Joanna Priestley, the Queen of Independent Animation, has a policy of never repeating herself. The only rule she seems to obey consistently is the avoidance of boredom.

Anouck Iyer, of ASIFA Seattle, interviewed Priestley in 2002.

What led you to choosing film as your medium of artistic expression?

I started as a painter. I had been working at a studio in Paris and when I returned to the states I relocated to the town of Sisters in central Oregon. At that time there were no movie theaters in Sisters nor in the three surrounding counties, which encompassed a vast area. So, a friend and I started a group called “Strictly Cinema.” We starting renting 16mm prints and showing them at the Bend High School. The screenings were wildly successful, there was no VHS back then so people came in droves to see these films. Later we started showing films at the Redmond High School and in the summers we held outdoor screenings at local parks.

We just kept doing more and more screenings because there was a demand for it. This led us to organizing film festivals. Our first big event was an animation festival. We brought in a filmmaker from Portland named Bob Gardiner who won an Oscar for a film he did with Will Vinton called Closed Mondays. That event was a gigantic success. It got me interest in animation and it was the first time I was able to see noncommercial animation art. From “Strictly Cinema” I got a job as the Film Librarian, then the Regional Coordinator at the Northwest Film Center working for Bill Foster. That was at a time when Bill Foster was bringing in a lot of independent filmmakers and animators, like George Griffin, Jane Aaron, and Marv Newland. So I was able to meet them and they were actually guests in my home. I was exposed to lots of work. I got so excited about the possibilities of translating what I was doing in painting to filmmaking.

I went to the Safeway store across the street, bought some index cards and started experimenting. From there I took a class taught by Roger Kukes who was the first animation teacher at the NW Film Center. He is a brilliant artist who is still active in town, but not in animation. He got me really excited about animation and made want to pursue it, so I went on to study at Cal Arts’ Experimental Animation program.

For readers new to the study of Portland animation history, I would like to point out a few interesting mileposts on Joanna’s career path.

1. She went to Paris. Then she went to the desert. Classic trajectory for an emerging artist! It was in Oregon’s High Desert that publisher-turned-producer Mike Richardson found his vocation in comics. It was in the desert that filmmaker Penny Allen wrote her book, A Geography Of Saints. (Although Penny reversed things and went to Paris after, not before, her desert epiphany.)

2. The first noncommercial animation she saw was by fellow Oregonians, Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner. Somewhere it must have registered that those two also happened to be Oscar winners.

3. She was taught by Roger Kukes, who also taught Rose Bond. Perhaps Priestley and Bond were in the same class! If so, Kukes is a master teacher, because these two students went on to have international careers.

4. “I was exposed to lots of work.” Bill Foster made sure Northwest Film Center students saw lots of independent animation and met living, breathing filmmakers.

The longer ASIFA interview provides a great short introduction to what Portland did right to nurture a young film artist. Joanna returned the favor by founding the Portland chapter of ASIFA, and by teaching at AI, PNCA and NWFC, and by running an apprenticeship program from her own studio.

See Joanna Priestley’s films, including three premieres, and meet the Queen Of Independent Animation herself, on January 28, 2012, at 7:00 PM, at Whitsell Auditorium. More information here.

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.

Pittsburgh has George Romero, Baltimore has John Waters, and Boulder has the memory of Stan Brakhage.

Portland has Gus Van Sant, Bill Plympton, Matt Groening, Mike Richardson, Jon Raymond, Aaron Katz, Chel White, Jacob & Arnold Pander, James Westby, Jim Blashfield, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestley, Matt McCormick, Rose Bond, Vanessa Renwick and Will Vinton.

Ever wonder why?

For cities wishing to replicate Portland’s densely populated cinematic scene, here’s a handy “how to” guide.

1.  Start early.

As soon as people were making films in New York and Fort Lee, they were making them in Portland. Portland’s first film studio, American Lifeograph, opened in 1910. That’s the same year movies came to Hollywood.

