Runnin' Wild

Robert Osborne's Classic Film Festival

originally published March 21, 2007

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The earliest days of the cinema are wound up in a convoluted web of competing, oddly-named machines and mediums dreamed up by dozens of hucksters, geniuses, savvy businessmen, and amateur enthusiasts, all of whom seemed to stumble upon strikingly similar ideas at roughly the same time. Consequently, pinning down the origin of arguably the most substantial advance in mass media over the past century and a half has proven nearly impossible. Among the swarm of landmark dates in the art that crowd the final decade of the 19th century, however, one of the most definitively important was Mar. 22, 1895. On that date, two brothers, aptly named Lumière (as in "light"), debuted 45 seconds of film showing workers leaving their recently-deceased father’s photography factory. On Mar. 22, 2007, 112 years to the day after that historic screening, Athens will host the opening ceremonies of an event celebrating the art that sprung from that milestone: the third annual Robert Osborne’s Classic Film Festival.

While the Festival by comparison is still quite young, the idea for it goes back a good deal further. A decade ago, in his old stomping grounds around the University of Chicago, Festival director Dr. Nathaniel Kohn had the idea to screen an uncut, 70mm version of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to commemorate the day the movie’s technological antihero HAL 9000 came online. The response to the screening was so overwhelmingly positive that Kohn and a fellow Urbana native and well-known film critic decided to turn the one-off screening into an annual event. Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival proved such a success that Dr. Kohn - now a professor at the University Georgia, director of the Peabody Awards, a prolific writer on film and mass communication, and the producer of such films as Zulu Dawn and last year’s locally-made Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee Somebodies - saw no reason the prospects for a similar festival in Athens shouldn’t be equally bright.

Dr. Kohn hit upon the idea of showing films with which most people had at least passing familiarity, but, for one reason or another, might never have enjoyed in their full vitality and vibrancy. “Our goal,” says Kohn, “is to introduce these films as they were meant to be seen.” To this end, he enlisted Robert Osborne to host and curate the Festival. As Dr. Kohn notes, Osborne “has probably seen more films than anyone on the planet and has impeccable taste in motion pictures.” Osborne is well-known as the host of Turner Classic Movies, author of 75 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards and also for his stint as the Academy's celebrity greeter on the red carpet for the past two years. His consummate suitability for the job, however, was due in large part to the encyclopedic knowledge of cinematic history, both on- and off-screen, which he has amassed as a film critic, historian and journalist.

Over the past two years, Mr. Osborne has invited many of his acquaintances, covering a broad swath of the movie-making industry, to share the Classic Center stage with him. Among the guests this year who’ll be talking with Mr. Osborne are comedic chameleon, Second City alumnus, and actor in, quite literally, hundreds of roles (most notably as a Christopher Guest stalwart) Fred Willard; Marni Nixon, who was the entrancing, lyrical voice behind Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr and Natalie Wood in many of the golden-era movie musicals and will be signing copies of her recent well-received autobiography; and Colleen Camp, whose extensive resume includes films as disparate as Wayne’s World and Apocalypse Now . The Festival will also give less immediately recognizable, but still vastly influential voices from the industry an opportunity to share tales and insights from behind the scenes - such as the storied producer and winner of the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, Roger Mayer; prolific continuity supervisor Angela Allen; and director/ producer Marilyn Agrelo, whose film Mad Hot Ballroom will also be featured. Further, several of these guests, alongside distinguished UGA professor and film scholar Richard Neupert, will join in a panel discussion of the changing demands placed on, roles for, and nature of film actors past and present on Friday, Mar. 23 at 10:30 a.m. Dr. Kohn also mentions the Festival’s intention to build student “awareness of classic film and the incredible artistic and sociological treasure they represent.” Consequently the staff is both actively encouraging student participation in the Classic Film Festival and securing class time so the guests can speak directly to students at the University. At its core, Kohn notes, this festival serves as an opportunity to “bring the University and the local community together in a major cultural event.” Dr. Kohn sees evidence that the Festival has put down abiding roots in its Athens. “You hear people in bars and restaurants talking about the Festival. It takes about three or four years for a film festival to fully invade the public consciousness, and we are just about there.” One of the more obvious reasons for the Festival’s growing presence on the Athenian cultural landscape has been Mr. Osborne’s meticulous selection of films (see facing page for a roster of this year’s movies). As the “world’s foremost expert on the Academy Awards,” many of Mr. Osborne’s choices for this year, as has been the case during the past two, will be justly lauded, timeless, award-winning films. But, as Dr. Kohn rightly notes, “we each have our own definition of ‘classic’. These films happen to fall within Robert Osborne’s definition, and his is a pretty broad one. Robert’s goal is to provide a balanced program, with films that appeal to a wide range of individuals.” The distinction of classic has little to do with box office numbers or gold decorations and everything to do with the immediate and lingering effects they have on scores of people transported from a darkened theatre to a place and time flickering on the screen before them.

