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The Texas Education Agency has rejected Austin ISD’s proposal for three middle schools that have received consecutive failing grades — putting the entire district at further risk of a state takeover.
The Austin City Council has approved guidelines for the construction and operation of a new natural gas plant after the project was OK’d in a secret vote.
Thousands of Austinites received a call or text this month urging them to seek shelter or evacuate immediately, but many weren’t even sure the message was legit. Now police say they will improve the alerts.
Plus: Exploded Drawing kicks off their 16th year of electronic music showcases.
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The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:08] The Texas Education Agency has rejected Austin ISD’s proposal for three middle schools that have received consecutive failing grades, and that puts the entire Austin school district at further risk of a state takeover. We’ll tell you why. And the Austin City Council has approved guidelines for the construction and operation of a new natural gas operation. Approval for the project came this month in a secret vote, and it’s raising eyebrows for critics of the idea. Plus… Thousands of Austinites received a call or text this month urging them to seek shelter or evacuate immediately, but many of them weren’t even sure the message was legit. We’ll tell you what’s going on, coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:44] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:49] And exploded drawing kicks off their 16th year of electronic music showcases. Come find out about them. That’s up next on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, thank you for tuning in to Austin Signal. It is the 29th, the final Friday of May. I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. We’re glad you are making us part of your day. The Texas Education Agency has rejected a plan by the Austin Independent School District to improve three middle schools. KUT’s Greta Diaz-Gonzalez-Vasquez reports the decision could bring AISD closer to a state takeover.
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:01:33] In March, AISD had submitted a plan for Burnett, Doby, and Webb Middle Schools to be run as charter schools for two years by an outside provider. That was after the three middle schools received four consecutive failing grades from the state. If they receive a fifth, the TEA could take over the whole district. The agreement would have paused the accountability clock for these three schools. But in a letter, the TA told Superintendent Matias Segura that the partner they had Texas Council for International Studies. Does not meet the criteria for the agreement. Segura told AISD families that the district will submit additional information to the TEA to reinforce the application. Ratings for the 2025-2026 school year have yet to be released, but Segura said the district has seen promising student growth. I’m Greta Díaz-González Vázquez in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:28] All right, Austin is getting a new gas peaker plant after the city council held a secret vote last week. Now council members have passed guidelines for the new plant to help limit emissions, but critics say these guidelines, how these guidelines will work is still an open question. For more about that, we’re talking with Moe’s Bouchelle. He is KUT’s energy and environment correspondent. Moe, thanks for coming back to the show. Thank you, Jerry. So I have no idea what a peaker plan is. Can you tell me what is it?
Mose Buchele [00:02:53] Yeah, what we’re talking about is a gas power plant that can turn off and on very quickly. Gas generators generate electricity and it’s called a peaker plant because it does this in times of peak energy demand. This is times when energy is scarce on the grid and prices are high. So the utility says we need one of these new peaker plants to answer that cost concern and also reliability questions.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:18] Take us back to last week at the secret vote, what was voted on, and why is there so much hubbub about it.
Mose Buchele [00:03:23] Well, I mean, for one, Austin has climate goals, Austin wants to reduce air pollution, and a lot of folks were very upset to hear the utility wanted to invest more in natural gas power generation, fossil fuel power generation which contributes to both of those things. The other big question was just the manner in which this vote was taken. You alluded to the secrecy around it. This was done in executive session. Because as a city with a public-owned utility, there are exemptions to the open meetings rules that allow council to take these decisions in secret, these discussions in secrets, because they don’t want to reveal competitive secrets in the competitive energy market that is the Texas energy market. So that’s why they say they did it in secret. But the fact that the vote was never, the results of the vote were never revealed, it raised especially a lot of questions. It was approved in secret but nobody knows how their council members voted. Or really what the conditions around that were still, we do not know.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:21] So tell us a little bit more about the guidelines
Mose Buchele [00:04:23] Yeah, right, so they approved the peaker plant and now they came back this week to try to set limits on how much nitrogen oxide emissions and CO2 our gas power plant fleet will emit now that we have this new power plant. And what they say is that they want to run the new plant as often as they can because it’s more efficient and cleaner. We have some other older gas plants like the one at Decker Creek that emits more. So the argument there is that you run the newer plant more often and that will potentially reduce emissions if you’re not running the older plant as much. They also want to set a cap on the amount of emissions the city’s fleet of gas generators produce so that it never goes above the amount of emissions that we as a city produce in the year before the new power plant starts running. So they wanna set a standard, take the year before we get this new gas peeker online. We can never surpass that amount of emissions again. And as you said, critics, while largely applauding the idea behind this, are concerned about the implementation.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:31] Yeah, what else have the critics had to say?
