Lost, but now found!

Rockaday Richie was written and produced by Don Gronquist and directed by George Hood, son of Frank Hood, the founder of the all important Teknifilm Lab.

It is screening on Feb. 6, 7:00 PM at the Whitsell Auditorium, as part of the Essential Northwest series. Admission is pay what you wish.

Both filmmakers will be present.

The 1970’s saw the re-emergence of wholly independent feature filmmaking in the Rose City. Here’s the timeline:

Tom Moyers, Jr. and Will Vinton make The Circle in 1972

Don Gronquist and George Hood make Rockaday Richie and the Queen of the Hop in 1974 (For film scholars: I recommend Tim Smith’s thematically related The Case Of The Kitchen Killer , made in Portland the same year, for a great double feature)

Don Zavin makes Fast Break in 1977

Penny Allen makes Property in 1978, and Paydirt in 1981

Gus Van Sant makes Mala Noche in 1985

And then we were off and running.

Here’s more information, from NW Film Center:

VISITING ARTIST—Made at the same time as Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS, ROCKADAY (nationally released in 1975 as B-titled STARK RAVING MAD) is based on the infamous Starkweather-Fugate murder spree in 1958. Portland actors Russ Fast and Marcie Severson star as the pair who left a disastrous trail of carnage from Nebraska throughout the Midwest as they desperately tried to cover up one killing with another. Written and co-produced (with Tiger Warren) by Don Gronquist and shot by John Mincey, a large cross-section of the Portland film community worked on the film, which was also George Hood’s first feature. “A compelling, if modest, work … neither high-brow nor exploitation. Fast has a brooding presence and is genuinely chilling. … Severson has natural screen charm.”—Variety (88 mins.)

Brian Lindstrom comments “An underrated film! Truly worth seeing. Will make any independent filmmaker proud.”

Although I excuse myself from seeing Rockaday Richie and the Queen of the Hop because of my wimpy dislike of serial murdering, I do claim it as an Oregon film, based on the location shooting and the Oregon citizenship of the artists.

The rarest category of Oregon film is a non-documentary based on the life of actual Oregonian. In 1951, Claire Phillips joined a select crowd which would later include John Reed and Louise Bryant, (Reds), Steve Prefontaine (Prefontaine, Without Limits ) and James Fogle (Drugstore Cowboy).

A night club singer who worked under the code name High Pockets, Phillip won the Medal Of Freedom for her espionage in WWII. You can read about her accomplishments in Brian Libby’s wonderful profile in Portland Monthly. Yes, she was water boarded by the Japanese.

She herself chose Ann Dvorak to play Claire Phillips/High Pockets on the Big Screen.‘

I hereby claim I Was An American Spy as an Oregon film on the basis of the inspiration provided by Oregonian Claire Phillips.

Pinto Colvig was almost 50 years into his show business career when he voiced Pluto in this holiday themed Disney cartoon.

Pinto was born Vance DeBar Colvig, son of Judge Colvig, in Jacksonville, Oregon in 1892. He entered show business in 1905 in Portland during the Lewis and Clark Exposition. He joined a street performer’s act, and learned he could get laughs by playing his clarinet with his eyes crossed.

He became an animator by way of newspaper cartooning. By 1915 he had his own animation studio, Pinto Cartoon Comedies, in San Francisco.

In 1922 he moved to Hollywood and went to work for Mack Sennett.

He was hired by Walt Disney in 1930, and originated the voice of Pluto in 1931.

I hereby claim Pluto’s Christmas Tree as an Oregon film, on the basis of Pinto Colvig’s contribution as voice artist.

Entertainment Weekly called them “the coolest wrinkled musicians this side of the Stones”.  The brainchildren of California Raisin Marketing Board, the musically talented Raisins first came to life at Will Vinton Studios in 1986.

They took the country by storm.

Executive producer Will Vinton, producer David Altschul and writer Ralph Liddle collected a 1988 Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program for their work.

I hereby claim A Claymation Christmas Celebration as an Oregon film on the basis of multiple criteria (credits include two Oregon Oscar winners – Will Vinton and Joan Gratz).

Mel Blanc made this when he was 71 years old. Every voice is his.

“Ain’t I a little Dickens?”