This alchemy of light and sound is precisely what sets Osborne’s festival apart from simply watching an old movie at home. Once again, under the deft hand of a master craftsman in the art of theatre technology (the appropriately-named James Bond) the Classic Center Theater will undergo a metamorphosis into a world-class cinema: a 60-foot, perfectly luminescent screen at the front; a magnificent sound system on all sides precisely tuned to the space; and a sophisticated 35mm projector for the pristine archival prints of the films upon which the Festival’s directors insist. The setup, says Kohn, “is state-of-the-art; we can’t make it better than that.” Many of the films in this year’s line-up were specifically chosen for their “widescreen and CinemaScope ratios” to take maximum advantage of the exceptional setup. In his welcome letter to Festival guests, Osborne recalls being awestruck, despite having seen the movie “probably 25 to 30 times,” at one such showing of Casablanca . “It’s rare these days when we get such an opportunity,” he muses. “As great as it is to be able to see films we love, or great films we’ve missed, on DVDs or via television screens, there is nothing quite like the impact of seeing them up there on a mammoth screen, sharing the experience with others.” Though the majority of attendees will likely have seen many if not all of the movies on the Festival’s bill, perhaps many times, few will have had the opportunity to see them with the vivid detail of the original prints, on a grand cinema screen, or in a room suffused with the electric pulse of a thousand other souls each engulfed in the collective experience. The magnetism of the relatively rare event hasn’t gone unnoticed in the wider film community, says Kohn. The Festival is “starting to bring film lovers from all over the country to Athens.” Ultimately, this sense of a shared encounter is the Festival’s central animus. The directors have planned a show of Ray Ruggeri of Cinemabelia’s exceptional movie poster collection to spark conversation in the lobby, a performance by the Georgia Children’s Chorus onstage before The Sound of Music , and a drawing for those willing to dress like Marilyn Monroe for the screening of Some Like it Hot with a prize from Watkinsville’s Ashford Manor Bed and Breakfast. Other local and regional businesses are also joining in on the act. Athens First Bank and Trust will give away a gift basket, as will Turner Classic Movies, for every evening of the Festival. AirTran Airways will give away two business-class roundtrip tickets to any location in the country on Mar. 24, and soon-to-be-opened local arthouse theatre Ciné will be giving away memberships. To Dr. Kohn, the broadness of the interest and the sense of community it fosters augur well for cinema in town. “Add what Film::Athens is doing, the opening of the Ciné theatre, and the various local productions and films made by Athenians,” he says, “and you have the foundation for a regional film center.” Recalling how a similar event in Austin turned that city, in a relatively short span of time, “into the third largest production location in the country; so we see Athens in a few years.” Indeed, considering the raft of local businesses and artists stoutly behind the Festival in its third year and the decidedly bullish recent history of movies produced in town, the collective synergy suggests that film - classic and cutting-edge, locally-shot and otherwise - as well as Robert Osborne’s Classic Film Festival itself, will remain fixtures in the Athens arts community for many years to come.

Brandon Waddell

Tickets are available at the Classic Center Box Office and at www.classiccenter.com. Admission to individual films is $10 (except The Man Who Would Be King , which is FREE!). Panel discussion on Friday, Mar. 23 at 10:30 a.m. is also FREE! Passes to all films are $60, $45 for students with valid ID. For more info, see www.grady.uga.edu/osbornefest.

