The Wild Bunch
North Bay
filmmakers forge a new cinematic scene
In the mid-1970s, when George Lucas and Francis Coppola
appeared on the scene in Northern California, the two filmmakers seemed
supernaturally energized by their recent cinematic successes, and their
combined passion and excitement was as electrifying as an early morning walk
down the third rail of a subway track. Armed with state-of-the-art equipment
and brimming with sure-fire script ideas, the dynamic duo trumpeted their bold,
beautiful vision of the Bay Area's future. The region, they predicted, would become--in
fact, was already becoming--a bravely independent, artistically grounded
filmmaking mecca, and would change the way films were made.
By the
mid-1980s, Lucas and Coppola had been joined by a small revolutionary army of
prominent film-world figures such as Philip Kaufman (Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, The Wanderers, The Right Stuff, Henry and June); writer Joe Eszterhas (Flashdance, Jagged Edge, Basic Instinct); Barry Levinson (Diner, The Natural, Tin Men); and writer-director Christopher Columbus (Gremlins, Mrs. Doubtfire, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). Others, like actors Peter
Coyote, Robin Williams and the late Klaus Kinski, already had roots here, and
the legendary independent producer Saul Zaentz (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, The English Patient) lent major additional filmmaking credibility to the
whole area with his own postproduction facility in Berkeley. With Lucas quickly
building Industrial Light and Magic into the San Rafael landscape, even more
fuel was added to the idea that the Bay Area was becoming a superheated hotbed
of cinematic creativity.
Now, nearly
30 years later, the notion of the North Bay as the non-Hollywood alternative to
Tinseltown has faded. Though visiting filmmakers continue to drop in at Lucas'
Skywalker Ranch to avail themselves of its awe-inspiring technical facilities
(much of which is being relocated to Lucas' new compound at San Francisco's
Presidio), and though Marin and Sonoma counties have also become home to John
Lasseter and other heavy hitters from the mighty Pixar Studios (officially
headquartered in the East Bay), many observers would suggest that, in the 21st
century, the North Bay more closely resembles a vacation retreat or high-priced
bedroom community for millionaire filmmakers than the magical breeding ground
for brilliant cinema that it once seemed destined to become.
A closer
look, however, reveals a number of promising, below-the-radar developments, as
a whole generation of young filmmakers have literally grown up in the large and
terrible shadow of those famous Hollywood expatriates.
As Coppola
himself predicted when he quipped, in the documentary Hearts of Darkness, that the next great motion
picture might be made by a teenage girl with a video camera, a new species of
filmmaker, armed with low-cost video cameras, laptop and computer-editing
tools, is beginning to make its own movies without permission or interference
from Hollywood. Many live and work and make their films right under our noses.
These visionary dreamers have been quietly developing their talents, taking
advantage of the technical innovations that have made filmmaking cheaper and
easier, patiently but aggressively honing their skills while hoping that
someday, somebody out there would take notice.
Well, we've
noticed.
Jesse Lindow,
a San Francisco filmmaker and programmer of the eccentric Sonoma Valley Film
Festival, calls them "the Wild Bunch," and the name fits. The
majority of them are young, hungry, intense, talented and determined, and all
of them are possessed of that certain cocky dash of maverick flash that makes a
filmmaker seem artistically dangerous and maybe even a little bit crazy. A few
have already made the move to Los Angeles but insist on maintaining artistic
connections to the North Bay, others have been there and returned, and some are
resisting pressure to leave the Bay Area.
A slice of
the Wild Bunch includes Mitch Altieri, Scott Daigle, Phil Flores, Gene Hamm,
John Harden, Daedalus Howell (see companion story), Abe Levy and Silver Tree.
Ron Schilling's hilarious short film, Christ Throws a Party, just had its world premiere in
Santa Rosa. Lance
Sterling: Off the Case filmmaker Darwin Meiners is in production with Fairfield, Idaho, shooting guerrilla-style around
Santa Rosa. Digital videographer Marc Azevedo and friends shot the
collaborative Brunch
of the Dead in
Sonoma County, honoring the mastery of Troma Films in a flick not to be watched
while eating.
