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The Beautiful Balance of the Mill Valley Film Festival: Interview with Mark Fishkin by Doniphan Blair
The Rafael, in San Rafael, and the Mill Valley Festival's main theater, on this year's opening night of 'The Fighter.' photo: CFI
Although the Bay Area is home to some of the oldest and most important film festivals in the country—notably the International, the Jewish and Frameline—another one stands out as embodying the eclectic local mix of Hollywood North, indie features, documentaries, and avant-garde: the Mill Valley.
The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) was founded by Mark Fishkin after he and a couple of film-buff buddies organized three days of films in Mill Valley in 1977. Although Fishkin, a New York City native, took some film courses at the University of Maryland, he was only bitten by the film bug while working as a potter in Colorado, just down the road, as it happened, from Telluride. Indeed, he was there the very year Telluride started and for the next nine years, although it was a talk by Francis Ford Coppola that inspired him to get off his potter's wheel, devote himself to film and move to Marin County. Within months, he was running a film series at the College of Marin, which included the Saturday Night Movie in Mill Valley, where the sound was so bad he could only show subtitled foreign films.
Mill Valley 1.0 featured not only Coppola's little known hippie feature, "Rain People," (1969) but also a documentary on the making of it, "The Filmmaker," by none other than George Lucas. They also showed "The Candidate," arguably Robert Redford's most pointed performance, which was directed by Michael Ritchie, who was living in Mill Valley at the time and was part of the reason Lucas and Coppola came to the area. Rounding out the masterful mix was a slew of artistic shorts by Marin County filmmakers James Broughton, Gunvor Nelson and Lawrence Jordan, balanced in turn by a program of documentary shorts directed by another native, Carroll Ballard, for the US Information Agency ("Beyond This Winter's Wheat," 1965, "Harvest," 1967).
"We did a very innovative program that I would not be embarrassed to repeat today," Fishkin told the Sonoma County Independent in 1998. With the 1970s and '80s the Golden Era of Bay Area filmmaking, MVFF expanded rapidly and soon began nurturing little known films, some of which went on to grandeur.
Mark Fishkin and Edward James Olmos enjoying the 1988 opening of 'Stand and Deliver,' which the MVFF championed and went on to great success. photo: CFI
Notable examples were "The Wanderer" in 1979 by another resident master, Phil Kaufman, "My Bodyguard" (1980) by Tony Bill, and "Stand and Deliver" by Ramón Menéndez and starring Edward James Olmos, which received a 10-minute standing ovation, one of the longest on record, at its showing in 1988. Mill Valley also championed the later acclaimed "My Left Foot" and "Like Water for Chocolate" (both 1989), and "The Crying Game"(1992). Other creative coups range from a rare appearance by Bernardo Bertolucci, on the occasion of MVFF showing his masterpiece, "The Last Emperor," also in 1988, or the hosting of Jack Arnold and the screening of his 3D cult fave "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" a decade later, accompanied by a tribute so moving Arnold was reduced to tears.
2010 was the 33rd for MVFF, the so-called Christ cycle, and the festival was rather stellar, with a surfeit of entries from the Bay Area. They included: "Everyday Sunshine," about the LA black punk band Fishbone, by Chris Metzler (see CS article); "Atomic Mom," by M.T. Silva, covering two mothers effected by atomic bomb research; "Child of Giants," by Tom Ropelewski, which followed the troubled son of local photographer Dorothea Lange and painter Maynard Dixon; Rob Nilsson's exuberant and ironic road movie "Sand"; Abby Ginzberg's doc about a Mexican-American activist, lawyer and California Supreme Court Justice called "Cruz Reynoso: Sowing the Seeds of Justice"; Emiko Omori's look at a local tattoo artist, "Ed Hardy 'Tattoo the World'"; "Leave Them Laughing," by John Zaritsky, about the late Bay Area singer and comedienne Carla Zilbersmith; and, last but not least, "The Empire Strikes Back," on the occasion of its 30th anniversary.
