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Monday
29Sep2008

The Scottsdale International Film Festival (October 3 - 7)

DateMonday, September 29, 2008 at 4:47PM
Seventeen days after the attacks on 9/11, Amy Ettinger christened the first ever Scottsdale International Film Festival. It has grown every year, and has featured early opportunities to see Oscar-winning films like The Queen, and nominees like Babel, Lars and the Real Girl, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and The Kite Runner.

This year, the Scottsdale International Film Festival will include What Just Happened? with Robert De Niro, Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, Humboldt County, Dark Matter with Meryl Streep, Phoebe in Wonderland, the documentary Flow: For Love of Water, and the country music bio-pic Crazy, among nearly 20 others.

The festival runs October 3 - 7 at Harkins Camelview in Scottsdale, Arizona, with special screenings at the legendary Valley Art in Tempe.

We recently had a chance to catch up with the very busy Executive Director of the Scottsdale International Film Festival, Amy Ettinger, as final preparations were being made.

It's the eighth year of the festival, so how is it different from in years past?

We started in a different place in that we became a non-profit, a 501C-3. And that brought us some attention and some decent contributions, so that we could expand. Contributions led to the ability to do more, which led to the ability to sell more.

Which is good for next year.

Hopefully. I mean, I don't want to get ahead of myself. Every year it's a whole new world. We're recreating with the economy every damn year I do this festival.

We're going do a performance with the star of Crazy, his name is Waylon Payne (he played Jerry Lee Lewis in Walk the Line). And oh my God, is this guy good. He plays the character of Hank Garland in the film and he does a very admirable job of it, and he's a brilliant genius of a guitar player. It made me want to buy the album and I don't even like country music. So, I'm very excited to have Waylon performing Saturday night after his film plays, but it should be also said that he's playing his own material.

I remember talking to you a few years ago, when you had Babel and The Queen in your festival just around the time that their Oscar pushes started to gain steam, and I thought that was such a huge feather in the cap of the festival. Of the five Best Picture nominees that year, two of them were in your festival, and you only have a couple dozen movies each year.

I'm sure your audience has to recognize what a great thing that is, what a great addition those kinds of films are to your programming, even though they're studio films with stars and budgets and everything. Have you noticed a difference when you add movies like that to the festival slate?

Definitely. For a few years I didn't do that. But the Toronto International Film Festival, for lack of a better word, mentored me. They came here for four years running, they sent films, they sent filmmakers - and they showed up here on a handshake; I paid them not one a single cent - and they came here four years in a row and watched what was going on. They coached me to the next level and the next level and the next level, and the thing they kept saying is, "You've got to get some studio releases, you've got to get some Hollywood releases in here."

And I said, "Oh, that's just so dumb. Why would people pay to see a movie at my festival when it will be in out in a week or a month?" And they said, "Just do it, and you'll see what we mean. It'll create a whole new audience for you." I was pretty stupid for arguing with them about it, but the year we did Babel and The Queen was the first year we brought in studio films, and it killed! Brought a whole new audience in.

And you're bringing Mike Leigh into town (for his film Happy-Go-Lucky).

Yeah. There are quite a few people who don't get how huge this is, and what an incredible opportunity this is. And Miramax isn't parading him into every city across the United States.

Nor do I think he'd want to paraded into every city.

No. And Miramax feels like they've gotten great publicity for their films at our festival that have kind of jumpstarted their gates, you know, when they finally do roll the films out. And I'm just so flattered and honored and excited.

He's such a versatile director. To me what's amazing is, yeah, I know he's got an Oscar nomination and all that, but he's just so uncompromising, and he never plays by anyone else's rules. For example, Spike Lee can make Inside Man, which is a big Hollywood thing, and then he'll go make a movie for himself. And I don't get the sense that Mike Leigh wants to make a movie for anybody else.

In fact, I get the sense that Mike Leigh wants to make the movie his actors want to make with him. And he does that over and over again. It's a very singular approach, a la Woody Allen, who always has his formula, but the collaboration is just far more than Woody Allen or any of the other directors. And Happy-Go-Lucky sounds like it could be a bit of a departure for him, but I don't believe it.

Is the festival what you thought it would be when you launched it back in 2001? I know you added events and screenings throughout the year; were those always on the agenda?

No, when I started the festival the plan was, "Let's throw a film festival and see if anyone comes!" I'd been doing the gay film festival at that point for six or seven years, eight years, I don't know. So film festivals are in my blood; I know how to do that.

Very shortly after that, I started having delusions of grandeur, thinking I could do something year-round. Maybe I was deluded then, because some of the initial attempts didn't go as well as they needed to.

But clearly, they're working now. And as it has grown, does it still represent the kind of festival you wanted it to be?

Well, I never, ever wanted to be a Sundance or a Telluride or a Toronto. I wanted to be a Scottsdale. It's never been a place to do film deals. It's never been a kind of destination event. It's always been an audience festival in my head.

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AuthorColin Boyd | | in | Print ArticlePrint Article | | CommentPost a Comment |

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