The four-day event will screen more than 50 classic films and include discussions and question-and-answer sessions with a remarkable slate of special guests, including Mel Brooks, Luise Rainer, Ernest Borgnine, Alec Baldwin, Eva Marie Saint, Tony Curtis, Jon Voight, Martin Landau, Buck Henry, Eli Wallach, Peter Bogdanovich and many others.
Grauman's Chinese Theatre is Festival's Hub
TCM's primetime host Robert Osborne, the former actor and film industry columnist, welcomed visitors Thursday night at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. The fabled movie palace is among several Hollywood-area venues where films and events will be screened.
Perhaps the real stars of the festival are the good-natured, self-confessed film geeks who traveled cross-country -- during a bitter recession -- to hear Hollywood greats tell stories out of school and describe working on some of the best films ever to come out of American movie studios.
Nicole Watson and Vincent Hemmeter arrived this week from Worcester, Massachusetts, where they own and operate a trio of bars and restaurants -- one of them Nick's, named not only for Nicole but also for the saloon from It's a Wonderful Life.
Robert Osborne is "Uncle Bobby"
"We refer to Robert Osborne as 'Uncle Bobby,'" Vincent said with a smile, seated beside Nicole on a divan in the makeshift lounge Club TCM, situated at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, the festival's home base.
Nicole, a former stage costume designer, was thrilled when, after arrival, one of Osborne's producers invited her to watch the TCM front man shoot some host introductions for the channel. "That was really neat," Nicole said, grinning.
The couple was especially interested in seeing the restored 1954 A Star is Born, along with Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (celebrating its 50th anniversary this year), Midnight Cowboy, a special cartoon program and even a live tribute to Esther Williams featuring synchronized swimmers at the Roosevelt pool.
Sunset Blvd. Location Tracked Down By Fan
John Kester came in from Phoenix, where he writes screenplays when he isn't at his day job working security at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. "This is the closest that you're gonna see these movies the way they were when they were new," he said.
Kester spent part of Thursday afternoon tracking down the real-life apartment building of the fictional Joe Gillis (played by William Holden) in Sunset Blvd., another classic screening at the festival.
In case you're curious, the Alta Nida apartments are on Ivar St., a few blocks from the festival.
Kester's key films at the four-day event include Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and, because he's a traditionalist, Casablanca. "I'm obsessed," he freely admitted, "with the whole movie thing."
Virginia Fan Obsessed with Fritz Lang's Metropolis
Susan Olson is a former lawyer from Mount Jackson, Virginia, where she cares for her ailing father. "The one big film I came to see is the Metropolis restoration," she said proudly. She recounted in detail the long, complex restoration history involving the Fritz Lang silent. The festival's newly-restored version includes 10 minutes of footage discovered in Argentina in 2002.
Meantime, Karen Bender of Raleigh, North Carolina, is a self-described Hitchcock fanatic most interested in Saboteur, perhaps in part because co-star Norman Lloyd will be on hand to talk about the picture. Also high on her list of festival screenings and discussions are Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons and the Gene Tierney vehicle Leave Her to Heaven.
Back home, Bender is on the board of Cinema, Inc., a Raleigh non-profit that stages monthly screenings of vintage Hollywood films. For Bender, who works in customer service for an employment staffing agency, these movies are a way to remember and honor her mother. "When I was a little kid, my mom and I would watch them together. She insisted I watch them," she said wistfully.
As the hours counted down to the festival's start Thursday afternoon, a forlorn woman sank deep into a leather chair in the Roosevelt lobby. Christine Dimengo of Akron, Ohio was waiting, fretfully, for her room to be readied at the hotel.
Ohio Family Loves Some Like It Hot
She was hoping her husband Steve would show up; he'd taken a separate flight and was bringing the formal gown Christine planned to wear to a 5 p.m. festival party.
"I'm passionate about films," the stay-at-home mom sheepishly admitted, adding her three grown kids probably wouldn't understand her dream of going back to school for a master's degree in film.
Dimengo said among the many festival events, she's most interested in seminars on casting and location scouting -- plus the chance to see Osborne and actor Alec Baldwin in panel discussions. The duo have spent two seasons chatting about movies on the network's series The Essentials.
"When I heard about the festival, I just knew I had to go," Dimengo said, recounting how her whole family fell in love with Some Like It Hot during a vacation to the Hotel del Coronado, near San Diego, where key scenes were shot in 1959. It seems a hotel monitor played the film on an endless loop. "The first night, the kids got hooked on it. We were there over a week and watched it again and again. We've gone back to the Del at least three more times."
Presumably, they're thrilled that the film's co-star, Tony Curtis, will be at the screening to talk about co-stars Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon, plus writer-producer-director Billy Wilder.
But Dimengo said Steve was really lured to the festival by the prospect of seeing the Sergio Leone spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Viva la difference.
Barry M. Grey - Barry M. Grey is a non-fiction TV writer-producer in Los Angeles whose love of classic film borders on the dangerously obsessive.
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