Focus on Santa Barbara

A funny thing happened in Santa Barbara a year ago, amid the gush of films in theprogram of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. An overflow audience packed the Riviera Theater, drawn by a star-studded panel of screenwriters, including the much-buzzed-about and/or Oscar-nominated Alan Ball (“American Beauty”), Kimberly Peirce (“Boys Don’t Cry”), Eric Roth (“The Insider”) and Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich”).

With all the other celluloid temptations of the 2000 festival, that gathering was one of its hottest tickets. And the trend ratchets up this year, with panel discussions of screenwriters, directors and producers who are among the current talks of the town. More to the point, Oscar nominees abound.

In many ways, it’s life as usual for the 16th annual, 11-day festival, which kicks off tonight at the Arlington Theater with a screening of “About Adam,” a new movie from Irish writer-director Gerard Stembridge, which co-stars Oscar nominee (for “Almost Famous”) Kate Hudson. The festival boasts the usual diversity of screenings, from new American films to healthy representation from world cinema, documentaries, shorts and a digital film sidebar.

Celebrity tributes include toasts to Diane Keaton, Rob Reiner, Ben Kingsley, producer Doug Wick (“Gladiator”), digital filmmaker Rob Nilsson and French writer-director Francis Veber, whose “Dinner Game” was a highlight of last year’s fest. There will also be daily, sequential screenings of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s 10-part “Decalogue,” the last West Coast screening before rights revert to Polish television. The festival closes March 11, with an awards ceremony and a screening of Ken Loach’s latest film, “Bread and Roses.”

But when all is said and done, it may be the panel discussions with industry folk that have developed into the most notable subplot of the Sana Barbara festival. Bolstering the panel talent, and increasing industry interest (and thus the festival’s profile), was high on the agenda when producer Renee Missel took over as artistic director of the festival four years ago.

From the get-go in the late ‘80s, festival organizers recognized a built-in virtue of the event was location, in a popular getaway town within driving distance of Los Angeles, and a gilded hometown to a growing number of film people. Missel came to another realization, that location plus timing were virtues. Landing handily between the announcement of Oscar nominees and the Academy Awards, the festival provides a symbiotic opportunity for panelists seeking publicity in the interim.

Word of the festival’s symposiums has gradually spread through Hollywood. “Within the studio system,” Missel says, “they’ve caught on to what possibilities it brings them--more publicity, Academy members noticing, perhaps helping the vote.”

Before Missel took over as artistic director, she assembled another stellar screenwriting panel, which included Anthony Minghella and Billy Bob Thornton, coming off “The English Patient” and “Slingblade,” respectively. From the beginning of her term, Missel says, “I was using the Oscars as a tool to leverage, knowing that I had something to offer these writers.” Film journalist Anne Thompson was enlisted to recruit the directing panel.

Evidence that the Santa Barbara festival panels have become a coveted forum for Hollywood came this year in the form of an 11th-hour phone call from Miramax, wanting to bolster the presence of the multiple-Oscar-nominated film “Chocolat,” which arranged to have its filmmakers in Santa Barbara. Missel says, “They were begging us to put on some people from ‘Chocolat.’ ” Now, director Lasse Hallstrom, screenwriter Robert Newton Jacobs and producer David Brown will speak on panels, further raising the film’s profile.

Other panel participants include, on Sunday morning’s “It Starts With the Script” symposium, Steve Gaghan (“Traffic”), Susannah Grant (“Erin Brockovich”), and Doug Wright, (“Quills”). The following Saturday’s “Directors on Directing” panel includes Philip Kaufman (“Quills”), Nancy Myers (“What Women Want”), Jay Roach (“Meet the Parents”), Ed Harris (“Pollock”) and Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”).

Missel, eager to include fellow producers in the mix, continues the practice of involving a producers panel, “Movers and Shakers,” on March 10. Missel, whose resume includes the film “Nell,” said, “So many people ask me, ‘What does a producer do?’ They don’t understand. They always have great stories and they’re very gregarious. So I thought, why not? Producing, directing, writing, the three go together.”

There are also panels of film composers, cinematographers, one on industry advice and another on gender equations in Hollywood, “The Power of the X Chromosome.”

Oscar politics can also have unfortunate side effects on festival programming. This year, Sony Pictures Classics picked up the film “Divided We Fall,” the Czech Republic’s Oscar entry, and decided to pull it out of the festival lineup. Underlying the decision was the company’s shift of lobbying emphasis to another Oscar nominee, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

Missel explains: “My usual argument--’It will help your film’--is a terrible argument in this case, because they want to help ‘Crouching Tiger.’ There was no way I could talk them into it, so they pulled the film.” These last-minute maneuverings are part of the landscape of running a festival, especially one still avidly cultivating respect.

If this year’s panels are well-stocked with Oscar nominees, there are also individual tales of merit. Last year’s script panel included Native American Sherman Alexi, writer of “Smoke Signals,” whose wit and minority perspective gave the panel balance. This year’s panel includes Gregory Allan Howard, who scored a success, after years of effort, with “Remember the Titans.”

That film’s commercial achievements, and the story’s central social conscience, have earned its filmmakers widespread respect. Howard spoke on the phone last week from Manhattan, where he was receiving the humanitarian Christopher Award.

Howard feels a sense of “validation” about the success of “Titans,” in part because it had been “rejected by all the studios, at least twice.” The project was also a highly personal one, begun after he moved back to Virginia from Hollywood in the mid-’90s. He had gained a sense of career solidity after working on sitcoms, doing rewrites and working on “Ali.”

After countless rejections, even as a made-for-cable movie, Howard thought it was a dead project. “It was a period sports movie,” Howard explains. “That’s death enough right there. And then you add in a social drama, a civil rights story, and my God, no wonder I was getting thrown out of offices. But I was so blinded by the story, I wasn’t paying any attention to any of that. Oddly enough, those are the very elements that made the movie a hit.”

Fate took a turn when Jerry Bruckheimer stepped in. Howard toned down his originally rough language and they were shooting within 18 months.

Howard’s writing career began in sitcoms in the ‘80s, which he views now as a good training ground. “You have to get to the point, which helps in screenwriting, which relies on an economy of words to convey your point.”

He also wrote a well-received play, “Tinseltown Triology,” produced in Los Angeles in 1991 at the Tamarind Theater. Still, writing for the screen, on his own creative terms, was always the goal. “To be honest, I’ve never been very successful at the assignment game,” Howard admits. “I got maybe 12 assignments while I was in Hollywood, but as far as moving those assignments forward, I don’t understand what the process is. Development is a farce. It’s torturous and it breaks your spirit and gets you confused.”

“I’m not even competent at pitching. Just for me, pitching is a fraud. I don’t know what I’m going to write until I write. For me to go in and tell people in a room that this is what I’m going to do in every act is a fraud, because honestly, I don’t know if I’m going to do that.”

“Titans” was a Disney project, and Howard’s Disney connection continues with a current Civil War-based story he’s writing. “My big thing is that it’s gotta move me. Then I can write something that moves people.”

Success in Hollywood breeds confidence and a sense of inclusion, at least in temporary waves. At the Santa Barbara Festival panel, he says, “I’ll be up there mouthing off. I buried my fear with ‘Titans.’ I’m not afraid of being put out of business anymore.”

* Santa Barbara International Film Festival, througn March 11, at various Santa Barbara locations. Panels include “It Starts With the Script,” Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Lobero Theater, and “Directors on Directing,” on March 10 at 11 a.m. at Center Stage Theater; (805) 963-0023; https://www.sbfilmfestival.org.