Creative Minds Come Together in Portland : Ideas: Three-day seminar seeks to draw attention to Oregon’s talent and coax brilliant people from a variety of fields to share thinking.
Oregon is, as the local Film and Video Office likes to remind people, halfway between Hollywood and Vancouver, B.C., and halfway between the Silicon Valley and Seattle--which, unfortunately, means it tends to get passed over.
But on a balmy Thursday night, a cruise boat floats languorously down the Willamette River, loaded with talent from the worlds of film, TV, multimedia, video gaming, advertising and computers.
There’s Spike Lee, posing in a patient deadpan for a photo op with handlebar-mustached claymation guru Will Vinton.
There’s Peter Gilbert, cinematographer-creator of “Hoop Dreams,” chatting light and lenses with Eric Edwards, cinematographer of “Kids” and “To Die For.”
There’s Judith James, producer of “Quiz Show,” and Hal Barwood, Hollywood director-turned-game-inventor for LUCAS-ARTS, and Rob Legato, who did the special effects for “Apollo 13.” The remarkable cast--plus a couple of hundred extras--coasts under the city’s bridges, mingling, noshing, and sipping microbrews. And more notable names have yet to arrive: Marta Kauffman, co-creator of “Friends,” and Chris Carter, who dreamed up “The X-Files.”
They’ve all been lured here by the sixth annual Portland Creative Conference, a three-day schmooze-slash-seminar dedicated to promoting synergies among various creative fields, drawing attention to Oregon’s creative community and coaxing people with brilliant minds to talk shop with an appreciative audience.
Put the words Portland and creative together and you get images of Bill Walton space dancing on Mt. Hood in a hemp shirt. But the Creative Conference is actually a next-century sort of event, with talent in a variety of emerging media coming from all over the world to spend a few collegial days contemplating the muse and swapping business cards. “Our goal is to give creativity its day in the sun,” says Vinton, one of the event’s founders. “And we’ve stumbled on to a really delightful and valuable format.”
Creative Conference attendees fill the Portland Center for the Performing Arts to hear nearly a dozen speakers muse over the sources of their inspiration, with film clips and slides demonstrating the finished product. Brief Q&A; sessions follow, with writer, producer and video game-developer Michael Backes serving as emcee and digital jester.
The cherry on top is the brace of sneak previews on Friday and Saturday nights. Disney’s “Mr. Holland’s Opus” with Richard Dreyfuss and Savoy’s “Three Wishes” with Patrick Swayze and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio were screened.
More than 900 people registered for the sixth Creative Conference, the most successful yet. They came from throughout the country and from every walk of life: doctors, model makers, dance teachers, ad executives, lawyers, screenwriters, publishers, audio technicians, marketing strategists, high school students.
They heard an array of opinions on the question of creativity. Hal Barwood, pugnaciously defending shoot-’em-up games, declared happily that, “It’s now literally possible to play with art.” Judith James said that, “The script has a voice of its own, and it gets a vote in the creative process.” Rob Legato slyly admitted that, “If you work with enough geniuses, they’ll somehow come up with solutions!” And Gary Johns, an award-winning director of commercials, chuckled that, “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission.”
The highest profile session was Lee’s Saturday afternoon talk, which drew an overflow crowd. Lee has some roots in Portland, having done commercials with both of the Creative Conference’s principal sponsors, Nike and the Weiden & Kennedy ad agency. After showing clips from “Clockers”--which, he was quick to point out, was playing across the street--he took dozens of questions on issues of race, education and the Hollywood system.
“Hollywood allows me access to the money I need,” he conceded at one point, “but you’re not gonna get $100 million to do a picture on Harriet Tubman.”
The emotional peak of the event, though, was Peter Gilbert’s account of the making and distribution of “Hoop Dreams.” Reflecting that the creative process of the documentarian invariably involves the subject, he detailed the way he and his filmmaking partners became intimate with the two Chicago families that they filmed. His closing tribute to his subjects--”What I did was lucky; what they did was brave”--provoked the longest standing ovation in Creative Conference history.
It may be unusual in most contexts for a cinematographer to upstage the great Spike, but it’s rather what the Creative Conference is all about. “We love the stars,” says Vinton, “and they always do wonderful things, but you never know who’s going to be the most inspiring speaker. We just push them out there and see what happens.”
Over the years, the Creative Conference has pushed an impressive list of speakers out there--Martin Sheen, Matt Groening, Martha Coolidge, Buck Henry, Chuck Jones, Debra Hill, Danny Elfman and dozens more. “We’ve got these incredible alumni,” notes Vinton, “and they become advocates of Portland and the Creative Conference, and it’s helped us snowball.”