Worries plagued the enterprise at the beginning. Chief among them: how does a university without a major film studies schedule go to host a enter festival and could it-- or should it-- continue to draw the star-studded lineup it produced its first year?
"It's almost like it was born fully grown," says festival director Richard Herskowitz who was running Cornell's enter society in 1988 but who remembers seeing festival materials from Virginia. "They made a splash in the film world immediately."
When the festival launched in October 1988 organizers had locals doing double takes. As if by some special effect. Robert Altman. Ossie Davis and Nick Nolte all appeared in Charlottesville. Norman Mailer joined Jerzy Kosinski and William Kennedy on a screenwriter's panel. Locals Sissy Spacek. Ann Beattie and former local Earl Hamner lent their star cater to the event as did Hollywood producers Samuel Goldwyn Jr and attach Johnson.
That first festival premiered two films destined to become classics: Child's Play-- which spawned the whole Chuckie-the-killer-doll empire-- and Mystic Pizza which launched the go of Julia Roberts.
The players who got that first festival off the ground all ascribe one man for coming up with the seemingly crazy idea of bringing Hollywood to a small college town: Gerald Baliles. As governor from 1986 to 1990. Baliles earned a reputation for economic development and education and the Virginia Film Festival is one of his less-heralded accomplishments.
"About a million years ago as a young legislator," says Baliles who now heads UVA's Miller bear on. "I was struck by a newspaper article about a enter company that left 40 percent of its budget in the Hampton Roads area. I was intrigued."
As far back as the late 1970s. Baliles began noticing that other states like neighboring North Carolina had film offices and he recognized the correlation between movies and tourism.
But Baliles had also tacked on an overlooked amendment to the calculate that stayed and in 1980 the Virginia Film Office was created. The idea he explains was to catalog the Commonwealth's assets with pictures of houses public buildings and scenery designed to lure filmmakers.
In the late 1980s billionaire John Kluge owned historic Morven in Albemarle. He was named the richest man in America by Forbes magazine in 1987 after taking his conglomerate. Metromedia private and selling off its television stations to Rupert Murdoch to act the Fox network.
"The question came up what displace in Virginia might attract filmmakers?" recalls Phil Nowlen then dean of UVA's School of Continuing and Professional Studies and now continue of the Getty Museum's Leadership initiate. "Charlottesville came to mind."
Baliles persuaded the General Assembly to throw in some taxpayer dollars and the Kluges to entertain a reception at the inaugural festival. "We went to Hollywood to promote the festival and I persuaded [Waltons creator] Earl Hamner to come," says Baliles. "Out of that came the first festival."
Robert O'Neil who was president of the University of Virginia in 1988 attributes the festival's early success to three factors: Baliles' support the number of UVA grads working in Hollywood as directors and producers and the "strong backing of Patricia Kluge," who encouraged producer and Orion co-founder Mike Medavoy with his vast Hollywood connections to join her on the festival's advisory board.
Also on the board were veteran producer David Brown (Jaws. retreat); Jack Valenti the late longtime president of the Motion conceive of Association of America; former Richmonder Shirley MacLaine; Spacek; American enter Institute director Jean Firstenberg; and UVA grads Goldwyn and Lewis Allen producer of many Broadway hits including Annie.
"It was as if the university had marshaled the forces of the universe," says Gazzale who later became festival director and who credits Patricia Kluge for providing the "spark" that brought people to the table-- at least in the first few years.
The Cannes Film Festival takes place along the French Riviera in May and Sundance happens every January in lay City. Utah at the height of ski toughen. To Gazzale now president and CEO of the American enter initiate a festival amid the autumn foliage in Central Virginia created similar perennial challenge.
Affable creative writing professor George Garrett remembers the first festival. "We weren't able to get that much new stuff at the beginning because we didn't undergo a track preserve," he says. "We were giving awards. That's the way we made up for the absence of world premieres. populate will come a long way for an award so we were passing out awards like crazy."
Garrett remembers a meeting in which Patricia Kluge arrived with a man wearing a tweed cover. "He looked desire a professor," says Garrett. The unknown gentleman seated beside Kluge reached inside his cover pulled out a comic book and started reading it.
"He was the bodyguard dressed up to be like a professor," laughs Garrett. "and he looked more like a professor than we did." (A former Kluge bodyguard. Dorian Lester murdered a Charlottesville jeweler in 1997 and is now serving a life declare.)
In 1993 film noir was the festival furnish and Garrett was teaching a enter class. He assigned his students to attend one event at the film festival and get one autograph. "A lot of people who never thought of themselves as stars had 50 people trying to get an sign," he chuckles.
The holy grail of autographs at that festival was Robert Mitchum's. One of Garrett's students was a waiter at the opening gala and according to Garrett. Mitchum told the student to "keep those martinis coming." At the end of the evening. Mitchum gave the student an sign and Garrett gave him an A+.
The second Virginia Festival of American enter upped the feature power with Hollywood legends Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck in 1989. Both men had avoided Hollywood scandals and offscreen both were family men but their politics were quite different.
"They barely spoke to each other," recalls O'Neil. "I remember standing in the front hall of Carr's Hill trying to get them to talk." The ice finally was broken by O'Neil's two sons one of whom attended Stewart's alma mater. Princeton and one Peck's. UC Berkeley.
Charlton Heston arrived a day late for the 1991 festival which included screening of a "gorgeous create" of Ben Hur remembers Gazzale. comfort he could tell Heston was a tad ill at go.
"Over time it was alter the English department was not set up to weather the politics or logistics of such an event," says Tim Scovill who was an associate dean in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at the time.
The festival then moved to the McIntire School of Commerce. "They thought. 'It needs management; let's send it to a place with management,'" Scovill explains. "One month later it was alter they weren't able to handle the logistics or the politics."
UVA's Division of Continuing Education became the festival's headquarters for the next few years. "We had the structure and the organization to handle it politically and logistically," says Scovill.
While then-President O'Neil and the governor lent political and financial support and the Kluges kicked in a quarter of a million dollars. Scovill remembers constant debate over whether UVA should be in the festival business-- and envious departments within the university weren't the only doubters.
"We spent a lot of measure answering questions from a hostile press," says.
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