WHAT: Robert Osborne's Classic Film Festival
WHERE: Classic Center Theater
WHEN: Thursday, Mar. 22–Sunday, Mar. 25
HOW MUCH: $10–$60

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Film Schedule

originally published March 21, 2007

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Some Like It Hot Thursday, Mar. 22 at 8:30 p.m.: (NR) 1959. Billy Wilder directed this runaway (literally), subversive screwball comedy starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and an absolutely iridescent Marilyn Monroe. Two down-on-their-luck musicians, Jerry (Lemmon) and Joe (Curtis), in Prohibition-era Chicago witness a mob hit in a garage and are soon running for their lives. They grab their chance to join an all-girl band on its way to a resort in Florida by dressing up like refined conservatory-educated ladies (Daphne and Josephine). On the train-ride South, Joe is immediately smitten with the voluptuous, sweet, but not terribly bright Sugar Kane Kowalski (Monroe), the singer and mandolin player for the ensemble. Things really get complicated in Florida, as Joe (Curtis doing a hilarious, dead-on impression of Cary Grant) masquerades as a shy millionaire to win Sugar's affections, while Jerry, er, Daphne is pursued by an amorous playboy (Joe E. Brown). Somewhere in all this, the mob guys show up and all hell breaks loose. This bawdy, gender-bending comedy was nominated for six Oscars. Monroe sings the spicy "Runnin' Wild" and what would become her signature song, "I Wanna Be Loved By You." Special invited guest will be former President and COO of Turner Entertainment, Roger Mayer .
Laura Friday, Mar. 23 at 1:30 p.m.: (NR) 1944. Otto Preminger ( Anatomy of a Murder ) is in peak form with this classic film noir. A beautiful career girl (Gene Tierney) is brutally murdered in her apartment with a shotgun blast to the face. The detective assigned to investigate, Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews, excellent as the square-jawed world-weary working class cop), spends time trying to figure out who she really was and why someone would want to kill her in such gruesome fashion. He interviews her friends, reads her diaries and starts to unravel what may have happened to her. Was it the handsome but dull-witted playboy fiancé (yes, that's right, Vincent Price before he was the king of horror), Laura's mentor, viper-tongued (and seemingly flamingly gay) gossip columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb, who received a well-deserved Oscar nod for his venomous performance) or someone else? Abetted by the haunting portrait of Laura that hangs in her apartment, McPherson begins to fall in love with the dead girl. A shocking revelation and many contrived plot twists later, the truth is revealed. But still, contrived or not, the film succeeds in spite of it all. Special guests at the screening will be Norm Aladjam and David Oppenheim .
The Man Who Would Be King Friday, Mar. 23 at 4:30 p.m. Special FREE! Matinee: (PG) 1975. Michael Caine and Sean Connery star in John Huston's epic adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's short story, "The Man Who Would Be King." Caine and Connery star as Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnahan, British ex-soldiers in India. Having had enough of civilization, the two set out for Kafiristan, a country where no white man has been since Alexander the Great. Their mission: to become kings of the native population, a feat they deem easy as they are white men, and therefore superior in every way. Soon, Dravot sets himself up as not only a king, but a deity, and falls for a beautiful local girl (Caine's real-life wife Shakira). An explosive climax is followed by a poignant and ultimately very satisfying ending. (How many present-day action movies can claim such?) This film is counted as one of the best action-adventure films ever made - non-stop action, gorgeous exotic locales, but also suspense, wit, drama and compelling lead actors with great chemistry. Christopher Plummer stars as the young Kipling who records Daniel and Peachy's remarkable story. Angela Allen , continuity supervisor for the film (and who also worked on a total of 14 of Huston's films) will be present at the screening.
Waiting For Guffman Friday, Mar. 23 at 8:30 p.m.: (R) 1996. The curse of living in a fame-obsessed culture is that everyone with the least bit of talent (and plenty without) never feels more than a hair’s breadth from their due acclaim, yet, as in the Beckett play that serves as a basis for this devilishly funny mockumentary, nothing ever seems to happen. In Waiting for Guffman, one group of such people and their effete director Corky St. Clair (comic mastermind Christopher Guest, who was also the film’s real director) plan an elaborately farcical musical theatre extravaganza to honor their modest hometown, Blaine, MO. Blaine is known for its bumbling founder’s mistaken belief that he’d reached the Pacific, UFO landings and renowned stool production. The painfully familiar small community theatre cast, including such Guest movie regulars as Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Fred Willard (special guest at the screening) and Parker Posey (as, respectively, a coke-bottle spectacled dentist, a husband-and-wife travel agent team, and a Dairy Queen employee) are convinced that Corky’s long-past off-off-off-off Broadway connections have secured them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the shape of one Mort Guffman. Throughout, the movie percolates with instantly quotable off-the-cuff dialogue and builds to one of the most anti-climactic climaxes in recent movie history.
