There’s something about UT-Austin and film. Something about the campus and its surrounding neighborhoods that inspires filmmakers to chronicle its peculiarities and personalities. Aside from big budget productions like Man of the House and The Hitcher that use the 40 Acres as a backdrop, it’s inspired films more explicitly rooted in the UT and Austin experience. Whether it’s Richard Linklater starting Slacker on the Drag and West Campus, Tobe Hooper heading to the student housing of Hyde Park for Eggshells, or taking a trip around campus for Austin Film Festival 2024 selection American Spirit, the siren call to budding directors is simple: There’s always’s something going on.
That’s as true now as it’s ever been, and it’s as true for Shyam Madhav as it was for his predecessors. “It’s in the core,” he said, “it’s in the spirit,” and it’s why he made Goodnight College, a raucous, elegiac, quietly insightful documentary about one night in 2024, two weeks before the end of the school year.
He originally filmed Goodnight College in the spring of 2024 as his capstone project for his degree from UT’s RTF department. Since then he has spent the last year and a half re-editing it into its current video montage form, which follows multiple groups of friends, classmates, and co-op neighbors from evening to dawn. Madhav explained that he was inspired to make something that captured his own experiences. “I would be walking around campus and even on a typical Thursday night, Friday night, I’d be like, ‘Dang, this would be a cool movie.’ It was really as simple as that, just wanting to film it all.”
Madhav acknowledged Linklater as a big influence – but for Dazed & Confused rather than Slacker. More recent on his watch list is Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross’ docudrama recounting the last night in a Las Vegas dive bar. He said, “I’ve always loved movies that take place over one night [and] there was never a version of this that was following people over several months. I always knew that, if you made it feel like you were there for one night, that would be the only way to keep it feeling entertaining, like you’re there.”
Filmmaker Shyam Madhav
And Madhav is there too, sometimes even on camera as he hands it over to his fellow students. “I wanted to cut away all the artifice,” he said. “I didn’t want to never acknowledge the fact that there’s a camera in everyone’s faces. And it makes people more comfortable too … Instead of the camera being on a tripod, it’s just here, and we’re talking. You get better moments that way.”
Like the Rosses, he fudged the shooting timeline a little – after all, with a crew that was basically just Madhav, his Fujifilm XT3 camera, and his buddy, Ethan Tinsley, working sound it would be physically impossible for Madhav to be everywhere at once. Yet having that extra filming time allowed Madhav to not simply follow a couple of people, but a selection that represents the full diversity of college life. “When it started,” he said, “I was like, we’re going full-on big. We’re getting the football team. We’re getting Matthew McConaughey in this thing. We’re doing the most mainstream version of this thing, but it became the classic ‘happy accidents’ thing. Through the process of reaching out to people you end up with exactly what you needed.”
He started with people he knew – seniors facing their imminent graduation, and his fellow comedians of Snafu Improv – and through those groups he was introduced to other people, from student artists organizing a co-op party to a bunch of freshmen pulling an all-nighter in the library, and live music from bands including Swimming With Bears and Spirit of the Beehive. “It was all connected,” Madhav said. “Different people from different pockets would know someone.” So while he didn’t get the football team, one of the seniors he was following was frat brothers with a member of the men’s ice hockey squad, who introduced him to the team management, who were thrilled to let Madhav and Tinsley into the locker room during an important game. “They were so excited,” Madhav said. “They were like, ‘It’s like being in a Netflix documentary!’”
Still from Goodnight College
However, sometimes it took the dogged determination of a documentarian to get access, as in the key scenes in a minimart that became a narrative hub. “That was just me going there, every day, and hounding them. They were like, ‘What do you want to do? You want to bring a boom mic and follow people around the store all night?’ And we’re like, ‘Yeah, it’ll be cool.’”
After debuting Goodnight College at last year’s Austin Under the StarsFilm Festival, Madhav gave the film its non-festival premiere last month at Hyperreal Film Club and followed that up with an encore at the Fallout Theatre, but that’s just the beginning of his plans. He’s now taking Goodnight College on a tour of campuses and arthouse cinemas. The screenings begin on Feb. 20 at the University of Colorado Boulder, with dates scheduled around the country (including another Austin screening on March 14). Madhav said, “We’re going to treat it like a tour.”
Goodnight College National Campus Tour
Feb. 20: University of Colorado Boulder
Feb. 26: University of North Carolina Wilmington
March 4: Lemoyne College, Syracuse, NY
March 6: Tulane University, New Orleans
March 14: Austin, TBA
March 26: UT-Dallas
April 1: UCLA
April 10: University of Oregon
April 18: NYC, TBA
A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.