Turning the klieg lights on three big events during a festival that boasts more than 200 movies is about as fair and balanced as, well, calling one film a year “best picture.”
And they’re not about to call off the Oscars, so the Starz Denver Film Festival plans to keep rolling out the red carpet for three big-tent extravaganzas during its 11-day run.
Tapping big names and big movies for a trio of high-profile parties has been a key festival strategy since 2002, when controversial documentary maker Michael Moore hosted a standing room crowd at “Bowling for Columbine.” Other main attractions that year included showings of the vibrant Salma Hayek vehicle “Frida” and an in-person tribute to Phillip Noyce, who that year boasted the excellent films “The Quiet American” and “Rabbit-Proof Fence.”
“That’s when we hit our stride,” said Britta Erickson, media and industry relations director for the Denver Film Society. “That was the first year of a real focus on red-carpet events, separate from the ‘body’ of the festival with all the movies playing at the Tivoli.”
A winning quality of the Denver festival is that organizers are open to acknowledging red carpet disasters or, at the very least, a series of unfortunate movie events. That same banner year of 2002 concluded with the large, bold-type footnote that Nick Nolte was supposed to show up and receive the Cassavetes award as an innovative filmmaker – but just after Nolte accepted the invitation, he was arrested for drunken driving and went into rehab. He never showed.
And Erickson admits 1999 was the true first foray into “big night” events when the festival expanded into the Denver Performing Arts Complex and the Buell Theater that can accommodate 2,800 patrons. Problem was, few people remember that year’s headliners: Sydney Pollack brought a mediocre “Random Hearts,” and “Snow Falling on Cedars” melted quickly in theaters.
Sean Penn amped up public reaction the following year, accepting the Cassavetes Award at the Buell. The night wasn’t close to a sellout, but his presence raised expectations for the kind of star power the Denver fest might attract.
For the past few years, planners have organized the schedule around three nights: An opening night, closing night and centerpiece or “big night,” each of which could feature a major film with talent present or an award recipient with a retrospective of career clips.
The festival has managed to top itself fairly consistently, setting up the 2006 casting for either ongoing triumph or quiet setback.
Last year’s campaign closed with the presence of Ang Lee and his “Brokeback Mountain,” and daytime appearances by author Annie Proulx, and screen adapters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Lee went on to win best director at the 2006 Oscars, and the adaptors won for their screenplay. The movie lost to “Crash” for best picture in a contest most observers assumed to be close.
The 27th Denver festival, in 2004, opened with star Jamie Foxx and director Taylor Hackford in person for “Ray.” Kevin Bacon accepted the Cassavetes Award, and Morgan Freeman closed events accepting the Mayor’s Award at a clips show. Foxx would win the best actor Oscar, and Freeman won best supporting actor for “Million Dollar Baby.”
“The glitz factor went up” as a result of those star-powered years, Erickson said. “We get that Hollywood feeling in the air for three nights.”
While planning the three big nights takes as much work as the rest of the 11-day schedule put together, the financial rewards are clear. Festival ticket sales have increased steadily in recent years, directly attributed to the bigger venues filled by higher-wattage star attractions.
“We were at capacity at the Tivoli,” Erickson said. “The growth has come in the red-carpet events.”
Ironically, the red carpet events are “the least interaction the audience will ever have with a director,” Erickson noted. The rest of the festival remains rooted in personal conversations between visiting directors, writers and actors at small Tivoli screenings where everyone can shake hands.
“People are willing to pay a higher ticket price for the high-profile events” – often a different crowd than dedicated festivalgoers – “and yet we feel like we can still serve our primary audience as a nonprofit,” Erickson said.
This year’s big-event lineup has too many question marks to support solid predictions. No featured festival movie comes in with as much juice as “Brokeback” did last year. The opening night film and visiting director, “Breaking and Entering” with Anthony Minghella, is a nice coup. Minghella is one of the smartest and most accomplished writer-directors going these days, already enjoying the critical success of “The English Patient,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Cold Mountain.”
Tim Robbins is also a nice “get” for the Cassavetes Award, having won the supporting Oscar in 2004 for “Mystic River.” Robbins stars currently in Noyce’s “Catch a Fire.”
The closing-night film is a potential winner, with acclaimed director Werner Herzog generating buzz once again with “Rescue Dawn.” The festival, though, is only dangling as-yet-unnamed talent to arrive with the movie on Nov. 18th.
Funny we should mention that, Erickson said. The hottest ticket on the opening day of sales was for the “Rescue Dawn” event, perhaps because of Herzog’s reputation or because of the mystery guests.
The risk of the big-event strategy is more articles exactly like this one, demanding to know which big star comes next. Of course the film festival wants Denver’s gossip columnists to print the boldfaced names, but they then must suffer the inevitable bullying of “Who ever heard of that guy? No one’s going to see that one.”
“The risk is directly related to the media,” Erickson said. “For every success we’ve had, we’ve had to outdo ourselves every year.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-954-1686 or at at mbooth@denverpost.com.