As if this wasn't enough, Fishkin also inaugurated CFI Releasing (the California Film Institute runs MVFF), a distribution company, and picked up last year's home town fave "Touching Home" (2008). It stars Ed Harris, in "a deeply affecting portrayal," and Noah and Logan Miller, in "dual performances [that] are among the most convincing screen depictions I have seen of identical twinship as a special comfort zone until the moment it isn’t," (both comments by S. Holden of the New York Times, 5/4/10). The Miller brothers also directed, wrote, and produced, and they shot in Marin, as a stand-in for Colorado.
That was where we started our discussion, right after Mark handed me a menu to order-in for our "over-lunch" interview.
CineSource: 'Touching Home' is the first thing you started distributing?
Mark Fishkin: Yes, in fact the producer Jeromy Zajonc—you might have seen him when you walked in. He produced the film and he works for us at CFI releasing, and in other areas as well. We launched it this year on the closing day of the Art House Convergence [a meeting of art house theater owners at Sundance]. There will be a premiere in Los Angeles on December 19th with Ed Harris. That will probably be the last theatrical and then we will go into DVD release—unfortunately, not before Christmas.
In many respects, we [already] act like a distributor. Our business, in the non-profit vernacular, is a cultural and educational organization. On the industry side, we are primarily an exhibitor, but an exhibitor who acts like a distributor. Lots of films at the Rafael [theater] don’t have official distribution. We do the marketing plans, the press, create the material. That was one reason we started [CFI Releasing].
But it always comes down to our mission: To celebrate, promote and advocate for independent cinema. That is why we built the Rafael. In this day and age, with all the—I rather not look at it as competing but complimentary—platforms, we are really invested in theatrical exhibition—bricks and mortars.
We have been thinking about it for a long time. With ‘Touching Home,’ it was time. We had to form the whole company starting January 20. By April 20 we released the ['Touching Home'] in eight different theaters in the Bay Area, San Francisco, East Bay, San Jose, Folsom, Manhattan, about eight theaters in the surroundings of Manhattan, Florida, Idaho, Denver.
A limited art house release?
Director, writer, and actors Noah and Logan Miller in 'Touching Home' (2008), which also starred Ed Harris and was California Film Institute Releasing's first film. photo: CFI
Yeah. In this day and age, it is really about how much you want to invest in the theatrical before you go into the ancillary [venues: DVD, VOD, etc]. It’s a tough market. The other aspect of CFI Releasing is the acquisition of the films. There are a lot of films that we like and would like to release but they may not have tremendous theatrical potential. We could pick them up and maybe do OK.
But there are some films that we are really excited about. We would like to release them but they have to go through a whole life of their own. You almost have to wait for everyone else to say ‘No’ before those films become available.
Is that because you are coming from more of the non-profit?
Yeah, because we are non-profit, we like to serve films that don’t have great opportunity for theatrical. Right now we are concentrating on films that have some viability on theatrical, then buy the rights for all that in North America. Ultimately, we are going to take advantage of all the ancillaries but our plan doesn’t include jumping into that first. That will come after a few more theatrical releases where—hopefully!—we will be involved in the ancillary rights as well.
The act of acquiring films as a very small distributer—who is the new kid on the block, who is a non-profit, and has limited resources—you have to be very careful. Another company may come in and say ‘We don’t care what it is, we are going to have six releases in the next 12 months.’ Our perspective is to grow organically and really support the right films, the films that have been neglected, and that we think will perform well in a theater.
That takes time. I have two films—I wouldn’t call them offers yet, but serious inquiries. They both happen to be, ironically, in the French language. Our hope was to acquire two films before the end of the year but I don’t know if that will happen, considering today is December first. But it will happen. Actually there is a third film we are looking at, which is an English language film, so two narrative films and one documentary.
A friend of mine, a very successful distributor, told me that there was one particular French language film that he developed that really gave their company a big boost. The story he told me is that it took a year of chasing this one sales agent to get the film. They didn’t even really want to sell it to him.
They were hoping for a bigger company?
Certain countries, with large sales agencies, there is a political aspect: How are you treating their film? Who are you selling it to? There are many foreign language films that have given up on selling to the United States. [If they don't] get the amount of money they would like, they would rather not release the film here.
