Yesterday’s recording was a mess. First we couldn’t find a time that worked for Awards Daily ‘s Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com‘s Phil Contrino and myself. Then the usual recording software didn’t work due to a Skype upgrade. And I forgot to bring my headphones to Austin so I was speaking from my cell as I walked down 6th and Congress and Lamar, etc. We discussed South by Southwest attractions and how some people wait until their 70s or 80s to announce that they’re gay or like to cross-dress. Here’s a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

We all get things wrong, and we all have our pet ways of acknowledging error. Whenever I’ve screwed up over the last 30 years or so I’ve been saying “I made a mistake” the way Michael Caine says it in this scene from Get Carter (’71). The other Caine/Carter line I do reasonably well is “I would like…to stroke you.” I’m nowhere near Coogan and Brydon, of course, but who is?

The Win Win guys — director-cowriter Tom McCarthy, Alex Shafer, Amy Ryan, Paul Giamatti, co-writer Joe Tiboni — took a bow after last night’s SXSW showing at the Paramount. Here, again, is my all-but-entirely positive 1.22 Sundance review. SXSW publicist Rebecca Feferman is at left in the red sweater. It opens on 3.18.

The other day Marshall Fine called Win Win “a delight…a movie that’s smart and emotionally honest about juggling the problems life sends you. It’s already at the top of my list as one of the year’s best.”

I ignored Rob Yulfo‘s 127 Hours Road Runner cartoon when it appeared two or three days ago because it’s way too late in the cycle. But when The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit linked to this, he got it wrong in the sub-copy by writing “beep beep.” The sound made by this legendary Chuck Jones creation is “meep meep.” Listen to it again — the “b” consonant has never been there.

I purposely never saw The Switch because of the mostly negative buzz, but this deleted scene, taken from the extras menu on the just-out DVD/Bluray, is rather well-written. (The script is by Allen Loeb.) And Todd Louiso, as always, is perfect.

“McCabe & Mrs. Miller: A Video Essay,” an impressionistic Vimeo essay by Steven Santos that was re-posted on Awards Daily earlier today by Ryan Adams.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller: A Video Essay from Steven Santos on Vimeo.

Anti-union Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has spoken often of Ronald Wilson Reagan, his personal hero for his tough stance against air-traffic controllers when they threatened to strike in 1981. And yet…

“As pervasive as the internet has become, so has the notion that free content must be free for others to take,” read the tag line. The “Blogger Centipede” panel, which began at 5 pm in the Austin Convention Center, was about a general lack of ethics in certain corners of the web, and what, if anything, can be done about it. The panelists were (l. to r.) William Goss, Pajiba’s Dustin Rowles, Gordon and the Whale‘s Kate Erbland, Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and the well-regarded Matt Patches.

Knowing full well that very few movie stars have a more toxic image than The Beaver star Mel Gibson, Summit Entertainment and Participant Media are trying to spin the South by Southwest premiere of Jodie Foster‘s new film (which will screen here on Wednesday night) with a “social action” campaign meant to highlight the various pitfalls and possible remedies for mental illness. What, Mad Mel’s? No — mental illness in general.

The press release reads, “As [The Beaver] depicts the devastating effects of mental illness on one family, Participant designed the Social Action Campaign to provide audiences with tools, resources and opportunities to heal the pain of those suffering from mental illnesses and their families and friends,” and blah blah.

It also promises that “on 3.17 at Lambert’s Downtown Barbecue in Austin, an afternoon celebration of the Social Action Campaign for The Beaver will take place,” and that musical headliners will include Pepper Rabbit and Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers. The Beaver director/star Jodie Foster and co-star Anton Yelchin will also take the stage.

So Gibson isn’t going to show up in Austin, or has Summit/Participant simply decided not to announce his intention to do so in their press release? If he appears, it’ll be a circus. If he doesn’t appear, it’ll be a bigger circus.

The Beaver will open on May 6th.

Augustus Owsley Stanley III, by any yardstick one of the key promoters and launchers of LSD use in the mid to late ’60s (equal to the influence of Timothy Leary, Jimi Hendrix‘s ‘Are You Experienced?‘ album and the Beatles), died yesterday in a car crash in Australia at the age of 76.

Everything you need to know about the hip factor at The Hollywood Reporter is contained in this headline for their Stanley obit.

If you accept, as I do, that spiritual satori by way of LSD in the ’60s triggered the spiritual revolution of the ’70s and introduced a whole new level of comprehension about mystical enlightenment (the concept of which, before the mid ’60s, hadn’t even penetrated U.S. culture, given the general tendency to regard spiritual matters in terms handed down in Sunday church services), then the death of Stanley is, in a sense, like the passing of John the Baptist, St. Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther or any other major spiritual figure of the past.

Stanley’s Wiki bio says he was “probably the first private individual to manufacture LSD. Between 1965 and 1967 he produced more than 1.25 million doses of LSD — a catalyst for the emergence of the hippie movement during the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury area, which one historian of that movement, Charles Perry, has described as ‘one big LSD party.’ Stanley was also an accomplished sound engineer, and the longtime sound man and financier for psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead.”

“‘[Stanley] made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honor,’ former rock ‘n’ roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoir ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’

“Hendrix’s song ‘Purple Haze’ was reputedly inspired by a batch of Stanley’s product. The ear-splitting blues-psychedelic combo Blue Cheer took its named from another batch.”