A CLOSER LOOK -- Newport Beach Film Festival: thumbs up

Alex Coolman

It was the last night of the Newport Beach Film Festival, and A.C. Lyles,

legendary silver-haired Paramount Pictures producer, was listing the

ingredients he considered necessary for cinematic success.

“In our business,” he said, “it’s obsession, obsession, obsession.”

As for the Newport festival, “I’ve never seen more people obsessed about

being in the picture business than there are here in this group,” Lyles

said, smiling grandly at his pronouncement.

It sounded a bit like booster-speak, like an assertion designed to make

listeners feel they were participating in something particularly

pleasant, perhaps even unique.

The remarkable thing was, it wasn’t an exaggeration.

The people who put together this year’s festival, working long, unpaid

hours and struggling with severe staffing limitations, are obsessed with

film.

And as for the festival itself, to listen to the filmmakers who

participated in it and the audiences who attended the screenings, it

really was a powerful and enjoyable event.

Though its organizers say they hope to make next year’s festival better,

the initial response from people who went to the eight-day series of

films, seminars and shorts, its just about unanimous.

Their thumbs are up. Way up.

More than a trip to the movies

Lyles wasn’t the only one conducting an analysis of the festival at its

closing ceremonies.

Larry and Mary Ann Eisenberg, whose short film “David Proshker” screened

at the Orange County Museum of Art April 1, explained their theory of the

event as they nibbled on hors d’oeuvres.

“Even though it’s a big fest, they really try to make it very personal

and family-like,” Mary Ann explained.

“Scott [Forrest, short program coordinator] and all the people took the

time to know who we were,” Larry added. “Clearly, they love films, and

that really shows through. It doesn’t feel like an industry thing, it

seems to be about genuine affection.”

One purely physical factor, which contributed to the personal quality of

this year’s event was the decision to hold the entire festival in Newport

Beach instead of spreading it around to other venues, as has been done in

years past.

Both filmmakers and organizers say they liked this arrangement.

“It’s a huge plus,” said festival spokesman Todd Quartararo, who has

worked on previous incarnations of the event. “It’s unanimous from

everybody that they really appreciated that.”

A difficulty unique to film festivals -- as opposed to gatherings like

sporting events or business conventions -- is that the people who come to

them don’t necessarily interact with or even see each other while the

main event is going on. Hundreds of people gather expressly to sit in the

dark and ignore each other.

For that reason, it’s particularly important, as Quartararo said, to give

festival goers “a sense of place.” A festival, for the viewer, needs to

feel like something more than a mere trip to the movies.

Room for improvement

Paul Davids, the director, screenwriter and producer of “Starry Night,”

the film that won the audience award for bestfeature, suggested that this

“sense of place” might be better served if festival films were shown in a

setting other than the Edwards Island cinemas, where most of the features

screened.

“It’s nice when a festival uses, for special events, a theater that

stands alone,” Davids said.

He also noted that some short directors were disappointed that the museum

of art screenings used video rather than projecting actual film.

But Davids said he was quite pleased with the overall feel of the fest.

Audience reactions in Newport Beach were more useful to him than they had

been in other cities where “Starry Night” had been shown.

“In Orange County, there’s a chance to test a film with a very mainstream

American audience,” he said. “Not necessarily the very urban audience you

have out of Boston or the erudite cinemaphiles that show up at the Los

Angeles (American Film Institute’s) film fest. In that sense, it’s

invaluable.”

Beyond the shadows

Lurking in the background of this general success story is the tale of

Jeffrey Conner, the man who ran the festival in previous years and who

declared bankruptcy last September. At the time, Conner’s bad fortune

might have spelled the end of Newport’s days as a film town.

Several people, who participated in the new festival, have suggested that

Conner deserves more credit than he has received in connection with this

year’s event. Newport Beach actor Pepe Serna singled Conner out in

remarks he delivered at the closing ceremonies.

“It’s because I know how much he put into it,” Serna said. “Heart and

soul, plus money.”

But if Conner’s name hasn’t been on many lips lately, that’s undoubtedly

because the new festival organization, headed by Gregg Schwenk, did an

impressive job of resuscitating the institution from the financial coma

in which Conner left it.

This year’s event, which attracted between 8,000 and 10,000 attendees,

looks like it will either break even or turn a small profit, Schwenk

said. For a year in which the goal was simply “to have a festival,” it’s

an encouraging outcome.

What’s to come

In the future, Schwenk said, merely balancing the books will no longer be

the goal.

“What we’re hoping is that we reach a critical mass where ticket sales

and merchandise allows us to propel the festival [financially] through

the upcoming year,” he said.

Some of that extra money, in Quartararo’s opinion, will need to go toward

getting some paid staff for festivals to come. The juggling act that the

board of directors performed this year, splitting time between their

festival positions and their paying jobs, is not one that is likely to be

successfully repeated.

“We’ll be burning people out quick if we don’t get a full-time managing

director,” he said.

For this year, though, the improbable came to pass. Short on time and

salaries, the festival succeeded on an ample supply of obsession.