I’ve loved the idea of film festivals ever since I moved to Northern California in the fall of 1981 and—while applying for a job in downtown Mill Valley—saw a stack of programs for the upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival. What is now a world-famous 10-day cinematic spectacle was then celebrating its sixth year and was still in its infancy. Except, I think, for Gregory Mark Besat’s documentary The Art of Food: The Life of M.F.K. Fisher” and perhaps John Sayles’s “Return of Secaucus 7”, I can’t remember any of the films that were being made then. shown the same year.
But I remember thinking, “Are some of the filmmakers going to be there too? Personally? This is the coolest thing ever!”
I didn’t get a job, but I discovered a new favorite thing to do. Back when I was a would-be screenwriter dreaming of being a better, kinder version of Peter O’Toole’s Eli Cross in Stuntman, I was obsessed with making movies. And as I watched this captivating program, I realized that a film festival—especially one that features interviews with filmmakers—was exactly the kind of event that I had spent years training myself to enjoy and appreciate.
I was born and raised in Southern California. Originally from the Inland Empire (Ontario, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga), we eventually moved to Los Angeles County where I lived near Hollywood from 1974 to 1981. When I was old enough to drive, my friends and I often went to places like the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard to watch movies. I saw the world premieres of Fame, Hair and The Muppet Move at the CineramaDome on Sunset Boulevard. Around the same time, we also discovered Westwood, an area as crowded with movie theaters as Petaluma is with hair salons.
Westwood was the place to go on a Friday night, especially when a new movie was opening, when the lines started early and snaked down the streets under the massive, 5-story-high movie posters that covered the entire side of some buildings. . I’ve seen movies like 9 to 5, Altered States, Being There, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Excaliber, Stripes, and the aforementioned Stuntman. After conscientiously watching until the end of the credits, my friends and I would leave the theater and return to the car as giant images of Peter Sellers, Harrison Ford, Dolly Parton and Bill Murray watched us, chattering excitedly about what we were going to do. I just saw myself hatching ideas for films that I would someday write and maybe even direct.
Not once, in all my time spent in the metaphorical front yard of Hollywood, did I meet—or even glimpse—one of those movie stars whose images towered around us like ancient obelisks. The only celebrities I ever met were Karen and Richard Carpenter, who lived in the same town where I went to high school and whose cars I occasionally washed and toweled off when I was a teenager working at a small car wash. which they often visited. Besides that, even though I grew up in an area heavily populated by movie stars, I had never seen one of them face to face.
Never.
Fast forward to the fall of 1981: I was staying with friends in San Rafael looking for a job. I decided—for reasons I can no longer remember—that my best path to a career as a playwright/screenwriter was to leave Los Angeles and move to Marin County. Maybe it’s because that’s where George Lucas was, hanging out with Francis Ford Coppola and Philip Kaufman. Regardless, I came to the conclusion that moving out of Los Angeles could provide me with better opportunities for creative collaboration than those I found in the shadow of Hollywood.
As may be obvious, I never developed into the director I dreamed of, instead finding my way into writing plays and, oddly enough, reviewing films. It was by writing a movie column called “Talking Pictures” in the early ’90s while working in the production department of a newspaper in Marin that I found my way into journalism. That, in turn, brought us back to the Mill Valley Film Festival, which is now celebrating its 46th anniversary.
Over the years, I have attended this annual event more times than I can count, as well as many other similar institutions such as the Sonoma International Film Festival, the San Francisco Film Festival and others, all stellar events that have given me the opportunity to interview and hang out with literally hundreds of famous directors.