A Trek That Often Pays Off

At the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, which opens today and runs through Monday, Hollywood wheeling and dealing is kept to a minimum. The focus, instead, is on the couple of dozen independent and foreign films as well as tributes to influential filmmakers and actors. So, toward that end, the festival’s directors choose to keep its slate of films and programs a secret.

But, inevitably, word leaks out. Many of the 15 new films expected to be shown in Telluride this year will go on to play at other film festivals--Toronto, New York--or have played at Cannes earlier this year.

This year there will be movies by such filmmakers as Oliver Stone, Paul Schrader and John Sayles as well as a documentary by Werner Herzog and a tribute to Jimmy Stewart.

Among the films scheduled to be shown are Stone’s “U Turn,” Schrader’s “Affliction,” Sayles’ “Men With Guns,” Agnieszka Holland’s “Washington Square,” James Toback’s “Two Girls and a Guy,” Harmony Korine’s “Gummo” and Atom Egoyan’s “The Sweet Hereafter.”

“Other festivals are much more high profile, more pressured, more crowded and frenetic,” said Tony Safford, senior vice president of acquisitions for 20th Century Fox and former director of the Sundance Film Festival. “The appeal of Telluride is to see a body of work and meet with filmmakers in a much more relaxed environment than you will find, for example, at Sundance these days.”

“It’s a good place for people to discover a movie in a more low-key atmosphere,” said Valerie Van Galder, vice president of publicity for Fox Searchlight. “The fact that they don’t tell you the movies in advance is good because people can genuinely be surprised. You can go without the built-up expectations and hype that sometimes is attendant. People can go without preconceptions and films can be accepted on their own merits.”

This year, about 27 movies will be shown and the reaction will be closely monitored by the studios distributing them since Telluride is often regarded as the best indicator of early movie buzz.

Last year, the buzz was over “Sling Blade,” “Kolya” (which went on to win the Academy Award for foreign language film), “Breaking the Waves” and the cult hit “Swingers.” Past years have seen U.S. premieres of “The Piano,” “Secrets & Lies” and “The Crying Game.”

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In fact, the early reaction to “The Crying Game” at the ’92 festival helped Miramax Films create a publicity and marketing campaign for the film, with the famous gender plot twist.

“We certainly didn’t know how to market this movie,” said Safford, who at the time worked for Miramax. “I don’t think we’d come up with a campaign yet. There was great bafflement among the critical community about how to write about the movie. The first review was from Variety at Telluride and [the reviewer] figured out a way to write about the movie without giving it away and, to me, that set the national critical tone for the picture, which ultimately led to the ‘Don’t give away the secret’ campaign.”

Telluride is a small quaint town of only a few streets. Its location makes getting there part of the experience. Last year the makers of the cult hit “Swingers” flew directly from the glitzy Venice Film Festival, where their film had its world premiere, to Telluride, where it debuted in the U.S.

“We left Venice at 2 in the morning and landed in Denver whereupon we were told we needed to get on a nine-passenger plane,” said Nicole Shay La Loggia, producer of “Swingers.”

“Venice was very glamorous, but when you get into Telluride it’s like a shock to the system. You’re looking at the most majestic mountains and this gorgeous landscape.

“And it was so welcoming. It was the most warm reception I’ve ever had anywhere. Shirley MacLaine came up to us after a screening. Ralph Lauren, Roger Ebert. People were roaring in the screenings. It was like being on cloud nine. You would walk down the street the next day after a screening and people would walk up and go ga-ga over it. Who knew when we made the film?”

The festival occurs at the same time as the Venice Film Festival, but that doesn’t stop industry types from attending.

“I don’t think that troubles too many people,” Safford said. “There are certainly enough films to go around. And certainly God knows there are enough executives to attend both.”