The Big Picture
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3/20/2008 - 3/21/08
A hometown boy wins an Oscar. A miracle in Taos. Michigan tries to outgun New Mexico. Billy the Kid in Santa Fe. Plus much, much more. Aren't you glad you read this column?Local boy makes good — and sings, too!
Xavier Horan can take pleasure in knowing he was among the creative crew that took home this year's Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing for The Bourne Ultimatum. This high-budget action fare, starring Matt Damon as amnesia victim/superspy Jason Bourne, is part of the successful film franchise based on the Robert Ludlum novels. Editors Scott Millan, Kirk Francis, and David Parker accepted the Oscar for the sound team at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles last month.
Horan was born in Santa Fe. In April 1999, he suffered a serious car accident in which his neck and back were broken, leaving him a paraplegic. Clearly that didn't slow him down; he moved to the West Coast several years ago and began working in sound editing. In 2006, while serving in the Peace Corps, his sister Tessa was killed by a shark in the waters of the kingdom of Tonga in the southwest Pacific Ocean.
This weekend Horan returns to Santa Fe to take part in a weekend of events sponsored by the Tessa Horan Fund, including a movie and music performance from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, March 21, at the Great Hall, St. John's College, 1160 Camino de la Cruz Blanca. Horan will sing a tune he wrote about his sister at the by-donation gig. (In a related, nonfilm event, the Tessa Horan Ascension Race at Ski Santa Fe takes place at 5 p.m. Saturday, March 22; go to www.sfpatrol.org and click on Tessa's Ascension.) For information on both events, call 820-1779.
Santa Fe scores again
Meanwhile, back in Arizona, the Sedona International Film Festival gave a Best Humanitarian Short Film award to In the Wake, scripted by Shannon Rotheneder and directed by Craig Strong as part of the College of Santa Fe's New Mexico Filmmakers Intensive program last year. The film focuses on a survivor of Hurricane Katrina who tries to remake his life — through baking — in Albuquerque. In the Wake played as part of last year's Santa Fe Film Festival, as did all the NMFI shorts. The NMFI program, which offers classes in directing, writing, producing, and editing in an effort to build up the above-the-line talent in New Mexico, is in its second year. Check out www.sedonafilmfestival.com for more information on the fest.
Miracle author on hand for screening
If you ever wanted to meet John Nichols, author of the novel and co-author of the film The Milagro Beanfield War, here's your chance: he is appearing at a screening of the 1988 film at 7 p.m. March 28 at the Taos Community Auditorium, 133 Paseo de Pueblo North. The novel and film revolve around the fictional town of Milagro, New Mexico, and how its residents, led by a defiant bean farmer, overcome the efforts of land developers to turn the place into a tourist trap. Robert Redford directed the film, which was shot in Truchas, New Mexico. This fundraising event for the Taos Historic Museums, includes a talk, a reading, and a screening. Tickets are $25; call 575-758-0505 for information.
Do I hear 40? 45? 50, anyone?
Michigan wants a piece of the film action. (Doesn't everybody?) State lawmakers there are trying to hike current incentives to ensure that Michigan becomes the state to go to for filmmaking. The state currently offers a 20 percent tax rebate to production companies that shoot there, but it wants to up the ante to 40 percent. According to Janet Lockwood, director of the Michigan Film Office, 16 incentive bills, including a workforce-development credit program, have been successfully working their way through the state legislature this month. She's feeling optimistic about them all, and I hope to chat with her later this month to paint a fuller picture of what the Great Lakes State is doing to attract the movie industry. Check out www.michigan.gov/filmoffice.
Film conference in the Duke City
The New Mexico Film Office is hosting the New Mexico Filmmakers Conference & First Vision Forum at the Hyatt Regency Albuquerque, 330 Tijeras Ave. N.W., from Thursday, March 27, to March 29. This event includes panel talks and workshops on such topics as acting in films, creating film scores, and marketing your movie. Plus there are receptions and parties and such. Believe it or not, it's all free, but you have to preregister, and March 20 was the deadline, so good luck trying to do that now. Call 476-5600 or check out www.nmfilm.com.
Give us your shorts
The governor's office, through the New Mexico Film Office, announced a call for entries for the Governor's Cup 2008 Short Animation Competition earlier this month. This setup is designed to get New Mexico filmmakers to submit treatments for a short (less than 10 minutes). Two winners will each get $10,000 for their projects, as well as additional support from statewide unions and media corporations. You can submit in either the short animation or indigenous/minority culture animation categories. The deadline is April 16. Go to nmfilm.com
or call 476-5600.
The kid on the silver screen
What do Robert Taylor, Audie Murphy, Paul Newman, and Kris Kristofferson have in common? They all played New Mexico outlaw Billy the Kid on film. So did Emilio Estevez, Buster Crabbe, and Jack Buetel (you remember him; he played Billy in Howard Hughes' 1943 film The Outlaw).
Want to learn more about "Billy the Kid on the Big Screen and in American Popular Culture"? Then take in the lecture that Paul Hutton, a professor at The University of New Mexico, gives at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 27, at the Santuario de Guadalupe, 100 S. Guadalupe St. Hutton penned a comprehensive essay about Billy the Kid in cinema for the New Mexico Historical Review last year, so he knows his stuff. This lecture, sponsored by El Rancho de Las Golondrinas, is free. Call the museum at 471-2261 for more information.
A torch bearer's passing
I'm sorry to report that film-poster artist John Alvin, a tributee at December's Santa Fe Film Festival, died of a heart attack last month. He was 59.
Alvin created images for at least 135 films in a career that was launched with his poster work for Mel Brooks' 1974 Western spoof Blazing Saddles. That opened doors for him, as he told Pasatiempo in December. "I didn't look for work for about 15 years after that; it came to me." The artist, who was born in Hyannis, Massachusetts, and ended up living in Rhinebeck, New York, after he left Hollywood, bemoaned the lack of creativity in the film-poster industry these days, since so much imagery is computer generated.
Yet Alvin felt movie posters would always be in demand. "People still want ... that thing they carry in their heads when they go in to see the movie, and, if it's properly done, they carry it with them after they've seen the movie. The poster is a torch."
Alvin lit up a lot of those torches with posters for E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, Always, Blade Runner, Young Frankenstein, and the Star Wars and Harry Potter series.