Ojai Valley News Blog

David Shor, chairman of the Ojai-Ventura International Film Festival, welcomes guests to the 2009 event Saturday night at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa. Photo by Scott Wintermute

By Nancy Gross
The Ojai-Ventura Film Festival is no copycat film festival. Many times throughout the weekend, participants expressed pleasure at being part of this singular festival’s 2009 event.

At Saturday’s awards gala it was remarked that there really isn’t another film festival that kicks off with a golf tournament. Moreover, Mike Donohue conceived a clever plan that put the golf tournament in a class by itself. Donohue must be a father, because he said he “worked out the plan with care bears and mock-ups.” Players in the Celebrity Golf Classic rotated six times, giving them a chance to be grouped with six different celebrities during the course, with one participant commenting that he’s been in about 100 golf tournaments, and none were managed as well as this one.

Maureen McCormick, who was the “Brady Bunch’s” Marsha in family rooms all over America in the 1970s, said, “It’s been glorious. It’s been Shangri-La. They wanted me to golf. I don’t know how to golf and I didn’t want to hold up the game. So they decided I could just be there to cheer people on.”

Ojai’s own Malcolm McDowell, who heads up the golfing, is going to be in a film based on Michael Murphy’s book “Golf in the Kingdom,” a classic book in the style of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” and known by golfers. The filmmakers chose a Mackenzie golf bag to be carried by character Shivas Irons, and Todd Rohrer, president of Mackenzie Golf Bags, was happy to respond when McDowell requested he attend the Celebrity Golf Classic and bring a bag for the silent auction.

The first screening of “The Most Dangerous Man in America” kept a good part of the audience around for the question-and-answer period, and Daniel and Patricia Ellsberg managed to make the evening warm and intimate, even when it was getting colder and colder on the lawn at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa. Ojai Valley News owner Bill Buchanan was eager to thank the Ellsbergs for having kept him out of Vietnam, as their bravery helped end the war when his draft time was approaching.

Filmmaker James Savoca, who brought “Around June” to the festival, enjoyed the friendliness of Ojai, and the generosity of Steve Grumette opening his home. Some other filmmakers echoed the sentiment from Saturday night’s awards ceremony podium that Ojai was the friendliest of the festivals they’ve attended.

Ojai Mayor Joe DeVito and Ventura Mayor Christy Weir were in attendance at the Lifetime Achievement and awards ceremony at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa.

Sheila Dvorak, associate producer, assistant director and acting coach for the winner of Best Narrative Feature, “Children of Invention,” said, “Ojai is certainly the most enthusiastic crowd.” Dvorak has a long history working with director Tze Chun, and spoke of the timeliness of the film on account of the current economy: “It tells the story of what it is really like to struggle, not sure if you are going to get it.” The film is loosely autobiographical for Chun.

Dvorak told the audience at a Sunday morning screening of the film that the children who acted so convincingly in the film had no prior acting experience, and that freshness comes through in the low budget but high quality movie. She added, “They both have agents now, and 8-year-old Crystal Chiu has recently been on ‘Sesame Street’ and met Michelle Obama.” The “Sesame Street” segment has Mrs. Obama planting a garden along with Elmo and a few children, and can be found on You Tube.

“Fenceline” won for Best Narrative Short. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for Best Student Film went to “Acholiland,” and the Best Animated Film award went to “Red Rabbit,” a German film about a man coping with an enormous purple bunny in his apartment.

For the Best Student Film, Panavision gave a $60,000 package to “Acholiland,” and Suzanne Lazotte of Panavision said, “We really like to support this film festival because they have emphasized camera equipment usage and artistic vision.”

Grumette presented the award for the film that best fit the festival theme of “Enriching the Human Spirit Through Film”: “Garbage Dreams,” about two boys born into Cairo’s trash trade, and surviving by recycling in the world’s largest garbage village.

The Best Documentary Short honored Ojai and Rich Reid for the film “Watershed Revolution. Reid accepted the award, saying, “I did a short documentary about our water, and never expected this!”

Ojai’s three-time Oscar nominee Diane Ladd presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to Haskell Wexler, and she spoke of how, when in 1984, she was starring in “Alice,” she had been asked to visit Latin America with Bella Abzug and others. “What I saw, what we all saw, shattered our belief in our country’s policies, but not a voice was speaking up. Then in 1985 Haskell came out with ‘Latino.’ That I get to come here tonight and present an award to this incredible talent who has held a mirror up to us all … I’ve always thought that you could not do great works unless you let that greatness into yourself.”

And Ojai’s Peter Strauss, fondly remembered for his roles in “The Jericho Mile,” “Rich Man, Poor Man,” and others lit a match and encouraged the audience to join with him in mimicking the “Mission Impossible” theme as he brought Robert Hays onto the stage to present the festival’s other Lifetime Achievement Award to Peter Graves.

Graves’ business manager of 54 years also spoke about his first collaboration with Graves, and how Graves’ reply to the offer was, “Let’s do it.”

This has been the longest artist-manager relationship ever in Hollywood.

The 83-year-old Graves got his star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame on Oct. 30. He honored his wife Joan, of 59 years, from the Ojai-Ventura Film Festival podium, telling how “she was holding my hand when it needed holding, and there were certainly times it did, and applauding when things were going right.”

Graves also said, “The film industry has a uniqueness to it in that you live a whole number of lives, with each production you do. You become a member of an entity, a film company. It is exciting.

“And you become a family in the amount of time it takes you to wrap a project. And then you go through it again. With other kinds of work you don’t get that completeness of a subject that you get doing a picture.

“You never really retire from this business, unless they make you retire. I must be on a roll that I’m still doing this. Well, that’s a wrap!” Graves said as he descended the stage to visit with admirers and colleagues as dessert was served.