On the distributor side, all these films are tremendous risks. There are guarantees of what you have to give up front; how many prints you have to make; how many markets you release in. It is very tough. That is why you have seen a lot of established distributors go out of business. Certainly, we have seen some new ones come in. That is even more of a reason for institutions like the California Film Institute, that have been in the business for a long time, that deal with art house films, to expand their horizons.
There is a desperate need, it seems, for more distributors in this area. I hear this from the filmmakers I talk to. They have to go to LA. The missing link is often the distribution.
It is, unfortunately, an area that has been controlled by a few companies. And it is a labor intensive. There are only so many films one company can handle. Even the biggest distributers, you are talking only a dozen films—some of them maybe twenty a year. But it is exciting for me. And I think it is really important.
If you canvas most filmmakers, they say they want their film to play in a movie house—to see their film on the big screen. That is the Holy Grail and it has been harder for them to do that. Just a few years ago, it seemed like every documentary was getting some theatrical play. That is not the case now. There are so many factors inhibiting theatrical exhibition.
We are one of the believers that theatrical is still the engine that drives a lot of films. We believe that this communal experience—gathering around the campfire—is really important to the fabric of any community. It is just a challenging time.
People like Bob Berney [of Picture House], super experienced distributors, have seen their companies close—in his case, opening another company and having that close and opening a third. He will always land on his feet but that corresponds to what a difficult business distribution is now. On the other side, all the democratization of the Internet. People are experimenting and trying to find some monetary economic model.
Mark Fishkin judicious perspective from the corner office at the California Film Institute in San Rafael. photo: CFI
Where does the control end up? Does the filmmaker see more results? If you look to the music industry: major groups are not even selling albums, it is not part of their portfolio for making money anymore. [On the other hand,] there are a bunch of bands that would have never been selling their music, that are now making a living. You can either look at it as a pessimist or an optimist.
A lot of it is generational. If you are a journalist and you just lost your job and are 50 years old, it is a pretty scary time. If you are just coming out of college, have a blog and are reaching a few thousand people, you are saying, ‘Oh my god, isn’t this great?’ It is just a very interesting time.
You watched it all.
Because I am old [laughs].
Yes but also because you run a festival. You are in fantastic position to watch the river flow. The number of submissions to your festival must be ten times what it was.
Our submissions were always kind of up there—certainly challenging to deal with them all. It is good to be in the position we are—an established film festival—that helps us in terms of getting the films and having substantial attendance. But here are a lot of festivals out there. It is a very crowded field.
You ever think there are just too many here in the Bay Area?
Absolutely. The Bay Area is blessed with a good number of very high quality festivals, the ones that have been around for a long time: Frameline, Jewish Film Festival, Asian America, San Francisco International, Mill Valley. And there are some others that have come up and established themselves—which is great! I get calls all the time from people who want to start a festival. I try to give back what I can.
I have attended—and will attend this coming weekend, and speak at, the International Film Festival Summit. It is not a festival organization, more of a market, in Las Vegas—although it started in New York. They provide educational seminars and they have businesses there—like any kind of convention—ticketing and other services festivals need. They get a couple of hundred festivals [attending]. They asked me to speak for the first couple of years and I declined because it wasn’t run by festival people. But after speaking to some of my associates, it seemed like a good place for gathering [the community].
There are areas that have a tremendous need for festivals and I want to support them. [But] there are many festivals that establish themselves when there is not a need. Festivals, which are basically event philosophies, are a good way to get people in to see things they wouldn’t normally see. But I don’t know if the same film should play in six places in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, in a small radius.
When I talk to people who are interested in starting a festival, I ask them to ask themselves, ‘Is there a need you are going to fill?’ We have a group of independent art houses called the Art House Project. It was originally started by Sundance; now we have our third, what we call, convergence. We do it before Sundance. Last year, we had a 150 people representing hundreds of screens. Michael Moore was there the whole time, as a keynote speaker, as he will be this year.
And there are all different kinds of independent nonprofit theaters. A mission-based nonprofit theater is what festivals primarily are. There are very few festivals left in the United States that are not 501c3 [not-for-profits]. If you have theater in North Dakota that is 50 miles from any other commercial theater and they show ‘Avatar,’ they are serving a purpose [so they can be] under the 501c3 designation. That is kind of an interesting model.
