Worthy of a Close-Up
by Jeff Welsch
Ellen Theater, home of the inaugural HATCHfest
photo: Yarrow Kraner
Bozeman's quaint downtown
photo: Yarrow Kraner
The Innovator's Lounge at Hatchfest
photo: Scott Lopker
The city of Bozeman and its surrounding area.
photo: Yarrow Kraner
Jeff Bridges speaks
photo: Yarrow Kraner
THE SCENE: weathered red-brick buildings on Main Street, a historic theater with a brightly lit marquee, the citizenry milling about on a postcard-perfect evening in 2004. Think Rockwell’s America, with a Rocky Mountain backdrop, except there’s a palpable charge permeating the night air.
Searchlights crisscross a starry sky. Red carpet stretches from the theater doors to the street. A crowd gathers expectantly behind ropes, illuminated by portable lights.
Stage right, an SUV from the Moonlight Basin Ski Resort eases out of traffic and parks at the carpet’s edge. A chauffeur emerges and opens the rear passenger-side door, where a boyish figure clad in an untucked button-down shirt and sandals steps out and . . . “Cut!”
“The cameras aren’t ready!” a voice shouts over the buzz. “Can you go around the block and do it again?”
No worries.
This is Bozeman, Montana, where the pace is as casual as the attire. Even visitors from helter-skelter Hollywood instinctively go with the flow as if there’s a calming agent in the pristine mountain water.
Director/actor Rick Schroder, of Silver Spoons and NYPD Blue fame, gives a friendly wave and steps back into the SUV. It quickly disappears around the next corner and returns minutes later.
Action! As cameras purr outside the Ellen Theater, Schroder emerges again to applause, followed by actors Eddie Spears and Julia Jones, the stars of his movie Black Cloud.
Their 2004 film, about a Navajo boxer, was up first at Bozeman’s inaugural HATCHfest. The weeklong film celebration fuses creative minds, passionate students from across the globe, and an energized public amid inspiring northern Rockies splendor.
Later, and more important, after Black Cloud is applauded and the actors partake in an informal Q&A session, Schroder serves as a mentor to students, (called “Groundbreakers”) as part of a laid-back panel discussion.
No evening gowns or tuxedos. No stretch limos. No paparazzi or groupies.
No pretense.
“It really speaks to the culture of Bozeman,” said Cynthia Andrus, a Bozeman Convention and Visitors Bureau liaison between film production companies and area communities. “We don’t really want to become the next Los Angeles or really even the next Sundance. We want to be exactly what we are & a more casual experience.”
Yarrow Kraner agreed. After nine years in L.A., the 1995 Montana State University graduate teamed up with Scott Billadeau and Huntley Ritter to found the festival. “We tell everybody from the beginning that this is a festival that’s got a lot of genuine heart.”
The same could be said of Bozeman.
Long known as a dogey-punchin’, ski bummin’, trout-anglin’, elk-buglin’, cow-college gateway to Yellowstone National Park, Bozeman has evolved into a bastion of artistic and technological creativity because of its wide-open spaces, sunny skies and frontier mystique. Authors, actors, directors, painters, producers, singers, songwriters, inventors and a host of high-powered innovators call this broad valley home.
The catalyst for this remarkable evolution? The film industry.
Since the turn of the 19th century, “The Last Best Place” has often been the first best place for movies, especially the Western. Bozeman’s tie to the big screen dates to the late actor Gary Cooper, who attended high school here in the 1910s. Of even greater import to the industry’s toehold in the Gallatin Valley was Gunsmoke writer Fred Gerber. He left the Tinseltown rat race of the early 1960s to teach in Montana State University’s (MSU) budding film program. Gerber’s connections gave the school instant name recognition and led to jobs in movies, television and commercials for students.
“Motion-picture video production and curriculum was ahead of the curve in its development at Montana State—for whatever many reasons and idiosyncrasies and good luck,” said Paul Monaco, an MSU film professor for 22 years. “When you look at the number of awards won for film or video production . . . it’s vast.”
From its humble pioneer days, the school’s Department of Media and Theatre Arts has earned national acclaim while producing a long list of Academy, Emmy and other award winners, including: Director John Dahl (Rounders, Unforgettable), situation-comedy director Jeff Meyer (Coach, Everybody Loves Raymond), comedian Craig Kilborn (The Daily Show, The Late, Late Show) and Brian Van’t Hull, who garnered an Oscar in 2005 for King Kong’s revolutionary visual effects. Actor Bill Pullman (Sleepless in Seattle) taught at MSU in the late 1970s and maintains a home in the area, a neighbor to such HATCH mentors as Peter Fonda, Jeff Bridges and Michael Keaton.
Even with the college’s reputation, though, it wasn’t until 1991 that southwest Montana became a magnet for the creative. Five movies were made in Montana that year. The biggest in fanfare and box-office appeal was Far and Away with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, filmed in Billings.
