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.

I am “not qualified”, in the words of Mr. Stevens, to pass judgement on Remains Of The Day, because, as a WASP, I feel personally responsible for all the emotional and sexual repression which transpires in it. This is my tribe. We came to America for a second chance.

Judge for yourselves whether we deserved one.

Remains Of the Day follows on Merchant Ivory’s successful pairing of  Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in Howard’s End. Many regard this story of a butler who comes to question the way he has spent his life as the pinnacle of the Merchant Ivory collaborations. I am too deeply sorrowed, and ashamed, by the actions of everyone in it, downstairs and upstairs, to have an opinion one way or the other.

This character study of an English butler was written by Kazuo Ishiguro, from Japan, adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, from Germany, produced by Ismail Merchant, from India, and directed by James Ivory, from Klamath Falls.

It received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Best Actress in a Leading Role.

I hereby claim Remains Of The Day as an Oregon film, on the basis of James Ivory’s contribution as director.

Leonard Stone, Oregon’s most successful character actor, was born in Salem in 1923. IMDB clocks him at over 120 television series appearances and 35 feature films. His most famous film role is in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where he plays Mr. Beauregard, Violet’s father.

Stone’s road to Hollywood, like that of James Ivory, his near contemporary, involved graduate studies interrupted by WWII, and then a long professional apprenticeship in a foreign land.  Stone was a student at the Royal Academy for the Dramatic Arts in London when the war broke out. The Navy cast him as the captain of a minesweeper. After the war, he spent eight years performing ( possibly the role of sailor? ) in an Australian touring company of South Pacific. Then came the Tony nomination in New York. Then came the Hollywood career.

Stone appeared in Dr. Kildare, McHale’s Navy, Rawhide, Perry Mason, Lost In Space, Dragnet, The Partridge Family, Mod Squad, Mannix, Gunsmoke, Sanford and Son and MASH. He appeared in The Bob Newhart Show, Barney Miller, and Quincey. He appeared in Hill Street Blues and LA Law. On and on.

Bottom line: if you’ve ever watched TV, you’ve seen Leonard Stone. If you missed him on TV, and in Willy Wonka, maybe you saw in Soylent Green, or heard in him in American Pop, where he continued Oregon’s long, fine tradition of providing voice artists to the world.

I remember when everyone gave me a hard time about liking Brian DePalma’s films. There’s a similar unanimity to the disgusted reaction I get when I describe James Ivory as Oregon’s most distinguished filmmaker. Everyone knows that Ivory is a featherweight who makes high brow bodice rippers. Everybody knows this because they haven’t seen his films.

People came around about DePalma, and eventually people will get around to seeing all five decades worth of James Ivory films, and then they will come around about him too. In the meantime, its hard out there for an Oregon film historian who is the only person alive to have seen every single frame James Ivory committed to celluloid, and who came out a believer.

Turner Classic Movies is making it easier for the lazy bones Ivory haters to actually check to see if the films Ivory made match up with the low opinion they know they are supposed to have about him.

Broadcast on September 8, 2011 are:

Savages 1973 Made from a screenplay inspired by Luis Bunuel, written by Saturday Night Live writer Michael O’Donoghue, and starring Seventies It Girl Susie Blakeley. Ivory’s weirdest film starts with a croquet ball entering the Stone Age.

Roseland (1977) A film about dying – disguised as a film about dancing. Watch it to see Christopher Walken before he became enshrouded in mannerisms. He plays a gigolo torn between (rich) Joan Copeland and (poor) Geraldine Chaplin. I didn’t like the other two thirds of this tripartitated (I just made that word up)  film, but Walken makes up for it.

The Europeans (1979)  Lee Remick plays a sexual predator outwitted by Puritans. Ivory’s first period film, and he laid down the law “… actresses were required to be tightly laced up into corsets with stays, and were not allowed to surreptitiously put on lipstick or eye shadow”

Quartet (1981) Alan Bates and Maggie Smith squash Isabelle Adjani like a bug. Like a BUG. Not for the faint of heart. Takes place in Jazz Age Paris, although not the one Woody Allen visited via Owen Wilson!

The Bostonians (1984) Vanessa Redgrave places herself between Madeleine Potter and Christopher Reeve.

See these films. While you’re thinking them over, see the rest of the Ivory ouevre – TCM is showing everything – on the following two Thursdays in September.

Gus Van Sant returns to Festival de Cannes, on the evening of Thursday, May 12, to open the “Un Certain Regard” competition with his latest film, Restless.

Shot in Portland, Restless stars Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper.