To some degree, festivals can serve that purpose in different areas but it is silly for festivals to replicate something that already exists. If there is an established festival that is doing good, is there a reason to have another ten miles away? And if they choose to start it, then you are dealing with the great American capitalist system.
It helps civic pride. The Sonoma festival comes to mind. From an exterior view, judging them side-by-side with other festivals, they are poor. But from an interior perspective, when Robin Williams shows up [for example], they bring a bit of glitz and glamour, and it brings people into the theater.
Fishkin teaches and advises festival directors from across the country at their annual gathering, the International Film Festival Summit, in Las Vegas. photo: CFI
Yes, yes. Those things can be very important to communities. The Cannes Film Festival was started to extend the tourist season in the South of France—that is relevant. But at what cost? Or is there another way to do it?
When filmmakers tell me ‘We are interested to get this article in the Sunday [SF Chornicle] Date Book in July before your October event’ I will say: What is the point? Are you are still trying to raise money? Why shouldn’t that article be later? It could be that the film is going to theatrical release [and then] it needs publicity.
I think those are things you have to ask yourself when you do anything. Festivals are very labor intensive. They are expensive propositions. They are not easy to do—you have to give credit to those who do it. But, as you mentioned, the quality of festivals is also really important. There are festivals I have seen throughout the country—and talked to others about—that don’t live up to those expectations. [Then] when other festivals go out to get support, sometimes it can affect them negatively.
For me, it's always about a festival's primary purpose: to showcase films that haven’t been shown before. It is your first look. And if they have been shown a couple of months before [at another festival], what is the need?
If you were to give advice to a festival starting up clarity of purpose sounds like the—
Absolutely, yeah! In the nonprofit vernacular: What is your mission? Because you are going to be working really hard for a long time. You want to make sure it is fulfilling a need that hasn’t been fulfilled in some other way.
Last year, at the International Film Festival Summit, I taught a two-day course which required putting together a whole syllabus. [It was] myself as well as number of other festival directors and program directors: Graham Leggat from San Francisco, Carl Spence from Seattle, some really experienced people. It was a lot of work. All of us do this a lot. We’re hoping we are benefiting organizations that are doing it for the right reasons.
What do you think of a local-centric kind of [festival]. Your festival is international but I noticed last year you had quite a section for local filmmakers.
We try not to ghetto-ize anything with too many sections. There was one time we didn’t identify films as in any section. It is a similar rationale to want a major art house [film] to be next to a small documentary. To some extent, we still do that. But for clarity, for people trying to weed through a tremendous amount of information, we have sections.
I don’t know how many people remember, but the Mill Valley Film Festival started as almost exclusively films from the Bay Area. Yeah, I can show you the first catalog. But I never personally believed you should have doctrines that are a 100% complete. Clearly, the first year, and for a number of years, the majority of films were all Bay Area. Great filmmakers like Robert M. Young and John Korty [who made 'The Crazy-Quilt,' 'Riverrun' and 'Funnyman' while living here in the 1960s], were in Mill Valley, and of course Coppola and Lucas. Through forces, ironically, beyond our control, we started reaching out to domestic and international programming.
What happened is this: we had been operating for two or three years and there appeared another festival that was exclusively Bay Area—I don’t remember the organization. We were really involved in the independent movement. That was a very exciting time. So we said ‘Well, let’s expand.’ Through outside forces, and the fact that there was so much else happening around the United States and the world—Australian New Wave, Jiri Menzel [Czech filmmaker, 'Closely Watched Trains' 1966]— there was just an amazing amount of great films that were not being seen. Naturally, we start to grow, to expand from the Bay Area, to be much more international.
It is a conflict I also have with CineSource. Our focus is regional. Should we show something that is not the greatest but is local talent? It is a complex question. But how do we help [a local film's] distribution?
There aren’t many festivals where you are going to get people staying up all night negotiating to buy films—where you really are a market. I think in the United States there is only one, Sundance. For a festival, my advice is ‘Know who you are.’ The Mill Valley is not going to have 3,000 members of the press [as at Sundance]. It would be ridiculous to try to emulate that.
