practicing for auditions. Sounds as if it all worked out – three months after he took the job, he landed his big break in American Pie.

So far, The Promotion doesn't have a Dallas release date, but it seems a safe bet that you'll have a chance to see it closer to home before the year's out.

Helen Hunt, the writer, director and star of Then She Found Me, which will open the AFI Dallas International Film Festival on March 27, took part in the festival's conversation series on Sunday afternoon.

With a room full of filmmakers in attendance, most of the questions dealt with actual moviemaking rather than the usual celeb questions you might expect. An early questioner asked Ms. Hunt why she decided to direct the movie in addition to writing it (she says she actually decided to star in it fairly late in the process).

"After the long process of writing the movie, I became more and more married to the movie," she said. "It got to a point where it would have taken longer to explain to someone how I wanted it directed than to direct it myself."

And what was the experience of running the show like for the first-time director?

"Well, the Coen brothers always have the other Coen brother," she said. "All I had was me."