E-Mail This Article to a Friend The heart of Texas SxSW proves it’s not all Bush country BY GERALD PEARY

Each time I get to Austin (four trips so far), it seems more evidently the best place in America to settle down in: a sunny, chummy, music-crazy spot with Tex-Mex restaurants and barbecue joints on every other corner and a prosperous, articulate populace that loathes George W. even more than Bostonians do. It’s where laid-back, left-of-center Southerners flock: I was told that in 2000, downtown Austin voted 38 percent for Ralph Nader.

Even if you don’t want to live there (the summers will melt you down), a yearly visit for chilly New Englanders is great for the spirits, grand for the soul. What better time than that week and a half each March when the spry, youth-culture-driven South by Southwest Film Festival segues into the world-renowned South by Southwest Music Festival? Why go to stuffy, snow-bound Sundance in January when, two months later, you can have a celebratory time of movies and music in T-shirt-weather Austin?

I began my happy days this mid March with the world-premiere screening of $5.15/Hr., an HBO pilot directed and co-written by Austin homeboy Richard Linklater (Slacker, School of Rock). I ended it, six days later, with a street-corner performance by Boston’s sublime chanteuse Mary Lou Lord, who was hawking her new CD to knowledgeable Texans.

$5.15/Hr. was planned as a social-consciousness comedy series set among the minimum-wage workers at a fast-food restaurant. "It’s settling old scores," Linklater told a South by Southwest audience. "I was a busboy in a bunch of restaurants. My title for the show was Shit Job." Unfortunately, his inventive pilot was as far as Shit Job went: the project was nixed by a high-up at HBO. "Everyone at HBO was supportive except this one guy," Linklater said. "He probably never had a real job in his life. The person who mows his lawns, he wouldn’t know his name."

"We worked on the show for two years," producer and co-writer Rodney Rothman added. "We ended up getting minimum wage."

It was a Linklater double-feature day at South by Southwest with the American-premiere screening of Before Sunset, his sparkling follow-up to Before Sunrise (1995). "We’re proud of the fact that we’re probably the lowest-grossing film ever to spawn a sequel," he joked. Before Sunset brings back Ethan Hawke and France’s Julie Delpy for a Paris reunion a decade after their earlier, blissed-out night in Vienna. Delpy spoke after the Austin screening, and she reappeared the next night at a 6th Street club as lead singer for the Julie Delpy Band. Among those in the audience: Jim Jarmusch. I told him that I’m teaching his œuvre this semester in a seminar course at Suffolk University. "I’m honored," he said, with sincerity. "It’s too bad your students have to watch such bad films."

He’s a nice guy with æsthetic integrity, so I’m sad to have to report that his new Coffee & Cigarettes is a thin, mostly pointless anthology of two-and-three-character encounters over weeds and mocha. But his failure wasn’t alone among the narrative films at South by Southwest 2004. Others were by youthful filmmakers still finding their visions. In contrast, the documentaries proved a vigorous, sophisticated lot. At the top of my list:

Slasher. Hollywood filmmaker John Landis’s long-awaited return is this true-life tale of a speedy, LA-based alcoholic who troubleshoots across the USA relieving used-car lots of unwanted autos through "prices slashed" super deals.

Small Ball: A Little League Story. New York filmmakers Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker follow a talented California Little League team (and coaches and parents) through a harrowing, exciting post-season.

Up for Grabs. More baseball, the hilariously pathetic story of the fight, in court and out, between two San Franciscans over who owns Barry Bonds’s 73rd-home-run ball.

Metallica: Some Kind of Revolution. Heavy metal with a semi-human face in this wonderful behind-the-scenes by documentary vets Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky.

Dig! The deserving documentary winner from Sundance depicts Ondi Timoner’s years on the road with two wild, and wildly talented, rock bands, the Dandy Warhols and the school-of-Sid-Vicious Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Super Size Me. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock spent a horrid month eating nothing but McDonald’s fast food to see what it would do to his body. This hilarious gross-out documentary is Animal House meets Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and it surely will be the most popular non-fiction work since Bowling for Columbine.