Napa-based
Anahid Nazarian, a longtime script editor and film librarian for Coppola,
recently served as producer on Michael Goorjian's locally filmed drama Illusion, starring Kirk Douglas. Tim
Wetzel, a recent North Bay arrival, has a new Vegas-based short film, Struck by Luck, which was made after a long
career as a Hollywood propmaster on such films as Jurassic Park III.
It should be
noted that many of these filmmakers take turns working on each other's films.
Part of the Wild Bunch's undeniable charm is that they always seem eager and
available to help one another achieve their cinematic dreams. If you've never
heard their names before, hang in there; we predict that you will be talking
about them a lot in the near future. The talk, in fact, has already begun.
Big Sweet Buzz
At last
April's Sonoma Valley Film Festival, as patrons mingled with the likes of Joe
Pantoliano, Saul Zaentz and Jon Favreau, and as the L.A.-based makers of the My Date with Drew doc were busy winning awards,
there was a powerful undercurrent of big, sweet buzz busting out around such
films as Altieri and Flores' Lurking in Suburbia, Harden's La Vie D'un Chien (The Life of a Dog), Nazarian's Illusion and Wetzel's Struck by Luck. All in all, there were 13 films
screening at this year's SVFF that were made with the help of current Bay Area
residents--that's an all-time high for the eight-year-old festival. According
to festival programmer Lindow, he didn't intentionally set out to find films
made by local talent.
"When I
started going through the submissions and setting aside the ones I thought were
especially deserving of being in the festival," he says, "I began to
notice that a lot of the ones I liked just happened to have some North Bay Area
connection. These are films that represent a really exciting, inventive,
down-and-dirty type of filmmaking. These films are being made by people who are
willing to break the rules of how films have always been made. And the films
are good! I'd like to believe we're witnessing the emergence of a whole new
evolution of local filmmakers."
Allow us,
then, to introduce you to the next generation of North Bay filmmakers, the ones
it was predicted would be coming.
Abe Levy and Silver Tree
Lifelong
Sonoma County resident Abe Levy has proven himself a filmmaker to the degree
that he actually has a second home in Hollywood, where he gets regular film-
and television-related work. For years, he's written and directed his own films
while working to support the projects of several other North Bay filmmakers.
Along the way, he's figured out how to work the system, and is the frontrunner
to becoming the first Wild Bunch member to hit fame and fortune in a big way.
His
ambitious, new guerrilla-style feature film, The Aviary--co-written with Silver Tree,
formerly of Petaluma--is about flight attendants, and it bears the distinction
of having been filmed in eight different locations all over the world, on
planes and in hotel rooms from Hawaii to New York to Paris, in spite of having
been made on almost no budget.
"We
pulled it off because we had a tiny crew," says Levy, "and because
most of the time, the airlines and airports didn't know we were doing it. Of
course, it helps that Silver Tree is an actual flight attendant, so I could
send her to work with a camera to get establishing shots when she
traveled."
Levy worked
as director and cinematographer, and The Aviary, it so happens, features a bona fide Hollywood
movie star: Josh Randall, Ed's best friend on the TV series Ed.
"We shot
for a year," says Levy. "Half of the film was made in 10 days, but
then it took us a year to shoot the rest, off and on."
After a
recent weeklong theatrical run at the Lark Theater, The Aviary found a surprising amount of
financial success once Levy and Tree began selling DVDs of the film on the
Internet (www.theaviarymovie.com). Recognizing that the film would be of
interest to folks in the airline industry as well as to other indie filmmakers
who wish they'd figured out how to make a film
all over the world for free, Levy and Tree have built word of mouth for the
film by talking it up on industry chat rooms.
Next up for
Levy and Tree is a film called One of Our Own, to which the intensely talented Jeremy Sisto (who played
Billy, Brenda's crazy, incestuous brother on Six Feet Under) is attached.
Asked about
Lucas and Coppola's famous prediction, Levy believes that if it comes to pass,
it won't be something that just happens.
"You
can't wait for someone to come along and offer you a movie deal," he says.
"You have to go out and make it happen for yourself. You have to make your
movies on your own. It's possible now. And you have to market and sell them
yourself, which is also possible now. And if people from the Bay Area really
want to see Bay Area films, they will have to go on the Internet and find them,
because they are out there, though they might not be coming to a theater near
you.
"Slowly," he says, "little by little, things will get better for all of us."