Election Saturday, Mar. 24 at 1:30 p.m.: (R) 1999. Tom Perotta’s second novel, Election , bristled with such flaying, immediately palpable satire that director and screenwriter Alexander Payne ( Sideways ) secured the rights for the film adaptation a full three years before the book even hit bookstores. The story focuses on an English teacher’s midlife self-destruction, a spiteful first-love breakup, and a nearly-apocalyptic student council election; all this done so deftly as to remind audiences of the essential similarity of everyone’s petty struggles and yet it remains viciously funny. Perotta’s star in the film world would take a few more years to rise to the heights it was destined for (he won an Oscar for his Sideways screenplay and got an Academy nod for Little Children this year). But the characters he created: cloying, duplicitous climber Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) driven by her controlling mother ( Colleen Camp , special guest at the screening); walking hornet’s nest of frustrated ambition Jim McAllister (a role that revived Matthew Broderick’s career); vindictive closeted lesbian cheerleaders, clueless jocks and disaffected hipsters, are timeless. This film rang such archetypal bells that Entertainment Weekly ranked it the 15th greatest High School movie in cinema in spite of its R rating. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and garnered three Independent Spirit Awards.
Mad Hot Ballroom Saturday, Mar. 24 at 4:30 p.m.: (NR) 2005. The sole documentary in this year's festival, Mad Hot Ballroom is to ballroom dancing what Spellbound was to spelling bees. This award-winning film from first-time director Marilyn Agrelo (who will be Mr. Osborne's special guest at the screening) follows a group of inner-city 11-year-old kids as they learn ballroom dancing, working their way to the city-wide competition. As with Spellbound , this film succeeds not just because of the competitive element, but because the children featured are so dynamic and interesting that the audience becomes invested in each of the fifth graders profiled. The viewer learns not just about the compulsory dancing class they must take, but about the amazing individual each child is. Caught somewhere between childhood innocence and teenaged cool, these New York kids are absolutely captivating.
An Affair To Remember Saturday, Mar. 24 at 8:30 p.m.: (NR) 1957. Itself a remake that was later remade (and prominently featured in Sleepless in Seattle ), An Affair to Remember is an odd mix of romantic comedy and weepy melodrama. In the film's first half, gadabout playboy Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant), engaged to an heiress, is traveling on a cruise-ship from the French Riviera back to the USA. He meets lovely, witty Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) and the two strike up an acquaintance that soon turns to love. Since Terry is also engaged, they agree at the end of the voyage to meet at the top on the Empire State building in six months to see if their love is genuine and if they should get married to each other. At this point, get out your handkerchiefs. Terry fails to show up at the lovers' rendezvous and they remain apart, separated by fate and their own foolish pride, for most of the rest of the film, until a coincidence (and a shawl) bring them inexorably together (as if you thought it wouldn't happen!). This film is ranked at No. 5 on the American Film Institute's Top 100 Love Stories. Actress and singer Marni Nixon , who provided Kerr's singing voice in the film (and in The King and I ) will be a special guest at this screening.
The Sound Of Music Sunday, Mar. 25 at 1:30 p.m.: (NR) 1965. Though one of the lesser known songs in the beloved score of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final musical collaboration, “I Have Confidence” is notable in The Sound of Music for one reason. As Julie Andrews, playing honey-voiced nun Maria who adopts the widower Baron von Trapp and his seven children, passes under an archway, the group of extras beyond contains the actual Maria von Trapp, upon whom the character is based. Also in that group are one of the original von Trapp children, and a grandchild. While hardly noticeable amidst the glorious Bavarian scenery and costumes, unsurpassed musical performances, and dancing as beautiful and carefree as any ever committed to celluloid, this moment is indicative of the kind of magic that earned the film five Academy Awards and 10 nominations. Partly as a result of the arresting juxtaposition of such instantly recognizable tunes as “Edelweiss,” “My Favorite Things," “Do Re Mi,” and the title song with the palpable family hardship and, more sinisterly, the threatening appearance of the Nazis in the second act, this classic remains, in adjusted terms, the third highest-grossing film of all time. Special guest is Marni Nixon , who played Sister Sophia in the film.