Willamette Week online, OR
March 23 2005
Filming Portland
Four emerging local filmmakers-and one zany group-are producing
must-see cinema.
BY DAVID WALKER, BECKY OHLSEN, BRIAN LIBBY, NANCY ROMMELMANN & BYRON
BECK
The digital revolution leveled the playing field of filmmaking,
making it possible for anyone with a video camera and editing
software to create movies. Unfortunately, the bar of excellence has
also been lowered. It’s the same all over the country: Wannabe
auteurs who don’t know what an auteur is, but really want to direct.
Now we seem to live in an age when few people want to write the great
American novel, even fewer want to be president, but everyone wants
to make movies. Thanks to cheap technology, everybody can-it’s just
that not all of them will do it well.
Making movies is a privilege to be earned through an understanding of
filmmaking craft and style, not a right that comes with the purchase
of a Canon GL-1. Fortunately, our city boasts quite a few filmmakers
worthy of the term.
To celebrate the kickoff of the Longbaugh Film Festival, Willamette
Week’s third annual tribute to independent movies (see our complete
program guide in this issue), we’ve profiled a select group of
Portland’s emerging filmmakers. There’s James Westby, who has
attracted attention by drawing upon his own self-proclaimed film
geekiness, Beth Harrington, a guitar player who uses her own passion
in filming
stories about musicians, and Nick Peterson, whose quiet work reveals
his love of silent films. Then there’s Vance Malone, a fast-moving ad
guy by day who turns out intimate documentaries after hours, and
Cinema Queso, a group of 13 madcap movie types who have given
themselves the assignment of claiming artistic freedom, one short
film at a time.
Not all of these artists have work showcased in the Longbaugh
festival this year. But all of these Portlanders, along with their
Longbaugh peers, show the breadth and depth of what film can be. They
have earned their cameras-and they deserve an audience.
-David Walker
James Westby | Geeking out
BY BECKY OHLSEN
Everything ever written about James Westby quotes Roger Ebert calling
the director’s 1996 film Bloody Mary “a diabolical thriller in the
tradition of Blood Simple.” That’s high praise for any filmmaker, but
it’s about to become irrelevant-or at least drowned out by a massive
new wave of buzz.
This spring, Westby is earning attention for Film Geek, his fourth
film, a labor of love made on the cheap with a digital video camera
and a script he cranked out in just three weeks. It’s the strange
story of Scotty Pelk, played by former Portlander Melik Malkasian, a
socially inept video-store clerk with an encyclopedic knowledge
of-and reverence for-movies.
To the surprise of Westby and producer Byrd McDonald, Film Geek won
the Independent Visions award at last month’s Sarasota Film Festival,
and the $2,500 prize was just about enough to cover the movie’s cost.
The movie was picked up by First Run Features, a Brooklyn company
known for distributing indie films and documentaries, and there’s
talk of a late-summer theater release.
Before Film Geek, Westby had made three features: Subculture, which
he dismisses as a “student film”; the noirish Bloody Mary; and the
million-dollar Anoosh of the Airwaves, which wasn’t ever released.
None brought him the success he’d hoped for.
After all, Westby has been chasing his moviemaking dreams for years,
including a three-year stint in Los Angeles, where he did everything:
script writing, freelance editing, subtitling. To make a living,
Westby worked as an apartment manager, and in retrospect, he says, “I
probably learned more dealing with tenants every day.”
In November 2001, Westby returned to Portland when he was offered a
job editing the documentary Haunters. That’s when he met McDonald, an
NYU film grad who had worked in Jonathan Demme’s production company.
Their common love of movies-and the fact that McDonald had experience
and connections-led them to form the Portland Narrative Project. Film
Geek is the company’s first release.
Three seconds into a conversation, listening to Westby rattle off
fully formed mini-homages to semi-obscure directors, you realize he
pretty much is Scotty Pelk, at least in terms of film obsession. Film
Geek, he admits, was “kind of an exorcism.”
Like all his movies, though, this one is shaped by his star and muse,
Malkasian. The two met when Malkasian, then attending Portland State
University, responded to an ad to act in Westby’s Subculture. Since
then, Malkasian has portrayed the short-fused, twitchy centerpiece of
Bloody Mary, the naive Armenian exchange student in Anoosh and, most
memorably, the awesome Latino porn director Arturo Domingo in
Westby’s well-known short The Auteur.
Now that a distributor has picked up Film Geek,”it’s so much easier
to move on,” Westby says. Next up for his film company is an Arturo
Domingo vehicle, “a sweet comedy about a sordid character.” After
that comes a crime thriller set in Lake Oswego-an idea Westby had
while working as a dental-equipment delivery driver there.
“I’m almost glad I didn’t succeed with those other projects,” says
Westby, who with his wife, Stephanie, is expecting their second
child. “Because it would’ve been for the wrong reasons.”
AGE: 32.
NEIGHBORHOOD: Southwest.
DAY JOB: Freelance film editing and subtitling; part-time video-store
clerk.
MUSE: Actor Melik Malkasian.
FAVORITE FILMS: Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye and his whole streak
from McCabe & Mrs. Miller through 3 Women.
FAVORITE DIRECTORS: Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Godard. Woody Allen from
Annie Hall through Bullets Over Broadway.
WHY PORTLAND? Moved back to work on Haunters.
PORTLAND BACKDROP: Videorama (2940 NE Alberta St., 288-4067).
“GIVING IT UP” MOMENT: “[Before] I discovered digital moviemaking.
Not worrying about funding saved me, or inspired me to try things a
new way.”
[rest omitted]
–Boundary_(ID_GQQxQtOi1wAv5stGybgOZg)–