Hollywood rebel sees his cause -- with CineVegas

A Sundance kid, a Hollywood rebel and a media mogul walk into a film festival . . . it sounds like the setup to a punch line. Yet the CineVegas Film Festival -- with its central brain trust of artistic director Trevor Groth, creative advisory board chairman Dennis Hopper and President Robin Greenspun -- is no joke, having transformed into one of the region’s most vital film fests.

This year will mark the 10th edition of the festival, which runs June 12-21 in Las Vegas. Every Friday in April, the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles will be screening films from the eclectic mix of past CineVegas festivals. The series kicks off this week with two rare screenings of Hopper’s “The Last Movie.”

Hopper, the personification of the rebellious outsider for decades, has become a key figure in the world of CineVegas. In 2003, the second year that Groth, also a senior programmer at the Sundance Film Festival, was working for CineVegas, Hopper was given an award. Since then he’s pretty much never left. As chairman of the festival’s creative advisory board, Hopper became de facto ambassador for what’s sometimes called “the world’s most dangerous film festival,” helping to snag talent and shape its emerging left-of-center identity.

“I was still trying to figure out what the mission of the festival was at that point,” Groth recalled one recent afternoon while sitting in Hopper’s backyard. “And bringing Dennis out that year really helped shape it in my head. I looked over his career and I learned so much from watching his art; the energy and the provocation that he brought to it really made me think that these are the types of voices that I want the festival to be about. Having him involved in the festival is really a major reason it has taken the shape it has.”

As to how and why he became involved with the festival, Hopper gives two answers, one long and one short.

“I just looked at it and felt there could be more of a Hollywood connection, and it started to really happen,” he said. “It’s a really good relationship now. And it’s also promoting the kinds of films that don’t get attention, that don’t get broad distribution, that need a way to be seen.”

The short version: “I opened my mouth too much. I started talking and dreaming.”

Mike Plante, associate director of programming, who also works for Sundance, said of Hopper’s involvement: “If you’re on the outside looking in, it’s awesome and impressive.

“From working with him, the two things we know are that the connection is real, he really likes the festival, and the second is he is just actually a really cool guy. And he really just loves all filmmaking. We can show him some tiny little film that’s really underground and he likes that too.”

The energy of Las Vegas does inspire a rambunctious spirit in the festival. Hunter S. Thompson once careened about in a golf cart loaded with showgirls before a screening of the documentary “Breakfast With Hunter.” At a now-legendary party, Charro danced while Tom Jones sang.

“One of our greatest assets is also one our greatest obstacles,” Groth said. “Everything else that’s going on in Las Vegas creates this energy that we try to utilize and thrive off of. But there is something big going on all the time. So to get people to come see these oftentimes small films with no stars, that can be a challenge.”

Greenspun, a member of a prominent Las Vegas family that owns media properties there, was involved in the earlier, pre-Groth/Hopper incarnation of the festival. Since taking over as president, she has overseen an overhaul of much of the behind-the-scenes work.

“I’m happy to say that we lose less money every year,” she said.

Some of what Groth and Plante choose to screen can be out there, even within the rarefied world of film festivals, but Greenspun allows them a fairly wide berth. “That’s why Trevor and Mike are there,” she said. “I trust them totally, but that’s not to say we have not argued over films. When it gets to the point where I ask ‘Why are we showing this?’ and they can’t give me a good reason, then we do have a talk about it.”

Even the festival’s timing has become an asset. It sits comfortably amid the Tribeca, Cannes and Los Angeles festivals. Films that Groth or Plante were unable, for whatever reason, to show at Sundance in January can be slotted in.

“It’s one thing to have a vision of what you want the festival to be about and the kind of films you want to show. That’s easy,” Groth said. “It’s harder to actually find those pieces of the puzzle.”

For now, Hopper is quite content with his role and plans to continue indefinitely.

“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, and I get free cigars,” he said. “What a deal.”

Feeding off the oddball energy of Las Vegas, the team behind the CineVegas Film Festival knows that there will always be a certain frisson to putting on a cultural event in a city known more for the Liberace Museum than fine art.

“Last year we had a charity screening of ‘Ocean’s 13’ with the A-list cast and [filmmaker] Giuseppe Andrews from the trailer park in Ventura,” Plante said of the unlikely juxtapositions generated by the festival’s programming.

“And it all makes sense to us. It’s all just cool stuff.”