I hereby claim Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol as an Oregon film on the basis of Mel Blanc’s contribution as voice artist.

After Cork Hubbert made his big screen debut in Penny Allen’s Property (1979), he moved to Los Angeles to begin a Hollywood career.

In 1991, he appeared opposite Vanessa Redgrave (looking ALOT like David Bowie in this haircut ) in Simon Callow’s adaptation of Carson McCuller’s Ballad Of The Sad Cafe.

I successfully avoided reading Ballad in high school, and will try my best to avoid seeing Simon Callow’s film, based on what I see in this one clip.

For people who like to keep track of these things: 1991 was a big year for the alumni of Property. Besides Cork Hubbert playing leading man to Vanessa Redgrave, Gus Van Sant (Allen’s sound man) directed Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho using fellow Property alumnus Eric Edwards (Allen’s cinematographer) as his DP.

(Edwards shared the job of cinematography on My Own Private Idaho with another Portland cinematographer, John Campbell.)

Ten years – three careers transformed. Wonderful testimony to Penny Allen’s eye for talent!

Rising above my lack of interest in the Ballad Of The Sad Cafe, I do hereby claim it as an Oregon film, on the basis of the leading performance by Oregonian Cork Hubbert.

In the films of Jane Powell, when she opens her mouth to sing, people move away. Her musical gift creates a circle of death around her, and most of the plot lines have to do with how she bears this cross. By contrast, Judy Garland’s singing brings everyone to her. It has always been this way, from the very beginning of her career. We all sing, inside, when Judy sings.

But in A Child Is Waiting, Judy doesn’t sing. She plays Jean Hansen, a failed musician beaten by her own lack of talent, or lack of faith in her talent. We don’t see Judy Garland. She shows us Frances Gumm, stripped of her voice, never discovered by MGM, a big frightened nobody who isn’t getting any younger.

Fortunately, Judy/Frances/Jean is in a message picture, and the message has nothing to do with the difference between Judy and  Judy-before-MGM, aka Frances Gumm. The message is that you and I are not as different from the mentally retarded as we would like to think. Burt Lancaster is the Moses who brings this message down from the mountaintop to frightened Jean Hansen, who shivers through her job interview with him, instinctively retreating from his icy certainty. Dr. Matthew Clark (Lancaster) has organized his treatment plan around the belief that the mentally retarded deserve a place where they are protected from the cruelty of the non-mentally retarded, a group which in the case of young Reuben Widdicombe (Bruce Ritchey), includes his own clueless parents.

Reuben sees Jean Hansen within minutes of her arrival in the school, and falls in love with her at first sight. Instinctively he senses that they are twins, bewildered, alone and angry. Jean is flattered by Reuben’s attachment, and begins making a series of well intentioned mistakes which lead to near disaster.

John Cassavetes disowned  A Child Is Waiting after he and producer Stanley Kramer disagreed over the ending. Kramer finished the picture. Cassavetes’ mark remains in the film’s tormented characters and the complex performances which bring them to life.

Burt Lancaster’s Dr. Clark seems to be a man aware that he might be wrong, but who has no other course of action than to proceed as if he were right. His certitude is the maypole around which the entire school revolves – the effort involved seems to have stripped him of his private life and his sense of humor. Lancaster does not play him as a monster, but as a man forced to display a monstrous belief in himself.

However the central performance of the film is not given by Lancaster, nor by Garland, nor by Gena Rowlands, Steven Hill or Juanita Moore. It is not given by any of the joyously unselfconscious mentally retarded children who play themselves. It is given by twelve year old actor Bruce Ritchey, who, as Reuben Widdicombe, stonewalls Dr. Clark’s best efforts with hatred and contempt.

I hereby claim A Child Is Waiting as an Oregon film, on the basis of Bruce Ritchey’s contribution in a leading role. Bruce Ritchey is from Nyssa, Oregon.

Barbershop Punk introduces us to Robb Topolski, the Hillsboro barbershop quartet enthusiast who proved, in 2007, that his ISP, Comcast, was using DPI to block peer-to-peer uploads, a discovery which resulted in an FCC order to end the practice.