2. Have a show business friendly mayor.

During the 16 year tenure of theater-owner-turned-mayor George Baker, downtown Portland was wall to wall theaters. John Gilbert, Clark Gable, William Powell, Edward Everett Horton and Eugene Pallette are some of the actors who jumpstarted their acting careers on the Portland stage, some of them in Baker’s own stock company. It was Baker who renamed Seventh Avenue “Broadway”.

3. Support innovation.

Oregon’s oldest source of print media, The Oregonian, responded to the puzzling new medium of radio by setting up a station right in the Oregonian Tower. Radio later served as an Early Warning System to identify the talent of Portlanders Mel Blanc, Suzanne Burce (renamed Jane Powell by MGM) and Johnnie Ray.

4. Grow your own film processing lab.

After WWII, Portland inventor Frank Hood went to work for a brand new electronics firm named Tektronix. He set up his own home lab to process films he made for them, after losing patience with the delays of sending film to LA. Eventually, he went into business as Teknifilm Lab. For decades, independent filmmaking in Portland was supported by Hood’s lax attitude toward payment schedules.

5. Provide a home for an exiled Hollywood film scholar.

Andries Deinum came to Portland during the blacklist. His vision of film as a mode of social discourse laid the groundwork for PSU’s Center For The Moving Image, housed in Lincoln Hall. Jim Blashfield, Bill Plympton, and Matt Groening were among the faithful attendees of the Center’s influential screening series, run by the Portland State Film Committee.

6. Provide a day job for the guy who wants to mentor the guy who wants to revive the archaic art form of stop motion animation.

Homer Groening led a dual life – ad man by day and experimental filmmaker by night. He had a family, a home, and his own business doing what he loved – and he did it all without leaving Portland. Aspiring filmmaker Will Vinton paid attention, and followed suit. His career, like Groening’s, would encompass both television commercials and art house films, but on a much larger scale.

7. Work with, not against, a pair of cinema addled students who want to start a regional film center.

When the National Endowment for the Arts decided to seed regional filmmaking, they went looking for the right person to submit a grant for a film center in Portland. They were pointed to Brooke Jacobson and Bob Summers, members of the Portland State Film Committee. Brooke and Bob wrote the grant, Portland Art Museum acted as fiscal sponsor, and the Northwest Film Center went into business. This year marks its 40th anniversary.

8. Work with, not against, a visionary film preservationist who wants to create a moving image archive.

Lew Cook was trained as a newsreel photographer by the first generation of Portland filmmakers. His stop motion film, The Little Baker, made circa 1925, proved prophetic when it came to Portland’s future claim to cinema history. He and Thomas Vaughn conceived Oregon Historical Society’s moving image archive, and Cook personally trained the preservationist, Michele Kribs, who currently presides over it.

To re-cap: by the end of the 1970’s, Portland had a film program at Portland State University, a film archive at Oregon Historical Society, and a regional film festival (now the NWFF) located at Portland Art Museum. That nucleus of film creativity on the park blocks was balanced by a film processing lab, an emerging animation studio, and a warehouse waiting to be filled with  filmmakers’ offices over in northwest Portland. No one entity owned the scene – the infrastructure and the support system served all comers.

The following timeline concentrates on factors which contributed to a culture where independent filmmakers supported each other in Portland. It does not address the important role played by Hollywood productions shooting in Oregon. The symbiotic role of Hollywood and the Indies in Portland is embodied in the career of Gus Van Sant who slips and slides with ease between these two worlds.

A timeline:

American Lifeograph founded 1910

Lewis Moomaw makes The Chechacos 1924

Lew Cook makes The Little Baker c1925

PGE makes It Can Be Done c1936

Tektronix founded 1946

Frank Hood founds Teknifilm Lab, early 1950’s

Andries Deinum arrives 1957

Homer Groening starts his own ad agency 1958

Center For The Moving Image founded 1965

Bob Summers and Brooke Jacobson found Northwest Film Center 197o

Tim Smith and Matt Groening make Drugs: Killers or Dillers 1972

Brooke Jacobson founds Northwest Media Project 1974

Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner make Closed Mondays 1974

Don Zavin makes Fast Break 1977

Penny Allen makes Property 1979

Rose Bond makes Gaia’s Dream 1982

Gus Van Sant makes Mala Noche 1985

Bill Plympton makes Your Face 1987

Matt Groening makes The Simpsons 1987

Jim Blashfield makes Leave Me Alone 1988

Joan Gratz makes Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase 1992

Gus Van Sant makes Good Will Hunting 1997.