Mose Buchele [00:05:34] So one of the things is that there are exemptions in terms of reliability risk. If there are times when there’s a potential energy reliability problem, the grid might be getting closer to blackout conditions or power outage conditions or price questions. When that happens, the energy cost goes up really high. These rules say that we can basically emit as much emissions as we want during those times, and it leaves it up to Austin Energy to define what those times are. So some environmental groups are saying we need to know when Austin Energy is basically going to give itself a pass on how much it can emit to really judge the efficacy of these limits to emissions. That’s one question. Another one is just this whole thing looking at the year before the new gas peaker starts running. Well, Some say that could provide a perverse incentive to emit more that kind of benchmark year, and then you have a higher kind of baseline of how much you can emit after that. Another question that was raised at council.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:39] Okay, I have one last question, we have about 30 seconds left. Where would these generators potentially go?
Mose Buchele [00:06:43] That’s another great question that we do not know the answer to. And I think that that’s going to be like one of the next big kind of debates around this whole thing. Austin Energy released a list of 14 potential sites just about a month ago. And I, I think we’re still all waiting to find out where they end up deciding. Council said that the utility should start looking to that. And just this week, they voted on that.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:06] All right, that is Moe’s Bouchelle. He is KUT’s energy and environment correspondent. We’re gonna have a link to his reporting in today’s show notes and at kut.org slash signal. Moe, thank you. Thanks very much. In the last few weeks, thousands of Austinites have gotten text messages and calls urging them to shelter in place, to evacuate immediately, and to maybe click on mysterious links. After KUT News looked into the issue, the city’s police department says it’s going to retool how it notifies people when it matters most. KUT’s Andrew Weber has the story.
Andrew Weber [00:07:47] Earlier this month, the words shelter in place blared across Chris Bataska’s screen at work. Someone, it wasn’t clear who, had emailed him to say there was a dangerous, violent person with warrants nearby. Bataska was at his office near Barton Springs in Lamar.
Chris Bataska [00:08:03] My first thought was to email it to IT.
Andrew Weber [00:08:07] Batasca said the notification looked fishy. He was signed up for local emergency alerts, but he didn’t trust this email.
Chris Bataska [00:08:14] Because it looked like a different link than normal Austin alerts and since we’ve been doing a lot of cyber security training, my first initial reaction was it was potentially fishing.
Andrew Weber [00:08:25] Listen alone.
John Stolls [00:08:27] And a half miles away, John Stolls was also confused. There was no from Austin, from APD. It was super general and it didn’t specify what part of town. After thinking about it for a couple of minutes, it seemed really spammy. Turns out that alert.
Andrew Weber [00:08:45] Came from the Austin Police Department. And a few days later, APD sent out another confusing message. This one told people in an apartment complex in the St. John’s neighborhood that they should evacuate immediately. But again, it wasn’t clear who the text came from or why it was being sent. Neighbors had to call 311 to find out that police had seen a person with a gun nearby. An hour later, APD tweeted that there was no threat to the public and somebody had been arrested. Martin Richie oversees the alert system that was used to send these messages. And he says they violated a couple of key principles.
Martin Richie [00:09:20] You should always tell the folks who you are because it adds credibility so people will actually act on the message.
Andrew Weber [00:09:27] And secondly, Richie says,
Martin Richie [00:09:29] So it’s really important that the messaging be clear and concise, and always understanding who you’re sending it to. If we’re sending a message to about a lockdown, how long am I going to be locked down? We want to try to convey as much information.
Andrew Weber [00:09:45] Richie oversees the alert system and he trains emergency communications staff across the state. But he didn’t send those alerts, Austin policed it, and they weren’t required to check with him beforehand. So I hopped on a call with a guy in charge of the folks who did send those messages, Austin Police Commander Lawrence Davis. He agreed the department could do better, and he said they will in the future.
Lawrence Davis [00:10:09] I’m glad that there are people including the story that are like hey, this is what we would like to see well Okay, let’s let’s work on that. And so I’m happy to have those conversations
Andrew Weber [00:10:19] Richie, the regional alerts manager, thinks APD did a better job on May 17, when three suspects allegedly went on a shooting spree across Austin and injured four people. The department sent out an alert telling people to avoid specific areas, and it also told them where to get future updates. Police also called people.
