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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 21, 1996)
| Page 3 Aggielife Film Festival reels in variety of talent The Blues Brothers is being shown on Friday, starring John Belushi and Dan Akroyd. By Amy Protas The Battalion H uge Hollywood hits are a staple of the local movie theaters. It’s not every day, however, that stu dents are able to experience indepen dent and local filmmakers in the Bryan- College Station area. The 3rd annual Texas Film Festival exposes students to those films that are not commonplace at A&M. In 1992, the chair of the MSC Film Society decided he wanted to exhibit films as an art form versus films as pure escapist material. Danny King, MSC Film Society chair and a senior mechanical engineering major, said the festival is the society’s way of pursuing that vision. “The festival is a fiye-day event that brings independent and Holly wood filmmakers to College Station to exhibit their films,” King said. “It gives us the opportunity to see films that won’t be shown at the Hollywood 16 Theater. This is the only chance to see these films.” Film Society members take a year to prepare for the festival. Directors submit their films and are chosen over the summer. This year, the society is incorporat ing new ideas to make the festival more educational for the audience. Amy Klinkovsky, MSC Film Society vice chair and a senior journalism ma jor, said the importance of the festival is the knowledge students can obtain by attending. “The most important aspect is that it exposes students to aspects that are lacking on the A&M campus,” Klinkovsky said. “We lack a radio, film and TV department. This exposes students to the film industry and gives students the opportunity to ask directors questions.” A workshop on Saturday is new to the festival this year. The director of Seeking the Cafe Bob, Jeff Stolhand, will talk about filmmaking in Texas and how to coordinate casting and bud geting for films. This is also the first year Texas films and short movies will be featured. Among the short movies are The Hardly Boys in Hardly Gold, featuring William Wegman’s weimaraner dogs. The Junky’s Christmas will be shown on Wednesday. William S. Burrows nar rates the film about a drug addict try ing to get high on Christmas. King said he is especially enthusiastic about the Texas-made film, Jacklight. “This is going to be it’s world pre mier,” King said. “It was filmed in Brenham with an Aggie as a producer.” Jacklight chronicles six high school friends whose lives are shaken up by a death. The other Texas-made film is ■ Seeking the Cafe Bob, which was was filmed in Austin. In the past, directors Spike Lee, Oliver Stone and John Waters have been featured speakers at the festival. This year, John Landis, director of The Blues Brothers and Animal House, will speak Friday. King said the society chose Landis to speak on Friday because he will attract college audiences. “We sat down this summer and came up with a list of filmmakers we wanted to come,” King said. “We looked at it from a college aspect. What types of films appeal to college students. He was co-writer and director of The Blues Brothers, so we call him ‘The Original Blues Brother’.” Wendy Vinzant, an MSC Film Soci ety member and a senior environmental design major, said Landis will be speak ing for free. “We used to go through the speaker bureau that gives a list of speakers,” Vinzant said. “John Landis contacted us and mentioned that the academy will send speakers and all we have to pay is for food and their hotel. It’s really exciting that there’s this program that allows speakers to come.” Landis will be bringing his own 35- millimeter film of Michael Jackson’s Thriller he directed in 1983. Vinzant said the video will bring stu dents back to their youth. “We thought it would be a great memory for the students,” Vinzant said. “It’s an added bonus because it was such a big thing when it came out.” The festival will end with II Postino (The Postman) on Sunday. Scott Stevenson, a movie buff and a senior management major, said he will be attending the festival because it is a unique opportunity at A&M. “I think it’s one of the best things at A&M,” Stevenson said. “They have a lot of cultural things here with the Opera and Performing Arts Society, but this is something different. It’s another av enue for filmmakers to present their films without having to have a Holly wood budget.” Klinkovsky said she hopes students will attend and experience films as an art form. “The main thing I would like people to get out of this is films as an art form,” Klinkovsky said. “There are so many ways to do films. There is this preconceived notion that you have to go to New York or California, but you don’t have to have a big budget to make good films.” Landis' career full of thrills and challenges By Michael Landauer The Battalion S even Voyages of Sinbad was the first movie direc tor John Landis ever saw. “I came home and asked my mother, ‘Who does that? Who makes the movies?”’ he said. “And she said, ‘The director.’ So at seven or eight, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.” Landis is speaking Friday night at the Texas Film Festival before a viewing of his film. The Blues Brothers. As a grown up, he has also directed Trading Places, An imal House, Amazon Women on the Moon, Coming to America and many others. But Landis’ career has not been limited to directing. “I’ve done every job you can do on a set except light ing director, director of pho tography and I never was a hairdresser,” he said. “And it was very good for me.” But menial jobs were also good for Landis when he was growing up in Los Angeles. As a mail boy at 20th Centu ry Fox Studios, Landis got his first taste of production. He worked around the sets of such TV shows as Batman and Lost in Space and movies like Beneath the Planet of the Apes. As a high school drop out, Landis admits he is not the perfect example of success. He risked his life sav ings, $30,000, to make his first movie, Schlock, in 1971. “We just raised the money and made the film with out a distribution company or anything,” he said. “It’s a very foolish thing to do.” It was six years until the release of Landis’ first major studio production, Kentucky Fried Movie. Given his success, Landis said people seem to forget these years, thinking instead that his career just took off af ter his first effort. “Well bulls—t,” he said. “I made a movie at 21, but the job I had after that was being a bus boy at Ham burger Hamlet.” Landis made it out of the chain restaurant busi ness and now finds himself dealing with a complex motion picture industry. Although he enjoyed a string of successes in the early ’80s, his 1984 production, Into the Night, taught him a valuable lesson about the business. “There are very few people in this country who can actually do what they want,” he said. “You don’t have the freedom or the power to do the movies you want (after a failure).” In discovering the reality of the business, Landis learned that the cliche that you’re only as good as your last picture is true. “What is so hateful about that is that ‘good’ in motion picture industry terms only means ‘money,’” he said. When making The Twi light Zone, an accident on the set killed three people. Ac cording to the FBI, the heli copter involved crashed three inches from where Landis was standing. Landis, along with four others, were sued for reckless endangerment in a long, sensationalized trial. The experience made Lan dis form a strong opinion about media incompetence. “People forget that journalism is in the same busi ness as entertainment — you sell soap,” he said. But the helicopter accident was not the first tragedy Landis faced as a director. The death of John Belushi had a large personal impact on Landis, who directed Belushi in The Blues Brothers. “John Belushi is someone I adored — I loved him,” Landis he said. “And on The Blues Brothers, some of it was very difficult because he was a drug addict, and we were concerned he was going to die. And that was very difficult, both work-wise and emotionally.” Landis said he has known others who have dealt with addiction and that the experience helped him deal with those people. “The only analogy I can think of is you’re standing on a pier and some guy’s drowning,” he said. “So you offer your hand, and they won’t take it. You throw a rope, and they won’t take it. “You put a boat in the water, and they won’t take it. You jump in, try to save them, and they punch you in the face. You do everything you can, and the guy drowns.” Despite attempts to help, Landis said some stories will always end tragically. “There’s an incredible feeling of helplessness, and ul timately it is up to the individual,” he said. “And John’s story was truly tragic because this is a great guy.” Landis said he encourages students to ask him about his experiences at Friday’s program, even if questions seem too personal. “People should know that they can ask me anything and I’ll answer candidly,” he said. “It sounds like bad advertising, but you are the future and anything I can do to help.” He also said he had a great time making The Blues Brothers despite the tragic story of Belushi’s death. “I don’t want to make it sound like it was difficult all the time — just sometimes John was f—ked up,” he said. “But we had a lot of fun making it.”
