James Westby spent 20 days shooting Rid Of Me.

Then, into the cutting room.

Two years later he and his leading lady Katie O’Grady took the Tribecca Film Festival by storm with their comedy of a milquetoast who finally unleashes the power of her sexuality. Rid Of Me stars O’Grady, with support from (wonderful) Orianna Herrman, Storm Large, Art Alexakis, and Teresa Russell.

How do you fund an entirely independent romantic comedy? Here’s one of the ways James Westby did it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

James Westby tapped a wealth of producing talent for Rid Of Me — congratulations to all five of them – Kristin Coleman, Katie O’Grady, Robin Schiff-Coste, Raija Talus, and Westby himself – for creating a film which at least one Hollywood insider sees marked for multiple Oscar nominations.

Rid Of Me opens in theaters November 18, 2011.

I hereby claim Rid Of Me as an Oregon film, based on every qualification you can think of.

Yes, that’s Sallie “Force Of Nature” Ford on the soundtrack!

Here’s an argument for music education in Oregon’s public schools:

Brought up in Gresham, the son of a welding supplies salesman, Todd Field has been nominated for three Oscars: Best Writing, (In The Bedroom), Best Picture (In The Bedroom), Best Writing (Little Children). He has directed Oscar nominated performances from Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Marisa Tomei, Kate Winslet, and Jackie Earle Haley.

Todd Field graduated from Centennial High School, and briefly attended Southern Oregon University on a music scholarship. He moved from music to acting, and from acting to writing/directing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

From All Movie Guide:

A bona fide jack-of-all-trades, Todd Field is one of the film industry’s more multifaceted members, having worked in varying capacities as an actor, director, producer, composer, and screenwriter. Probably most recognizable to art house audiences thanks to his work in such films as Nicole Holofcener’s Walking and Talking (1996) and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Field has also composed scores for features ranging from Gross Anatomy (1989) to Ruby in Paradise (1993) — both of which featured him in supporting roles — and has directed, written, and produced a number of independent projects. Born in Pomona, CA, on February 24, 1964, Field broke into professional acting in his early twenties with work in television. After making his film debut as a singer in Woody Allen’s Radio Days (1987), he went on to do supporting work in a multitude of features, until in 1993, he earned some measure of recognition and an Independent Spirit Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a greenhouse worker in Victor Nunez’s Ruby in Paradise. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx

A young woman faces the world equipped only with her wits. No family, no education, no social connections. If she was played by Louise Brooks, she would use her beauty. If she was played by Jane Powell, her pluck. But Ashley Judd, both beautiful and plucky, plays a character whose primary weapon against being ground to a pulp by capitalism is her own cool detachment.

Victor Nunez wrote, directed, produced, shot and edited Ruby In Paradise, which he set in Florida, his home state.  Famous for launching Judd’s career, Ruby In Paradise also features an almost-a-leading-man performance by Oregonian Todd Field, who, eight years later, would win two Oscar nominations for In The Bedroom (2001), which he wrote, produced and directed.

Nunez cast Todd Field as the motorcycle riding bookworm who woos Ruby (Ashley Judd)  by giving her her first Jane Austen novel, which she reads behind the cash register at work.  There are parallels between the plot of that novel, Northanger Abbey, and that of Ruby In Paradise itself – thank you Jim and Ellen for pointing them out!

Important Tip To All Beautiful, Plucky & Self-Possessed Girls Who See This Film: although Ruby in Ruby In Paradise does not choose education as a route to upward mobility, in real life Ashley Judd just graduated from Harvard.

I hereby claim Ruby In Paradise as an Oregon film, based on Todd Field’s contributions as supporting actor and composer.

Note to all readers of Oregon Movies, A to Z: as we move into the 90’s (this blog follows Oregon film history chronologically) I am moving farther and farther from my area of interest. If you love films from the 90’s and would like to write for Oregon Movies, A to Z, please contact me.

If you have seen Heather Perkins perform live, you understand why she lists Mad Scientist as one of her job titles. Conjuring sonic beauty at a recent live performance at Mississippi Pizza, she danced between her laptop, an electronic keyboard,  and several exotic electronic instruments which I think were of her own creation. When she needs a human voice, she croons into a microphone. Perkins writes and performs music for dance, animation, video games, film, theater and live performance. You may have heard her collaborations with Ten Tiny Dances, or with Rose Bond, or with Minh Tran.