Austin PD message [00:10:39] This is an emergency message. Austin PD, shelter in place inside these four major roadways, South Slaughter Lane, East McKinney Falls Parkway, North Bend White Boulevard, West Escarpment Boulevard due to ongoing law enforcement incident.
Andrew Weber [00:10:53] It’s worth noting that APD did coordinate with city emergency management officials before sending that alert and that phone call. Richie says the more often police can do that, the better. I’m Andrew Weber in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:11:11] And for today’s Reporter’s Notebook, Andrew Weber is in the studio with us to talk a little bit more about this story. Howdy, Andrew. Hey, Drew. So tell us, why did you want to look into the story?
Andrew Weber [00:11:21] Well, I got one of these alerts, the one that I believe was on May 13th. I was just sort of working from home, uh, just had lunch and got this, this alert that was very vague. Um, and it was, I was confused just cause, you know, we’re, I have to look at these alerts a lot in just the daily course of my work and it was saying watch out for a guy with warrants, which I was like, Okay, well a lot of people have warrants at any given point in time walking around, why do I need to know about this guy? So that got me curious.
Jerry Quijano [00:11:53] And in case people haven’t read your story or didn’t get this text message or these messages, what did they look like? What was it about them that made them look kind of funky?
Andrew Weber [00:12:03] It was kind of vague, like I said, but it was all caps. It didn’t say who it came from. And there was a link and it basically said, please reply. Yes. So a lot of people thought that that was, that was spam.
Jerry Quijano [00:12:15] From your reporting, it sounds like a lack of communication between agencies is at least part of the issue here. What determines what type of alerts are sent out to Austinites or to Texans?
Andrew Weber [00:12:26] It’s very much an ecosystem. So, you know, if there’s a flash flood, then National Weather Service can say, we need to send out one of these alerts. But these alerts kind of go down. There’s a bit of a sort of layer cake to it. This alert system is called Warn Central Texas and folks sign up for it. The other ones like Amber Alerts and Blue Alerts and stuff like that, you have to opt out of those. They come automatically on your phone. So these alerts that confused a lot of folks, they were alerts that they signed up for and they didn’t know where these were coming from. And that can, you know, it’s really up to APD, if they want to send out an alert, when they want send out and alert. Um, so they, they’d sort of have a lot of latitude and, you know, what they can send out.
Jerry Quijano [00:13:08] We heard from an APD commander in your story and he said that APD has heard the criticism and is making changes. Have they said specifically what changes they’re trying to implement?
Andrew Weber [00:13:17] Yeah, they said just making the language look predictable. So, you know, basically trying to come up with templates for X emergency or that’s going to happen, uh, and just having that really ready. So if something does happen, it can kind of be a plug and play thing. They also want to, and this was kind of the principal thing that they said that they would do is just say it’s from APD, just say this is Austin police, you now watch out for this and, you know, be clear.
Jerry Quijano [00:13:45] In the intro to your story, I said that these alerts are meant to be sent out when it matters most. And a lot of people here in Austin felt like these alerts didn’t meet the moment. From the people that you spoke with and from the public opinion that you saw, how did people feel about these messages?
Andrew Weber [00:14:01] I think just confusion, you know? They were told to shelter in place. Some folks were told evacuate. It was just very conflicting. And I mean, I think personally, it was interesting that they directed people to x.com, formerly Twitter. That’s not really a platform that a lot of people engage with. I know we have to go on that site, that site for our work. But you know, I don’t think the general public didn’t really do that. And yeah, I that was just, that sort of struck me.
Jerry Quijano [00:14:32] Alrighty, that is KUT’s government accountability reporter, Andrew Weber. We’re gonna have a link to his story in today’s podcast, Show Notes. Thanks for coming on the show, Andrew. Thank you, Jared. And thank you for making us part of your Friday afternoon. This is Austin Signal. We will be back after a break. This is Austin Signal, welcome back. After a couple of wet weekends, it’s gonna be a beautiful time to get out and about over the next few days and catch some live music around town. That starts tonight with the Exploded Drawing Show. It’s the 16th year of events and the hosts of the show are joining us before tonight’s event. They are Sound Founder and Butcher Bear. Welcome to Austin Signal. Thanks for having us. Thanks. So tell us, this is your 16th event. What sparked the idea for the show all those years ago?
Soundfounder [00:15:27] Oh, so just to clarify, we’re 16 years in, but it’s actually our 67th official event. So we do multiple events a year, but this is our first event of our 16th year.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:40] And are all those events here in Austin or they happen other places as well?