The New York Times wrote about Barbershop Punk:

The film follows Mr. Topolski’s case to Washington, offering familiar but vivid glimpses into Beltway mores. (Ostensible civil servants, manipulated by lobbyists, often have greater loyalties to big-pocketed conglomerates than to the average citizen? Shocking.) But it’s noteworthy when nemeses like the Christian Coalition and the group Naral Pro-Choice America are on the same side of the Net-neutrality fence. The “punk” in the title refers to defiance and freethinkers like Janeane Garofalo and Henry Rollins, who provide eloquent digressions about the electronic dissemination and stifling of information and historical efforts to control such delivery systems.

How did filmmakers Georgia Sugimura Archer and Kristin Armfield fund Barbershop Punk? Kickstarter, naturally. Bet you didn’t know that you can use Kickstarter even if your executive producer is Anthony Dominici.

Ed. Note: the filmmakers politely corrected me. They used Kickstarter to underwrite a screening of the finished film, not to pay for production.

I hereby claim Barbershop Punk as an Oregon film on the basis of the Oregonian who inspired it.

Bill Plympton took his career as an animator to 11 when he decided to go from hand drawing every frame of animated shorts to hand drawing every frame of animated features.

The Tune was the first successful theatrical feature produced, directed and animated by one person. It went to both Cannes and Sundance.

The soundtrack for The Tune was written by Maureen McElheron. Here’s her account of how she began working with Bill:

THE TUNE was the first soundtrack I composed for Bill but our first project was YOUR FACE.. Bill and I performed in a country band in NY City before he was an animator….he enjoyed my original songs so when he started to pursue animation, he called on me to compose YOUR FACE.

We slowed down my vocals for YOUR FACE in the studio so it would sound like a man was singing because Bill could not afford to hire a man! YOUR FACE went on to be nominated for an Academy Award.

For later projects, I often co wrote songs with Hank Bones…..we recorded in his studio in Brooklyn. Hank, a talented musician/ vocalist played all the instruments for our sessions as well as acting as recording engineer.

Bill Plympton’s DIY genius extended to finding others who shared it. McElheron not only wrote the soundtrack to The Tune, she also provided the voice of Didi.

I hereby claim The Tune as an Oregon film on the basis of its director, Oregon born and raised Bill Plympton.

Letters from the Big Man belongs to the rarest category of Oregon film – those inspired by a direct contact with the landscape.

From today’s New York Times:

“Letters,” which opens at the IFC Center in Manhattan this Friday, grew out of Mr. Munch’s desire to make a movie in the Klamath-Siskiyou eco-region of southwestern Oregon.

They have to specify this, or  you might be led to believe that Mr. Munch’s desire was to make a movie starring the children of movie stars. Letters features a leading performance from the daughter of Jill Clayburgh, Lilly Rabe, with a supporting performance from the daughter of Brad Dourif, Fiona Dourif.

There is a club in Hollywood of young actresses with pedigrees in the business who cut their teeth at the beginning of their careers by appearing in Oregon films. Angelina Jolie Voigt appeared in two, Without Evidence (1995) and Foxfire (1996). Zoe Kazan appeared in Meek’s Cutoff (2010). Lilly and Fiona, no dopes, are following suit.

I remember seeing Jill Clayburgh once in New York, and reporting the sighting to a friend. “Guess who I saw on Fifth Ave today! Jill Clayburgh, wearing a fur coat!” “Oh,” my friend said, “Jill always wears fur coats. She was wearing them when I met her at Sarah Lawrence 20 years ago, before she was famous.”

The second time I saw Jill Clayburgh she wasn’t wearing a fur coat.  She was appearing with Frank Langella and Raul Julia in Private Lives. Frank and Raul went up on their lines and burst out laughing. Everyone laughed along with them except Jill, who was visibly furious. She was in an evening gown, and you could see her anger, even though her back was to us.

That’s the end of my Jill Clayburgh stories. Back to Letters.

Christopher Munch believes in Sasquatch, but not his acting ability. He tapped Isaac C. Singleton, Jr. to play the Big Guy.

Karen Black also appears, in this her fourth Oregon film. Good call, Christopher!

I have no idea what else Letters from the Big Man contains, but I’m happy to claim it as an Oregon film, based on the location shooting, and the inspiration provided by the legendarily shy Oregon Sasquatch.