Click here to view the embedded video.

Every once in a while you drive past a house in Portland with one or two glum looking palm trees planted out front. Those California imports are starting to look prophetic, not pathetic.

1. Reese Witherspoon has just optioned Wild, Cheryl Strayed’s forthcoming memoir.

2. Kristen Wiig had already optioned Clown Girl, Monica Drake’s novel.

3. Chelsea Cain’s Heartsick may still be under option.

4. Chuck Palahniuk led the way.

5. It is a good time to be a Portland writer. Or a hyphenate!

6. This year Patrick DeWitt joined Jon Raymond in the rare category of author-screenwriter.

7. Mike Rich became a writer-producer on his fourth movie, following the example, perhaps, of the similarly named Mike Richardson, who has been known to combine writing and producing.

8. Then there’s writer-directors Gus Van Sant, James Ivory and Bill Plympton, who were born to be hyphenates.

On Sunday, February 26, at 2:00 PM, Oregon Movies, A to Z talks Oscars at the Oregon Historical Society.

This talk serves as a great crash course in Oregon film history.

For those impatient to get started, I include here a short list of Oregon artists who have received recognition from the Academy. I leave off the curious case of David Fincher, who was nominated for SOCIAL NETWORK and for THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, because although Fincher graduated from high school in Ashland, he never identifies himself as being from Ashland in the way that Brad Bird, for example, identifies himself as coming to Disney/Cal Arts straight from Corvallis.

When I identify the filmmaker with the name of a city or town, it is the city or town which the filmmaker originally came from, not where he/she currently lives. Where I give the city as “Portland” for Joan Gratz and Bob Gardiner and Irene Taylor Brodsky, it is because I am not sure where those filmmakers grew up, or lived, before becoming Portlanders.

See you there!

Brad Bird (Corvallis)
Winner for THE INCREDIBLES (2004) and RATATOUILLE (2007)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Will Vinton (McMinnville)
Winner, with Bob Gardiner, for CLOSED MONDAYS (1974)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Joan Gratz (Portland)
Winner, MONA LISA DESCENDING A STAIRCASE (1992)

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Bill Plympton (Oregon City)
Nominated for YOUR FACE (1987) and GUARD DOG (2004)

Gus Van Sant (Portland)
Nominated for GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997) and MILK (2008)

James Ivory (Klamath Falls)
Nominated for ROOM WITH A VIEW (1985), HOWARD’S END (1992), REMAINS OF THE DAY (1993)

George Bruns (Sandy)
Nominated for composing the scores of SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959), BABES IN TOYLAND (1961), THE SWORD IN THE STONE (1963) and the song “Love” in ROBIN HOOD (1973)

Irene Taylor Brodsky (Portland)
Nominated for THE FINAL INCH (2009)

James Longley (Eugene)
Nominated for IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS (2006) and SARI’S MOTHER (2006)

Oregon’s most distinguished filmmaker, three time Oscar nominee James Ivory, speaks here about the future of his profession:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

Oregon Cartoon Institute is holding its second public meeting on Sunday, Feb. 12, at 2:00 PM at 5th Avenue Cinema.

All friends and fans of Oregon Cartoon Institute are invited. If you think you might belong to this group, you do.

The agenda includes a brief introduction to the all volunteer Institute, and a discussion of what is up next. We’ll have announcements from the Mel Blanc Project and the Homer Davenport Project, some proposals to consider, and some hand outs to take home.

Reminder: last time the Institute met, Dennis Nyback supplied home made refreshments.

This year our featured attraction is a rare screening of The Little Baker, a stop motion animation short by early Portland filmmaker Lewis Clark Cook (1909 – 1983). We will also screen a ten-minute profile of Cook, made for OPB in the early 1980’s by Portland artist Jim Blashfield.

Michele Kribs, who was trained by Cook to succeed him as head of Oregon Historical Society’s Moving Image Archive, will be in attendance.

In the photo above, use of which was generously made possible by the Oregon Historical Society, Lew Cook is 15 years old. That is his own 35mm camera. A doting aunt, knowing that he was in love with the movies, bought it for him. He quit selling newspapers and went to work as a newsreel photographer.

Top Four Reasons You Might Want To See The Little Baker:

4. Cook made his living as an independent filmmaker using more tricks than you can imagine. Just as Bill Plympton turned down Disney, Lew Cook turned down Warner Brothers. He chose independence. Besides Plympton, the other Portland filmmakers who followed Cook’s lead include Homer Groening, Will Vinton, Joan Gratz, Jim Blashfield, Gus Van Sant, Rose Bond and  Joanna Priestley.

3. The Little Baker was made “in the 1920’s” which means Cook could have made it anywhere between age 11 and age 20. Come help us sleuth out clues as to whether this is the work of a hard working child or an uninhibited adult.

2.  No one else you know has seen this film.

1. Will Vinton credited The Little Baker with inspiring him to consider clay animation. Who knows what it will inspire you to do!

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This event is a partnership between Oregon Cartoon Institute, Oregon Historical Society and 5th Avenue Cinema.

Thank you to Kerry Tymchuk, Michele Kribs and Scott Rook of Oregon Historical Society.

Thank you to Heather Petrocelli of 5th Avenue Cinema and PSU’s Public History Interest Group.

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.

