Mill Valley Preview. 1.

JM: How did you come to start the Mill Valley Film Festival?

MF: Well, what happened was, I had been a potter, actually, in Colorado. I owned an art gallery in Ouray, which is southwest Colorado and it's, as the crow flies, very close to Telluride, though, of course, you can't get there that way. I was a ceramic sculptor and my girlfriend was a painter and we were living the life of a young 60s-oriented couple, and I kind of fell in love with that area, even though I eventually closed the gallery and decided I wanted to have a bigger palette and get back to my roots in film. I had taken all of the obligatory film history courses in college, but I had been a potter from the time I was in high school, 9th grade. So I happened to be at the first Telluride Film Festival and that really inspired me to look at film as a potential life-changing career option. We didn't want to move back east, neither one of us, and we certainly didn't want to move to Los Angeles, and through our normal travels to visit friends and going to Hawaii - I used to scuba dive - we fell in love with Marin county. I looked at Mill Valley. I looked at the absence of any kind of quality independent cinema and yet an abundance of talented film artists living in the area, and I said, "This is the perfect place to do a film festival."

The majority of the films that we screened in the first few years were from the Bay Area. They were not exclusively for the Bay Area, but that was our emphasis. In those early years, we were showing work from Larry Jordan, from a lot of people from the San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Kuchar brothers and local documentarians and people like the Canyon crowd who had made those fabulous independent films that had inspired George Lucas and other people. So the very first year we were showing things like The Rain People and that rare documentary that George Lucas made on the making of The Rain People or Imogen Cunningham's Three Views, where there were three short films, one by Fred Padula, who still lives in Mill Valley and who was a great cinematographer. He did a film called El Capitan years ago.

The idea of playing films that originated from the area was a great way to celebrate the rich talent that was here, and you continue to show, not exclusively, obviously, but you continue to show work that's made locally in a way that, say, San Francisco International, at least recently, has not. I think that's an important component of Mill Valley. I think it's an important component of any regional festival. That's why, initially, in the program, you would see a large specialty film next to a very small film. Subsequently, since that time, we have created sections, though we've retained our non-competitive status.

JM: How many different festivals do you attend in order to make decisions for the program at Mill Valley?

MF: Well, I'm not the only person who travels, but typically I will go to Sundance, I will go to Berlin and I will go to Cannes. I will go, if I am invited to be a juror, or if I am invited in some other capacity, I may go to a fourth festival. There have been times in Berlin where we've had one person and there are times where we've had four, including someone to just look at the children's section. Rotterdam, we try to go to when we can, but it'll usually have to be two different people. It's almost too much.

JM: Most of the better festivals, both in America and around the world, have a year-round venue with which they can continue to offer films outside of the confinements of the festival. Vancouver has their own venue, the Cinematheque, so the nice thing with Mill Valley, in my estimation, is this relationship that you have with the California Film Institute, which allows you to use the Rafael Film Center year-round. It's a beautifully restored theater. Can you talk a little bit about the relationship between the two organizations? Obviously, you're the executive director of one, the director of another.

MF: The relationship was very important to us, and so it's part of our long-term vision and we worked on it for many, many years and I always felt that San Rafael was the perfect location because it's the most diverse and the most urban area of Marin. I don't know if the Rafael would have been such an immediate success if we hadn't really been involved in the Mill Valley Film Festival for 22 years. We educated, not only individuals, but generations of people in terms of independent films, both domestic and international.

JM: In a sense that you're programming year-round, it's becoming like a Los Angeles North. You're able to attract writers and directors and stars in a way that no other venue in San Francisco is able to.

MF: It's been a very healthy thing for the Rafael. So while we're having Leonardo DiCaprio and Javier Bardem and all those other great visitors - Julie Delpy coming through, and George Lucas and Phil Kaufman and Saul Zaentz - and this year in particular, this tribute to Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I am so delighted to be bringing him in. Even though he's a director who has only made five features and is 50 years old, he's managed to create international films that have broken barriers everywhere. You know, Amélie and A Very Long Engagement, in particular, and Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, and we are continuing the retrospective at the Rafael. The same thing with our tribute to Michael Powell, with Thelma Schoonmaker, who is an icon in her own right, a two-time Academy Award-winning editor, and Richard Peterson is doing a substantial retrospective that will continue into the fall, post-festival. That's a wonderful thing to be able to do.

And then, Felicity Huffman. I have never met her and I already have this warm spot in my heart for her and it's not because William Macy has been a guest here two or three times, with Pleasantville and other films. I don't watch much television, but I have caught a couple episodes at least of Desperate Housewives, and I remember seeing this one scene in particular where she's just fed up, she's strung out on Ritalin, she's got, like, five boys between the ages of ten and one and she calls over her neighbor, hands her the baby and says, "I have to go." Next, they cut to the scene of her sitting in the middle of a football field and all the desperate housewives go out there and join her. She does this monologue and she's in tears and you look at this woman who is basically on an evening soap opera and it is so moving and you know that you are looking at an actress of substantial talent.

Then, Donald Sutherland. Bertolucci, Fellini, you know, at 70 years old, he's the grand master of acting.

Posted by dwhudson at October 5, 2005 4:47 AM