Most of the great festivals in the United States were at times ghetto-ized or regionalized. It is not such a bad designation. But the impact of some resonates beyond their immediate borders. There are a lot of festivals, like Mill Valley, in the Bay Area and elsewhere, that are wedded to their community. They have a solid foundation within the community [but] they kind of expand [like the ripples] from throwing a pebble in the pond.
I heard from Rob Nilsson that you attended a dinner organized by Celik Kayalar trying to stimulate a group energy. That always seems like a nice idea, but complicated: How could all the different filmmakers in the Bay Area be considered some sort of movement? There was certainly an art film movement here in the’70s: Lawrence Jordan, Bruce Conner—
Mark Fishkin and Saul Zaentz, the lauded music producer who became the Bay Area's most developed film producer, essentially running a studio, Fantasy in Berkeley. photo: CFI
Yes, those were a lot of people we used to showcase, initially. Also, the Kuchar Bros and Gunvor Nelson—a lot of great talent—James Broughton, people who came from other disciplines like poetry and painting. We showed a lot of experimental. I still have a tremendous fondness for those films. We try to show what we can.
I was at that dinner— I am not so sure there was any particular agenda. The Bay Area has a great reputation for great films, mostly documentaries of late. Whether they represent a 'Mumble Core' aspect [a film movement out of Austin]? You see a little bit of that [but] it's hard, those sort of movements—even with festivals.
We still don’t have a film festival organization, nationally or internationally. The only one that exists, internationally, is run by producers and they are looking after producers. I think festival people are very independent. It is difficult to form those kinds of things or, as you said, this is a Bay Area film. I agree with you. It has to come out organically. It was a great thing that ‘Howl’ was just made.
Yes, and now they are making ‘On the Road’— shooting a little around here —but it is not local.
It is being made by Walter Salles, the great [Brazilian] director. We were fortunate enough to have him here [at MVFF in 2008].
I recently spoke with Lee Utterbach, who is closing his camera rental in San Francisco, about how the film business here is down due to lack of incentives and closeness to LA. And now there is the expanding Internet and VOD—
All these things hurt. Labs are closing. Technicolor is closing in Los Angeles. They are not going to be producing any prints in Los Angeles, maybe Deluxe is—but Technicolor will be doing it out of Canada. Certainly, Bay Area film is alive and relatively well [laughs] compared to other areas—particularly in documentaries.
You mentioned you want to talk about these filmmakers [up-and-coming luminaries]. I don’t know who the best is to talk about what is going on here. There is some one who has a film she wants us to show from San Anselmo, a film called ‘Absent,’ on fathers who are absent. Tiffany Shlain has her documentary coming out. What is really good is Phil Kaufman and Peter Kaufman are working on an HBO film about Hemingway.
That is definitely a good sign. If you would create a brand, that is the sort of thing what you want: 'On the Road,' Hemingway, alternative views—you know, Bohemian, hippie, arty…would be the sort of thing we would be good at. So I think there is good reason that Phil is doing it here. Evidently, he really pushed for it.
There used be some local distributors here, it is kind of tough, you know. There was one in Marin—Tara Releasing [active till the'90s, big release, ' Amazonia: Voices from the Rainforest, 1991]—but I wouldn’t say I would categorize them as distributing Bay Area Films. But if you dissect it, there is a Bay Area sensibility that has been affected by all the great artists that have come through Golden Gate, whether it is Jack Kerouac or Francis Coppola. It is really interesting, the stuff he is doing now—didn't Francis just announce a film?
I didn't hear but I thought 'Tetro' was pretty damn good [Fishkin was referring to the rumor that Coppola was producing 'On the Road,' see article 'SF Film Business Explodes'].
It was really good. It was at the Rafael.
(Left to Right) David Karger, senior writer for Entertainment Weekly and Oscar reporter for Access Hollywood, actress Amy Adams, who stars in 'The Fighter,' one of MVFF's big premieres this year, and Mark Fishkin before taking the stage at the Rafael. photo: CFI
The critics didn't love it.
They liked it more then the last one.