Miranda July makes The Amateurist 1998

Chris Eyre makes Smoke Signals 1998

Will Vinton makes The PJ’s 1999

Travis Knight makes Coraline 2009

Jon Raymond writes & Neil Kopp produces Meek’s Cutoff 2010, one of five Oregon films at Sundance in 2011.

This post is dedicated to Portland filmmaker/film writer David Walker, who inspired it by raising the question “how rare is regional filmmaking, anyway?”

“Now in this part of Florida, all the fish are federally protected, except from each other.”

Homer Groening’s travelogue combines found footage ala Craig Baldwin with cosmically disoriented voiceover  ala Miranda July.

To place this in Oregon film history…..

Ten years after this, Penny Allen would take Property to Sundance. The ever resourceful Allen had paid her crew, which included Gus Van Sant, with CETA funds.

Ten years after that, in 1989, Gus Van Sant would make Drugstore Cowboy.

1989 was also, of course, the year that Matt Groening would begin his conquest of prime time television, with The Simpsons moving out from under Tracey Ullman’s wing and debuting on their own.

But in 1969, all this was in the future.

I hereby claim Basic Brown Basic Blue as an Oregon film, on the basis of Homer Groening’s contributions as producer,  writer, director, editor, and narrator.

Five years after Sleater Kinney disbanded, all three members continue to make music.

One decided to supplement her music career by becoming a television writer-producer-actress. If you decide that you would like to follow in Carrie Brownstein’s footsteps, I recommend that you live in a city which provides you the following role models.

#1. The Oscar winner. In Portland, this is Joan Gratz.

#2. The Pathbreaker. In Portland, this is Penny Allen

#3. The Visionary. In Portland, this is Rose Bond

#4. The Wise One. In Portland, this is Ursula LeGuin

To keep yourself from becoming discouraged/taking yourself too seriously, its always good to have the wisecracking Best Friend Who Has Been There Already And Survived. Portland provides young female artists with a wide assortment of these.

For example:

#5. The Crazy One. In Portland, this is Courtney Love. (OK, so Courtney’s not here any more. Mary’s Club, where she got her start, still is.)

#6. The Self Deprecating Funny Bisexual One. In Portland, this is Storm Large

#7. The  New York Times Best Selling One. In Portland, this is Chelsea Cain

Q: How many female role models does it take to achieve gender parity in the entertainment business?

A: As soon as we achieve it, we’ll know.

In the meantime, Carrie looks very at home in the spotlight at last year’s Portlandia premiere in Manhattan.

This post is the promised second installment to the first, which addressed the Portland peer group role models which might have helped influence Carrie Brownstein.

How’s this for indie credentials?

Property (1978) was a prizewinner at the very first Sundance Festival, at that time called the US Film Festival.

Property marks the cinematic debut not just of Penny Allen, the writer-director, but of Eric Edwards, her cinematographer; Gus Van Sant, her sound man; and Corky Hubbert, one of her leading men.

Corky went to Hollywood after making Property.

Henk Pander and Walt Curtis stayed in Portland, and in a sense Gus Vant Sant and Eric Edwards did too, although their careers take them all over the world.

You can read more about Property and Penny Allen’s most recent film, the prizewinning The Soldier’s Tale, on her website.

I hereby claim Property as an Oregon film on the basis of just about any criteria you can think of.

I began suspecting  Oregon artists Marne Lucas and Bruce Conkle of being secretly French when they invented Eco Baroque. But here’s a few reasons to entertain the theory that all Oregon shares their hidden dual identity:

1. Wine

2. Food

3. Movies

4. Mass transit

5. Public spaces (beaches, parks, Pioneer Square)

6. Focus on quality of life (see above)

How French is Oregon?

The first ever Palme d’Or (as adjudged in 2003) went to a film based on work by an Oregon author.