“Who’s that guy, in the white suit, with the dirty hair? How did he get here?” Elliott Smith

Attention music loving readers: you have until Dec. 13 to support an experimental film/documentary about Elliott Smith. The Kickstarter trailer for  Heaven Adores You also serves as an evocative portrait of his hometown.

Director Nickolas Rossi lives in Brooklyn, but spent some formative years in Portland, which makes him a lillypadder.

But what makes Heaven Adores You an Oregon film is the subject, singer-songwriter Smith.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I hereby serve notice that as soon as Heaven Adores You is finished, it will be claimed as an Oregon film, based on the subject, Oregonian Elliott Smith.

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?”

Benjamin Popp’s Laszlo Lassu won Honorable Mention at the 38th NWFF.

The name has changed, but the mission remains the same. The Northwest Film & Video Festival, now the Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival, encompasses the full range of Northwest filmmaking. Cinematic locavores will find it all, from the obsessive self contained world of stop motion animation to harrowingly intense documentaries to hand made, small scale, sotto voce features.

This year, three features were directed by artists who cut their teeth at the festival.

Gus Van Sant’s fourteenth feature, RESTLESS, opened the festival on Nov. 12. His first NWFF entry, ONE HALF OF A TELEPHONE CONVERSATION, was in 1978. It was two minutes long.

Chel White’s first feature, BUCKSVILLE, closes the festival with its Portland premiere on Nov. 20 at 6:00 PM. White won an Honorable Mention from judge Christine Vachon for his first NWFF entry in 1998. Titled DIRT, it was four minutes long.

Matt McCormick’s first feature, SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, screens on Nov. 16. In 2001, he competed against Courtney Taylor-Taylor, Jim Blashfield, Brian Lindstrom, Chel White, Marilyn Zornado, Vanessa Renwick and Andy Blubaugh with his first NWFF entry, THE SUBCONSCIOUS ART OF GRAFFITI REMOVAL. It was 17 minutes long.

This festival is also the place to see Peter Richardson’s HOW TO DIE IN OREGON, in case you missed that, and Taggert  Siegel’s QUEEN OF THE SUN: WHAT ARE THE BEES TELLING US?.

We’re not a ghoulish bunch, here in the Pacific Northwest, I swear we are not.  However, since Gus made a film in which death looms, Matt made a film which features cremains, Peter made a film about physician assisted suicide and Taggert made a film about the collapse in bee population, I think it is fair to observe that the filmmakers of Salmon Nation tend to see death as part of life.

This must have been an usually tough year for festival director Thomas Phillipson. So many films to choose from!

Click here to view the embedded video.

James Franco was at the Hollywood Theatre yesterday, screening My Own Private River, his feature length, River Phoenix-centric, remix of My Own Private Idaho outtakes. Not eligible for theatrical release (due to copyright issues, I am guessing), James Franco and Gus Van Sant presented the film personally, as a fundraising event,  to a theater packed with grateful, eager film nuts.

My Own Private River tells the story of Mike Waters, the narcoleptic street hustler whose brother might be his father, whose his best friend won’t be his lover, and who seems to be, like the Johnny Depp character in Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film, a walking dead man. More sentimental than My Own Private Idaho, My Own Private River jettisons the Prince Hal plotline, and Scott (Keanu Reeves) only appears around the edges, in scenes which serve as markers of Mike’s decline.

To get the most obvious question out of the way, My Own Private River does stand on its own as a feature length film. I cannot speak to what the experience would be like for someone who had not seen My Own Private Idaho (or who has seen it 20 times, as Franco has) but for me, this odd scramble of rejected footage felt like a real movie, mostly because of the power of Phoenix’ performance, which I imagine was exactly the point Franco was trying to make when he proposed the project to Van Sant.

Van Sant granted permission to Franco on the condition that if he (Van Sant) didn’t like the result, it would never be seen.

But he liked it. And now Franco’s exploration of River Phoenix’ performance permanently raises the bar for film scholars everywhere. The outtakes he drew from include scenes which made it into My Own Private Idaho as well as ones which never did, such as a outdoor love scene with a fellow street rat (female), a dinner table scene where Mike wordlessly editorializes on the bad manners of Scott and his new Italian girlfriend, and a hot dog vending scene where Mike discovers, after coming back from Italy, that his street rat friends (male) now have jobs.  Franco’s goal, to re-tell the story solely from Mike Waters’ point of view, ends up illuminating Van Sant’s directorial choices as much as it sheds additional light on the profound all out commitment of River Phoenix’ performance. Van Sant is lighter, drier, and more peculiar then Franco. Franco’s Mike Waters is histrionic (sometimes hilariously so, as when he suddenly begins fighting his own jacket, Buster Keaton style, in the middle of a bedroom seduction he has been hired to perform) and self pitying. In the world Franco creates, death is a foregone conclusion. It is Van Sant, less emotional and more worldly, who leaves room for redemption.

Which interpretation best reflects River Phoenix’ own understanding of the character? I am hoping all future scholars of  My Own Private Idaho will see My Own Private River and come to their own conclusions.

I hereby claim My Own Private River as an Oregon film, on the basis of the contribution of River Phoenix, a native Oregonian, and on the basis of the location shooting, and the setting.

Karl Lind documented the artists’ talk before the screening:

Click here to view the embedded video.

“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.