That is true, but the last few were... It seems like he is back in the saddle.
Our intent is to always have a really balanced schedule at the Mill Valley Film Festival. We will include the best of the art house [releases]—even in our early years, we did that. Our second or third year, we opened with Phil Kaufman’s 'The Wanderers.'
We also did Caleb Dashenal's film, you know? The cinematographer who has two very famous daughters, who are actresses now? We opened with a studio film he directed, [The Escape Artist (1982)], it was an interesting film. The history of [Mill Valley] is of larger art films, quirky international films, experimental films. It is kind of a tradition for us.
That is really the Bay Area identity; it is all here. You have LA right there, the art filmmaker tradition and the documentaries. It seems to me that is a magical mixture that very few other places could duplicate.
How much is related to this beautiful area we call home and that artists gravitate to.
One of the ironies is: sometimes, when life is too easy, it is not that good for the arts.
Un hunh.
That was the beautiful thing about ‘Touching Home’[CFI Releasing's first film] is that even though [the Logan brothers] are from Marin, which we think of as the easy life, they had a very hard life.
It is another part of Marin that we don't really hear about.
They were incredible; they really made it work, getting Ed Harris on board, doing it mostly themselves.
Sheer force of will.
That is what I love about writing for CineSource, the drama of the filmmaker. It is a heroic story, virtually every single one.
Every one is a miracle. Speaking of miracles, I recently asked Rob Nilsson what he has on board. He has five films in his editing room! Here is a guy who won the award for best narrative first feature at Sundance, the best first feature at Cannes. He is just starting to get retrospectives in prominent festivals around the world. It is amazing that Berlin or Cannes haven't done a retrospective of his work.
He is a local treasure, a continuation of the Cassavetes and Warhol school—although he doesn't like to be grouped with Warhol.
It is amazing he can get it all done.
Of films you showed from the Bay Area in this year's Mill Valley, did anything stick in your mind?
Well, it is hard to, one, remember, and, second, because we don’t put them in a category. I will go through the list see if anything really popped up for me.
There are always films that I show and you say, 'I wish more people would have seen that.' I wish more people had seen 'Nowhere Boy' [the 2009 film by Brit Sam Taylor-Wood about John Lennon] or, a few years ago, 'Control' [the 2007 film, also a British offering, about the band Joy Division]. It is great they made a remake of that Scandinavian vampire film ['Lat Den Ratte Komma In,' 2008].
Richard Peterson [Fiskin's associate at the CFI] and I were both in Berlin and we both wind up at an empty screening of that film at 9 o'clock in the morning. We showed it at the festival—I wish more people would've seen it. Hollywood thought enough of it to remake it ['Let the Right One In,' 2010], but what about the original?
Are you seeing any sort of trends of filmmaking?
Now that more people have access to make films that doesn't mean there are better films. I think eventually there might be, because younger people know the visual language innately. But writing a screenplay, making a great film, it is a difficult thing to do. You know, if you look at these three guys—Alfonso Couron, Guillermo del Torro and Alejandro Gonzales Inniratu—why are some of the most exiting films today coming out of Mexico?
Something about the intensity of Mexican life and the tradition of quality cinema?
I had Alejandro [Gonzales Inniratu] on the stage for the third time this year, I guess I should have asked him.
What inspired you to start the festival?
The Telluride, as I have acknowledged, was a great influence for me. I was at the first Telluride Film Festival—the first ten, in fact. It influenced me enough that when I saw Mill Valley and the great amount of filmmakers, and the lack of anything interesting at commercial venues, and this incredible charming town—kind of oozed charm, literally. There were so many artists and writers who were living there, not just filmmakers. You could point to the house where Coppola lived when he was making 'The Godfather' [1972], and where Lucas wrote 'American Grafitti' [1973], in the carriage house, and John Korty's office was down the street. And Michael Ritchie's office was upstairs from what is now D'Angelos. And where James Broughton shot ‘The Bed.’
‘The Bed’! I love James Broughton.
A wonderful film. Well, [laughs] I guess it is time for you to go to bed [referring to the interviewer's bad cold] and for me to finish my work before I have to leave town tomorrow.