Far less attention was accorded the Robert Redford version of a 1976 novella written by Montana’s Norman Maclean. Today, in the Gallatin and Yellowstone river valleys near Bozeman, where filming quietly took place, A River Runs Through It is known simply as “The Movie.”
Featuring a young Brad Pitt and Craig Sheffer as the fly-fishing sons of a Presbyterian minister, A River Runs Through It captured the Montana mystique with stunning cinematography. Tourists poured into the region, armed with fly rods, visions of lunker trout rising to dry flies, and a desire to be as haunted by free-flowing waters as Maclean.
“It was just another movie that happened to be directed by Robert Redford,” said Sten Iversen, manager of the Montana Film Office in the state capital Helena. “But it grew to sort of mythic and epic proportions. It’s really become a film that’s culturally iconic and definitive of Montana in a lot of ways. It certainly was a touchstone moment.”
Many who came stayed. Others built trophy vacation homes. Boutiques, galleries and wine bars sprouted on a Main Street once dominated by feed stores, grain elevators and ranch suppliers.
Seemingly the only industry that didn’t benefit from The Movie was, ironically, movie-making.
While Montana rested on the laurels of 110 feature films, other states and Canada, coveting the $15 million typically dropped into a local economy during production, began offering tax incentives. Montana was hurt most by Alberta, which touted the same stunning topography at lesser expense.
The nadir came in 2003, when actor/director Kevin Costner lamented having to film his Open Range north of the border instead of in Montana because of cost.
“It was hard to hear it, but I was glad to have him say that on film because it also gave us the impetus to move forward,” Iversen said.
In 2004, newly elected governor Brian Schweitzer immediately emphasized courting the film industry. A year later, the legislature approved the Big Sky on the Big Screen Act, featuring tax breaks for hiring local labor and rebates for expenditures; more were approved this year. The result: Iversen said his office “has been swamped by calls.” Bozeman’s return to showbiz was evident in 2006 in small signs popping upon street corners, directing crews to A Plumm Summer locations.
“You guys are finally in the game again,” a mentor recently told Kraner, who added, “This was a hotbed of film and it will be again.”
The vision is enhanced by long summer filming days, convenient airline access on SkyWest, and a readily available MSU workforce. These benefits led to yet another advantage: the availability of movie-making equipment. J.P. Gabriel, a Great Falls native who served as underwater lighting supervisor for Titanic, recently moved his Filmlites Montana, to Bozeman. It is the largest grip and lighting rental company in the northern Rockies.
Like his close friend Kraner, Gabriel is a Hollywood expatriate whose yearning for Montana could only be satiated by moving here.
They share a devotion for raising arts consciousness with others in the valley including Lee Poole, founder of Moonlight Basin Resort. Together these and other Bozeman visionaries created HATCHfest. Its underlying philosophy — creativity begets creativity — applies to more than film. At HATCH, the best and brightest in the arts, design, music, architecture and innovation provide expertise and critiques in casual sessions. Students and the general public — attendance was 11,700 in 2006 — visit with industry goliaths eager to give back. Ideas are “hatched” and nurtured. One Groundbreaker has already been nominated for an Oscar.
“Pulitzer Prize winners, Emmy winners and Oscar winners sit here, no pretense, free of charge all day, and bounce ideas off one another,” Kraner said. “One of the most amazing experiences I’ve had is walking in and seeing [artist] Rocky Hawkins talking to [sculptor] Dennis Harrington talking to [actor] Peter Fonda talking to [musician] Bruce Langhorne—all these disciplines in one room, and they’re getting a charge out of each other. When I was a kid, I would’ve traveled 2,000 miles to experience being in a room with some of the minds out there.”
Today, Kraner need only stroll down Main Street, though searchlights no longer guide him to the Ellen. After the first fest, the board deemed the modest glitz too highbrow for Bozeman.
Substance over style is the mission. Last year, three films that screened at HATCH — Borat, Deliver Us From Evil and Days of Glory — were nominated for Oscars. Borat made its U.S. debut at a sold-out Ellen.
Naturally, the crowds were casual and glitches were shrugged off.
After all, that’s the HATCHfest. That’s Montana. And that’s Bozeman. The community has evolved culturally without sacrificing its easygoing manner.
“There are reasons why it made a lot of sense here,” Kraner said, touting MSU’s film school, the environment and “the fact that we’re all in love with this place.”
HATCHfest
OCTOBER 3 - 7
TO FOSTER THE ARTS, in the Gallatin Valley and Montana in general, leaders in the realms of film, art, music, design, architecture — including Oscar, Emmy and Pulitzer Prize winners—serve as mentors to students or “Groundbreakers” from around the world. Highlights include public film screenings followed by informal panel sessions also open to the public. More than 11,700 art lovers attended in 2006 and panels have been viewed by more than 300,000. In excess of $100,000 in cash prizes have been awarded to top Groundbreakers. Submissions have come from more than 35 countries.
SkyWest Delta Connection serves Bozeman with daily flights to and from Salt Lake City.
SkyWest United Express serves Bozeman with daily flights to and from Denver & Chicago.