HIGH ON MOVIES

Telluride, Colorado is not easy to get to, and it’s expensive once you get there. The air is thin, and when thunderstorms hit it can become a sea of mud. But come Labor Day

This is the view as you walk down the main street of town from one film to another. The only word for it is "breathtaking."

Weekend, there’s no place on earth I’d rather be.

The last weekend in August, Bill and Stella Pence and Tom Luddy presented the 30th Annual Telluride Film Festival and it was, as usual, a moviegoing feast in a magnificent Rocky Mountain setting.

One of the festival’s distinctions is that it places equal weight on current world cinema and movie history. Where else could one have seen Stephen Sondheim presenting his all-time favorite comedy, George Stevens’ The More the Merrier (1943) and then raced off to a showing of Gus Van Sant’s Elephant?

On Saturday, my wife and I watched Errol Morris’ remarkable documentary The Fog of War and then listened to a live discussion with its subject, former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. I didn’t expect to have such an emotional reaction to the film, but the cumulative effect of reliving the Vietnam era through Presidents Kennedy and Johnson was simply devastating.

Unfortunately, we had to leave in midstream in order to see another outstanding octogenarian, screenwriter and novelist Budd Schulberg, following a showing of a British documentary about his life and, significantly, his appearance as a ‘friendly” witness before

Documentary filmmaker (and Telluride regular) Ken Burns makes a point to legendary British theater and film director Peter Brook and opera director/film buff extraordinaire Peter Sellars.

This year's guest director Stephen Sondheim poses with one of his heroes, Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi.

Australian actress Toni Collette happily poses with the director of her new film Japanese Story, Sue Brooks.

the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. The documentary was fairly pedestrian, but Schulberg himself was fascinating, and interviewer Todd McCarthy got him to talk about some of his experiences in the 1930s, meeting Sergei Eisenstein, and attending a Soviet Writers’ Conference in Moscow chaired by Maxim Gorky! (For the record, he is unapologetic about his HUAC appearance, which he says was prompted by a disillusionment with the American Communist party.)

I was asked to present a short-subject that bridges the past and the present, Destino, and interview the man who made it possible, Roy Edward Disney. It was during production of Fantasia 2000 that Roy first saw some of the artwork prepared by Salvador Dali when he came to work for Walt Disney in 1945-46. He learned that the studio didn’t actually own the paintings and drawings, but according to Dali’s contract, they would once the film was completed. This inspired Roy Disney to pursue that possibility, especially after consulting with Dali’s chief collaborator, John Hench, who at age 95 still works for the Disney company. With his help, a team was able to make sense of the many story sketches, and align them with a song recorded in 1945 by singer Dora Luz (who was seen and heard in Disney’s The Three Caballeros). Then Dominique Monfery of the Disney Paris studio took on the project and brought it to life.

When I first saw this 6-minute short a few weeks ago, in the company of fifteen or twenty other people, we had the chance to pepper Roy Disney with questions. Then, almost in unison, we asked if we could see it again. There was too much to take in during just one viewing. With Bill Pence’s blessing, that’s how I presented it at Telluride at two different screenings with Roy Disney in attendance, and the audience ate it up. (Having now seen Destino six times, I find myself more entranced than ever. Roy is hoping it will be considered for an Academy Award as Best Animated Short Subject, and it will almost certainly be released on a DVD in the near future, with an extensive documentary on its creation.)

Telluride is small enough that if you don’t get to meet a filmmaker during a panel discussion, you might run into them on line for coffee. And if you’re not sure which film to choose at a certain hour (there are always three to five choices) there is no shortage of people to offer opinions all around you.

Many of the films on display will find their way to theaters in the months ahead; one of the best, Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, will open nationwide next week. Another gem,

Veteran novelist and screenwriter Budd Schulberg on the aisle at the Sheridan Opera House for a screening.

Denys Arcand’s brilliant The Barbarian Invasions, is scheduled for a November release by Miramax.

But there is something special about seeing these films in the rarefied atmosphere of Telluride, where filmmakers and film lovers mingle. Enthusiasm permeates the air, and this

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disarms some first-time attendees, who have their guard up, or worry about how their work will be received.

They soon learn that the people who attend this festival come because they care about films, and want them to be good. That doesn’t mean they’re pushovers; street corner conversations all weekend are filled with debate about the merits of various festival selections. But no one wants to see anyone fail: we’re all rooting for every film to be good, maybe even great.

That’s just one of the reasons I look forward to returning every year.