Soundfounder [00:15:43] The majority have been in Austin, but over the years we’ve done stuff in LA, Atlanta, New Orleans, New York.
Butcher Bear [00:15:50] Chicago.
Soundfounder [00:15:51] Chicago a couple times. So yeah, we had a little stint where we were really going all over the place, but lately we’ve been back to kind of focused on our Austin people.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:00] Okay, well, what was the genesis of the idea? I mean, how did it get started?
Butcher Bear [00:16:04] I think me and Andrew met through mutual friend, and basically both kind of were having that idea that we wanted a electronic music showcase, but we wanted it to be independent of the kind of concert system that we have here in Austin. And we wanted to make sure it was all ages. And we also wanted to make sure that it was super affordable. And we want to bring in essentially like bigger artists to come in. And work with our younger artists who are local. That was the original idea was to create the ecosystem for us to kind of thrive in. And after 16 years, most of that is still intact.
Soundfounder [00:16:44] Basically the main thing that makes exploded drawing different than most electronic music events is that artists, when they’re asked to play, they’re only allowed to perform their own music. It’s not DJ sets. So when you go to exploded drawing, it could be anything from ambient to noisy to beats to jungle and drum and bass to like whatever. It’s a whole spectrum of creativity in electronic music.
Soundfounder [00:17:20] So it’s people performing their own music, which at the time in 2010 was like completely absent really from the scene other than a few things here and there. So we wanted a place where we could really bring together the people who were actually like creating original music and electronic music.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:39] Well, 16 years is already enough. That’s a pretty long time, but 67 sessions is even more, you know, a lot more time to craft the session or craft the experience. How has it evolved over the years?
Butcher Bear [00:17:51] Probably just being able to invite more people from out of town to come in and experience it. For the most part, we’ve really focused on kind of like our core being that all ages, making it super affordable, making it to where we’re booking mostly people from Austin, making it to where it’s a support system. Like a lot of people that will come and play our show sometimes have never played a show anywhere before. And a lot of people maybe they’re, you know, local DJs, but they’ve never actually played their own material before. When we first started out, we weren’t a nonprofit. I think it was about three years in that we became a nonprofit, and I think that definitely, it opened up our mind to the possibilities. I think when we started it, we weren’t thinking that we were gonna be around for 16 years or that it was gonna become kind of this bigger thing that it has. So in that way, it’s definitely evolved without, without us really doing anything. But yeah, just, just to have, I think more and more we hear from people that we bring in from out of town that it’s an experience that they’ve never had anywhere else. So I guess that’s, that’s something positive that’s come out of it.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:04] So who are some of the people you’re bringing to town this time around?
Soundfounder [00:19:07] Well, this time our kind of headliner is an artist from L.A. Named Leilani. She’s super, super creative, makes beats, electronic music, vocals, does visual art.
Leilani [00:19:21] Never miss a thing, I never miss it twice Turning dots to reach you, so stepping in the light In the grind together, don’t make it over Every sign I’m choosing
Soundfounder [00:19:33] She’s worked with some bigger names like Kid Koala. She’s work with Money Mark, who was kind of the brains behind a lot of like Beastie Boys and Beck music. She’s toured the planet with Deltron 3030. So she’s still, I feel like her career is very much on like an upward arc, but she’s a creative powerhouse and she’s very like kind of captivating figure. And so she’s absolutely perfect for what we’re doing. Cause really at the end of the day, our event is a celebration of creativity. So. If we’re bringing in somebody we want to make sure they’re doing something super creative unique and just true to themselves
Butcher Bear [00:20:08] And I will say, um, Leilani more than I wouldn’t say more than anyone we brought, but definitely up there, her live show is incredible. Um, as far as I think sometimes, um the impression of electronic musicians can be, are they checking their email or are they calling someone?
Soundfounder [00:20:25] Turning a knob and doing yeah, what are they actually doing?
Butcher Bear [00:20:28] And, uh, and I can, I can definitely say for, for sure. No one’s ever said that about her, uh performance. We were able to bring her out here for a festival before, but we’re super happy. This is the first time she’s ever played an official session. And, we’re also doing this limited, you know, seven inch with her, uh, with two songs that aren’t available on vinyl anywhere else.