Here’s Gus Van Sant’s history at Cannes:

Gus Van Sant received the Palme d’or in 2003 for Elephant and the 60th anniversary award for Paranoid Park (2007). His first nomination at the Festival de Cannes was in 1995 for To Die For.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I submit the track record Gus Van Sant (Portland), James Ivory (Klamath Falls) and Bill Plympton (Oregon City) have at Cannes as solid proof all Oregonians are secretly French.

Director Jody Mack conceived her 28 minute color xerox animated musical while on a visit to Oregon. It just won the Jury’s Choice First Prize at the Black Maria Film Festival in Jersey City.

I am not going to claim Yard Work Is Hard Work as an Oregon film, although students of Oregon film history will see the influence of Jim Blashfield.

TRUE FILM GEEK ALERT: Devoted scholars of Oregon film history will recall that James Ivory’s dad, inventor Edward Ivory, worked for Thomas Edison, the proprietor of the first Black Maria, the rooftop film studio after which the Black Maria Film Festival was named.

But because Yard Work Is Hard Work was conceptualized in Oregon, I do hereby claim Jody Mack as a lillypadder.

Internationally acclaimed directors are Oregon’s leading cinematic export. Our talent pool in that department – James Ivory, Gus Van Sant, Bill Plympton and Brad Bird – is unparalleled. But the hand painted contact lenses Natalie Portman wears in Black Swan also came from Oregon. Lee Williams has the story.

Parents, next time your children ask you for film school tuition, tell them “Get a job in radio”. Mike Rich’s first screenplay, Finding Forrester, was written while he was working as the director of morning news at KINK in Portland

Here’s Mike at work, before Gus Van Sant decided to gamble on that first screenplay.

Rich first learned to write and to do radio in Enterprise, pop. 1,900, where he grew up. In this interview, he observes “The overall goal of screenwriting is the same as news writing. It’s just done in a different and polar opposite way.” In making this transfer of skills from the newsroom to Hollywood, Rich was entering a tradition pioneered by Ben Hecht.

Here’s the ex-radio journalist, ten years later,  helping to celebrate the career of fellow Oregonian James Ivory at the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival in 2009. This photo, snapped by Shawn Levy using his cell phone, includes (clockwise ) James Ivory, Mike Rich, Bill Plympton, and Gus Van Sant.

Q: What do these four Oregon artists share in common?

A: All four produce their own work. All four choose to hold the reins of their economic destiny in their own hands. Mike Rich began executive producing his own work with his fourth script, The Nativity Story (2006) and continued with Secretariat (2010).

]]> http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2010/10/mike-rich/feed/ 0 http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2010/09/handy-guide-to-oregon-logging-films/ http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2010/09/handy-guide-to-oregon-logging-films/#comments Mon, 13 Sep 2010 23:45:34 +0000 Anne Richardson http://www.talltalestruetales.com/?p=8983

The only known musical version of Livy’s Rape of the Sabine Women was made at MGM in 1954. Seven Brides For Seven Brothers was set in an Oregon logging camp, with Oregonian Jane Powell cast as a lead, but not one inch of it was shot here.

It was only after seeing a number of logging films, and reading about even more than I could see, that I was able to figure out that there is a movie genre dedicated to the lives of lumberjacks. Hollywood’s most famous example is Come and Get It (1936), which has nothing to do with Oregon. But Oregon, with its mighty forests, does have a steady track record with this genre.

The Valley Of The Giants (1919)/Lost film

Rough Romance (1930)/Lost film

Park Avenue Logger (1937)/Lost film

The Forest Rangers (1942)/Lost film

Lumberjack Rabbit (1954) In 3D!

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954)

Sometimes A Great Notion (1971)

Natural Timber Country (1972)

The Bed You Sleep In (1993)

Clearcut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon (2006)

If A Tree Falls: A Story Of The Earth Liberation Front (2011)

Letters From The Big Man (2011)

Oregon’s logging industry produced one best selling journalist, Stewart Holbrook, one recording artist, Buzz Martin, and one literary fraud, Opal Whitely.

In 2009, Oregon Public Broadcasting produced The Logger’s Daughter, based on the real life experiences of Gwen Trice, whose father traveled from the South to work in race segregated Oregon logging camps.

Perhaps the most important contribution Oregon’s logging industry made to the arts is James Ivory, whose father arrived in Klamath Falls from upstate New York (by way of Berkeley, California) to start his own company, Ivory Pine. Ivory recalls accompanying his father on trips to LA where his father negotiated with the movie studios to supply the lumber they used for back lot set construction.