On February 25, at 7:00 PM she will be introduced to members and friends of the  Oregon Cartoon Institute as the Institute’s first artist in residence. The public is invited to hear Perkins describe her work at the Institute, which will include a musical investigation of Mel Blanc and his favorite creation, Bugs Bunny. The event is free, and located at Ackerman Films, 13 NW 13th, Portland, Oregon.

Photo credit: Portland Tribune

Glen Moore says about their music, “We’re intensely interested in sound itself, the colors and shapes of sound…and we never know ourselves how we’re going to get from one piece to another…what could be a quick little element one night could be drawn out, extended and thoroughly explored another.” Ralph Towner explains, “My notion of a song, including the improvisation on that song, is that from the first sound you establish a character, a sense of motion; then you are committed to develop a history, a miniature lifetime that is a faithful development of the original atmosphere.” From the OREGON website.

I first saw OREGON at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in the fall of 1973. They were performing outdoors, in the sculpture garden. I was newly on the East Coast, and a friend had taken me to see them because they were cool, not because their name was the same as that of my home state. In fact, she took pains to tell me, OREGON was a New York band.

I accepted this information. It wasn’t true. Ralph Towner and Glen Moore began playing together in Eugene, in the early 60’s, when both were students at the U of O. It was the sole non-Oregonian in the group, Paul McCandless, who suggested they call their trio OREGON. Together they have been nominated for seven Grammys, and continue to tour the globe.

OREGON entered film history  when it supplied original music for Fast Break, Don Zavin’s 1977 documentary about the Portland Trailblazers’ championship season. The world’s only sports film with a jazz soundtrack plays at the Clinton Street Theater, Oct. 24 – 29.

Or is it a jazz film which appropriates the improvisational sport of basketball for visuals? Come see for yourself.

After Your Face was nominated for an Oscar and for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Bill Plympton called up all the magazines he used to work for as a cartoonist and illustrator and said “I quit”. From then on, he worked full time writing, producing and drawing his own animation.

I hereby claim Your Face, made in Bill Plympton’s New York City studio,  as an Oregon film, based on Bill Plympton’s status as an Oregonian.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute.

On Dec. 30, 1935, Antoine Saint-Exupery crashed his Caudron C-630 Simoun in the Sahara Desert. He was discovered four days later, dehydrated, hallucinating, and near death, by a man passing by on a camel.

In 1942, sitting in his New York penthouse, Saint-Exupery  wrote The Little Prince.

In 1979, working out of his Northwest Portland studio, Will Vinton transferred The Little Prince to the big screen. The Little Prince drew on the talents of two Oscar winning animators, Joan Gratz – whose Oscar win would come in 1993 for Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase - and Will Vinton himself, whose Oscar for Closed Mondays was only four years old.

The only known artistic collaboration between a member of French nobility and the son of a McMinnville dairy farmer, The Little Prince was Vinton’s fifth clay animated short. Vinton was seven years away from his first clay animated feature, The Adventures of Mark Twain, eight years away from creating the California Raisins ad campaign. and nine years away from directing Michael Jackson in Speed Demon.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can see The Little Prince this weekend at the Hollywood Theatre, with all the original voice actors performing live, along with a live performance of a brand new score by Galen Huckins.  After the Sunday Nov. 14  performance, Will Vinton himself will be present, along with members of the Will Vinton Studio animation team, Joan Gratz, Barry Bruce and Don Merkt, to take questions from the audience.

I hereby claim The Little Prince as an Oregon film, on the merit of multiple qualifying criteria.

This post brought to you by none other than Oregon Cartoon Institute.

An affectionate portrait of Ralph Wright, by fellow Disney employee Bill Peet.

Ditto George Bruns, as seen by Bill Peet.

When Walt Disney adapted Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book to the big screen, he assigned the script to his usual group of writers, one which included Ralph Wright. Wright was born in Grants Pass in 1908.

George Bruns wrote the score, composing everything except the magnificently catchy songs, which were written by Richard and Robert Sherman. George Bruns was born in Sandy in 1914.

I hereby claim Jungle Book as an Oregon film on the basis of the creative contribution of these two Oregonians.

George Bruns was nominated for his third Best Music Oscar for his work on this Disney film.