Soundfounder [00:20:50] Yeah. We also have another artist coming from Edinburgh, Texas, which is in Rio Grand Valley, and he goes by the name Bruxess. He was recommended to us from another friend that we’ve made that’s also in the Rio Grande Valley. He’s from Brownsville named Bice. But the thing that is so cool about this kind of platform we’ve created is that we can find, like the tools that are available now, you can make amazing music with a low budget in a bedroom. So we can find people who are in these small Texas communities and say like, hey, we like your music, we like what you’re doing. Come play a show for like two or three hundred people out of a big sound system and to them that’s like it’s not an offer they get every day. So some of the best sets we have are just random, you know, people from San Marcos or from like any, any town that has any kind of youth culture, there’s probably somebody there making interesting electronic music. So like really exploring the different communities of Texas has been one of the things that’s really kept the event strong and interesting, I think.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:12] You mentioned that Exploder Drawing got its start back in 2010. Obviously the Austin music scene and its various sub-genres are always evolving. What have you seen, how have you see the electronic music genre evolve here in Austin?
Soundfounder [00:22:29] I mean, it’s definitely come more into, I guess, kind of the mainstream view of Austin because I mean I moved here in 2005, Ben Butcher Bear is an Austin native, so we both kind of remember when the city was a lot more I guess guitar centric, at least in the media’s scope of thing. So like now seeing, I mean just the fact that KUTX gave me an electronic music to host shows you. That the view of electronic music has really grown. And I mean, I think exploded drawing has been a part of that showing people that, you know, there’s people here who are creating electronic music. It should be taken seriously. It’s like a real, a real thing and it’s only getting bigger. So, you now.
Jerry Quijano [00:23:16] Very cool. We have been speaking with sound founder and butcher bear ahead of exploded drawing that shows happening tonight and again It’s five dollars to get in lots of great artists. We’re gonna have a link in today’s show notes and at kut org slash signal Thanks you all for coming by thanks so much. Thank you Howdy, we have got an Austin Signal bonus for you today. Some of the cast of Friday Night Lights recently reunited at this year’s ATX TV Festival, and ahead of that reunion, actor Adrian Policki reflected on the 20th anniversary of the show’s kickoff. Policki caught up with Texas Standard’s Laura Rice. Let’s take a listen.
Laura Rice [00:24:06] 20 years! Can you believe it? I can’t actually. How have you changed? How’s your life changed since those Friday night light days?
Adrianne Palicki [00:24:17] Well, I mean, front-end lights itself changed my life, I think, you know, as far as my work is concerned. I found my home in Austin 20 years ago and stayed. That show literally made me a better actor. It created a home and a family and I went from being the girl in the bikini to actually being taken seriously as an actress.
Laura Rice [00:24:42] Friday Night Lights really has this unusually deep hold on people, with lines like Texas forever and clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose, still quoted like scripture. What’s it been like for you to live with a project that carries this, like, long-tail emotional weight?
Adrianne Palicki [00:25:00] I think it feels amazing and I don’t think any like, as an actor, you’re lucky to get this once. You know, I don t ever foresee having it again because it was just lightning in a bottle. The fact that, you know, young girls are still coming up to me right now and saying that they’ve gone to college because of Tyra or they’re in college because Tyra. The fact that these like, you know, these teenagers or 20 year olds, they’re still watching the show for the first time. I feel like that is something that it is a timeless show. And I think that’s also rare.
Laura Rice [00:25:32] Do you keep in touch with folks or is this reunion gonna be like so strange to see some of these people who you haven’t kept up with so much?
Adrianne Palicki [00:25:41] With. I mean, Kyle lives here in Austin. Connie’s one of my best friends still. She’s like a sister and she’s in and out of town. And then Jesse as well. But some people I haven’t, you know, like I haven t seen Gaius in forever. I haven’t t seen Amy in forever, so it’s gonna be really, really special to see, to see people. I’ve seen Katums quite a bit, but it’s just, it’s a special group and we’re gonna have the best time.
Laura Rice [00:26:03] What do you think is gonna surface? I mean, the characters or the people you were back then or something else when you’re all back together?
Adrianne Palicki [00:26:11] Probably, I mean, we got in, we took this city by storm. We got into some trouble. I don’t remember leaving Cedar Door more than once. So there’s that. So we’ll probably get a little rowdy. I mean it just happens. Scott Porter will start beatboxing out of nowhere. That always happens. But I think it’s just gonna be fun and just family.
Laura Rice [00:26:35] I think a big part of the show’s legacy is how it treated its young ensemble. What do you remember about the level of talent that that show had assembled at that stage of your career?