In 1939, a brand new film festival on the French Riviera at Cannes was cancelled due to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. In 2003, Cannes went back and revisited the list of films that would have competed that year. That jury awarded the Palme d’Or to Union Pacific (above), directed by Cecil B. DeMille and based on a novel by Portland author Ernest Haycox.

Currently, four Oregon directors are much beloved in France.

#1: James Ivory (Klamath Falls), 6 nominations for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Winner of Cannes 45th Anniversary Special Award for Howard’s End(1992).

#2: Gus Van Sant (Portland), 3 nominations for the Palme D’Or at Cannes. Winner forElephant(2003). Winner of the Cannes 60th Anniversary Special Award for Paranoid Park(2007).

#3: Bill Plympton (Oregon City), 2 nominations for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. His latest feature, Idiots and Angels (2009), received theatrical release in France, and was seen all across that country.

#4: Penny Allen (Portland), whose latest film,The Soldier’s Tale (2007), has been seen by more filmgoers in France than America. It was a recent hit at the Nyon Festival Visions du Reel.

Oregon is so French, Bill Plympton says that everyone in France accepts without question the immediate assumption that Pink Martini is a French band.

Walt Curtis, in a scene from Penny Allen’s Paydirt (1981). Cinematography by Eric Edwards.

Portland’s unofficial street poet laureate, Walt Curtis, did not confine himself to the printed page. Here’s a quick guide to his film career.

Number of times Walt appears as himself in a film: 3

Number of times Walt plays a character named “Walt” in a film:  2

Number of Oscar nominated filmmakers who have put Walt in their films: 2

===============================================

Walt appears as himself in Bill Bowling’s American Ferris Wheel (1970)

Walt appears as a character based on himself in Penny Allen’s Property (1979)

Walt appears as the character based on himself  in Penny Allen’s Paydirt (1981)

Walt appears as George in Gus Van Sant’s Mala Noche (1985)

Tim Streeter appears as Walt in Gus Van Sant’s Mala Noche (1985)

Walt Curtis appears as himself in Bill Plympton’s Peckerneck Poet (1997)

Walt Curtis appears as himself in Sabrina Guitart’s Salmon Poet (2009)

Here’s information on how to contribute to the efforts to help Walt recover from losses sustained in the fire which destroyed Great Northwest Bookstore.

American Film Institute’s Greatest American Screen Legends list contains actors selected by more than 1,800 AFI members.

Here are the stars on that list who appeared in Oregon films.

Listed in order of their rank (on that particular list):

#3. Jimmy Stewart, in Bend In the River and Shenandoah.

#7 Clark Gable, who apprenticed on the Portland stage before hitting Hollywood.

#12 Gregory Peck, in MacKenna’s Gold.

#13 John Wayne, in The Big Trail, Stagecoach, and Rooster Cogburn.

#17 Kirk Douglas, in Indian Fighter and The Way West.

#21 Buster Keaton, in The General.

#22 Sidney Poitier, in All The Young Men.

#23 Robert Mitchum in Rachel and the Stranger, The Lusty Men and The Way West.

#25 William Holden, in Rachel and the Stranger.

#9. Marlene Dietrich (on AFI’s separate list for top female stars) , in Golden Earrings.

The most recent film on the above list, Rooster Cogburn, was made in 1975.

Three years after that, Penny Allen shot Property, using CETA funds to pay her crew. She may or may not have sensed she was launching a renaissance of Portland based independent filmmaking.

Seven years later, her sound man, Gus Van Sant, made Mala Noche, and Oregon film history no longer was confined to showcasing our strengths as the world’s largest and most scenic sound stage.

Penny Allen’s award winning film closely documents her encounter with an American soldier on his way home from Iraq. Sitting next to her on a plane, he struck up a revealing, anguished conversation that she turned into The Soldier’s Tale.

Allen is a seminal figure in Portland film history – her first film, Property, gave two recent art school graduates named Gus Van Sant and Eric Edwards their first professional exposure to low budget, entirely independent filmmaking.

Allen worked again with Edwards on The Soldier’s Tale. Catch it on the big screen if you go to Paris this spring. Or buy the DVD straight from Allen.

……