Adrianne Palicki [00:26:46] You know, everybody kind of came up on that show, even though Connie and Kyle, you know, had been working for quite a while, you know that made everybody like a household name. And I think getting to work with that level of talent, which I have to give Linda Lowe, who was our casting director and Peter Berg for handpicking everybody to ultimately be able to improv and go with the flow. And it was like an acting class every episode. It pretty much just go like at the Clodhouse. Here’s a room, go. There were no marks. You know, three handheld cameras on you at all time. One film rolls out, they keep shooting. You never cut. And it allows you to go to places you’ve never been emotionally. And it actually, as a young actor, helped me to use my instincts, which, again, you don’t get a lot of. A lot of times you feel like a puppet, you know, being told what to do. And this was like, no, go, do it. And again, I just think that’s very, very special. I think that what made the show special too.
Laura Rice [00:27:49] You’re working on a documentary now? This is amazing. Tell me about the idea behind this project and what you wanna accomplish with it.
Adrianne Palicki [00:27:57] Well, so two gentlemen, Sean and Lee, they contacted me. Now they’ve done a lot of docu-series. They’re like, we’re working on the front lights thing and we have mutual friends and doc. And I was like, I need to be involved. It’s such a special part of my life. And again, living in Austin, it’s like that never stopped for me. So it’s really exciting and we’re gonna start, we’re going to actually have our first interviews during this festival. And part of the docu-series will be the festival and it will probably end with a 20 year reunion. So it is going to be very, very special.
Laura Rice [00:28:32] What is the story that you want to tell with the documentary? Are you still kind of figuring it out as you start these interviews? This story is…
Adrianne Palicki [00:28:39] How this was created and how it became so special and the people that involved in it, the creativity and how It actually did change. It changed television. You know, it was a very special show that documentary style, you know, we would wrap before three Connie Kyle and I would be at where it’s at three o’clock in an afternoon on a Tuesday because we would rap before like three PM it’s crazy. So I think it’s just like. Telling that story and the people that went into it, the football players that went into it. Real life football players, you know, going from school to school, talking to, you know the high school and talking to teenagers. Because, you have to remember we weren’t teenagers when we did that show.
Laura Rice [00:29:26] Still young people though!
Adrianne Palicki [00:29:27] He doesn’t even hate me, we’re teenagers.
Laura Rice [00:29:29] Bye.
Adrianne Palicki [00:29:30] Everybody else does not. So it was, I don’t know, again, it was just very special. So we’re gonna tell that story. We’re gonna show the humanity of it and we’re going to show the relationships in it.
Laura Rice [00:29:40] Shifting gears, I want to ask you about another project of yours, Due West, which is stepping into a very different kind of Texas story, contemporary political and grounded in geography and access. What pulled you toward that project right now?
Adrianne Palicki [00:29:56] You know, Caitlin Miller, who is one of the founders of ATX TV Festival, her husband, Evan Miller, is like a brother to me. And she, Emily, Evan, myself kind of put this thing together. Evan wrote and directed a beautiful film about a woman traveling through West Texas trying to get help and. I believe that it’s very, very important for this time. You know, it’s about a gal who needs to get an abortion. And honestly, the society that backs her and it’s a beautiful, beautiful story. And I was just so honored when Evan brought this to me. He and Hardy, his writing partner, had actually written the character for myself. And so again, it was one of those things where I was like, this is a story that needs to be told. Um, it’s a conversation piece. Now when we’ve showed this, either side of the line have come together to have a conversation. It’s again, it, it a life story. And the way that I viewed her, the woman is that what if Tyra didn’t go to college? This is probably where she would be in her life. And so there is an actual parallel with the two. Um, and that’s kind of where I found that character. And Evan and I had discussed that in detail, obviously. But that was the first movie I ever produced. And obviously, I got the bug. And I’m so excited that we finally got distribution. And July 28, it will be streaming. So hopefully, people can watch D-West at home all around the globe.
Jerry Quijano [00:31:37] That was Texas Standards’ Laura Rice catching up with actor Adrian Palicki ahead of the reunion of some of the cast of Friday Night Lights at this year’s ATX TV Festival. And that’s it for us today on Austin’s Signal. We’re going to have more about today’s stories in the podcast show notes and as always at kut.org slash signal. Rayna Sevilla is our technical director, Alexandra Hart is our producer, and Kristen Cabrera is our managing producer. I’m your host Jerry Quijano, we will be back with you on Monday at 1 o’clock, we’ll talk to you then.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
