Michael Kutza is sick of the second-guessing, Monday morning quarterbacking and general nay-saying that have accompanied his 31-year reign over the Chicago International Film Festival.
The comparisons to the more popular and better-funded Toronto festival grew tiresome years ago.
The perceived lack of enthusiasm and support by the city has been an ongoing frustration.
The complaints that too many films are unknown seemed to contradict the spirit of discovery in which the festival was founded.
By many accounts, Kutza isn’t one who appreciates criticism anyway. Yet after a couple of tumultuous months that began with a failed effort within the board to oust Kutza and culminated in the departure of the organization’s board chairman and managing director, the festival’s founder is seemingly ready to re-evaluate the course to which he has stubbornly stuck over three decades.
This re-evaluation, which will take the form of a committee report due at Cinema/Chicago’s early February board meeting, comes with the event facing an identity crisis.
When Kutza presented the first Chicago International Film Festival in 1965, it was North America’s only large-scale, competitive festival. (New York’s festival was already up and running but does not feature jury prizes.) Now, Chicago’s annual October event is just another spot on a map cluttered with numerous other festivals–some of which overshadow it (Toronto’s, the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah), and many others that tug at the spotlight.
“It is a good time for us to refocus what we’re doing,” Kutza says. “In 30 years this festival has originated most of the things that the other festivals are doing. . . .
“Now there’s (a festival) on every corner. They’re like popcorn. In Florida there must be 25 film festivals. It’s hard to make yourself special and get your festival noticed when so many of us show the same films.”
While the most successful festivals have carved out their own niches–such as Sundance’s hold on American independent films–Chicago’s consistently has pursued a cast-a-wide-net strategy that can give an impression of trying to be everything for everyone. Now the festival must answer some vexing questions if it is to thrive–or even just survive:
– Is it primarily a local, national or international event?
– If it’s local, how can it do what it has failed to do thus far–generate excitement among the city’s everyday moviegoers as well as film buffs?
– If it’s national or international, how can it attract the films, filmmakers and out-of-town media coverage that are bypassing it now?
– Perhaps most pressing, who’s going to pay for its continuing operation?
When Ellis Goodman became board chairman two years ago, he guaranteed more than $300,000 in loans to the festival to cover its ongoing debt.
Goodman let his chairmanship expire at the end of the year and resigned from the board after his efforts to diminish Kutza’s role failed. He is on the re-evaluation committee and, like Kutza, is keeping mum about details. But he acknowledged that the festival’s financial difficulties are on the agenda.
In December, the festival also lost managing director Betsy Morris, whom Goodman hired in June 1994 to bring her 19 years of development experience to the organization’s fundraising efforts. Even some Kutza allies call Morris’ resignation a blow to the festival’s ongoing efforts to gain credibility among corporations and other possible patrons.
Citing too much “interference” from above, Morris says she left because “I really felt like I couldn’t do the job I was hired to do anymore. . . . The festival did not have the reputation as a well-run business or a well-run arts organization, and it became more and more difficult to try and turn it into one.”
She has a succinct answer for another key question: Can the festival significantly change if Kutza remains in charge? “No.”
Early on, Kutza earned a reputation for “discovering” important filmmakers at the festival. He premiered Martin Scorsese’s debut feature, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door?”, in 1967 and also gave the first U.S. exposure to directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Krzysztof Kieslowski.
But like Bulls General Manager Jerry Krause, whose penchant for plucking talent from obscurity has yielded superstar Scottie Pippen and Croatian sharpshooter Toni Kukoc as well as disappointments such as Jeff Sanders and Kris Bruton, Kutza has turned up his share of non-starters. And like Krause, the coups have grown harder to come by.
The good, the bad, the ugly
“In the years in which I covered the festival, my biggest complaint was that I felt there was as much of a chance of a person seeing a bad film as a good film and in some years a far greater chance,” says Tribune movie columnist Gene Siskel.
“The strength and weakness of the festival is Michael,” says Dave Kehr, who covered the event as movie critic for the Tribune and Chicago Reader before moving to the New York Daily News in 1993. “It’s entirely his baby. It’s his single-minded dedication that has kept this thing going despite civic indifference for 30 years. . . .
“He’s never been someone who was much willing to listen to other people’s opinions about anything, so (the festival) is somewhat eccentric and somewhat odd in its empathies,” he adds. “It yielded a lot of interesting stuff that no one else was showing, but it didn’t show a lot of films that would have been considered the important films of that year.”
Scoffing at the notion that he could be replaced, Kutza told the Tribune last month: “The festival is me. It is so me.” Yet over the past few years, he loosened his hold on the artistic reins and let young program director Marc Evans take a more active role in booking films.
Evans and Kutza pared down the number of features shown from about 160 to 80 to make the festival more accessible by allowing repeat screenings so “when a film did really well on Wednesday night, people would tell their friends about it and we could pack Friday night,” Evans says.
Recent success
The 1993 and 1994 festivals, in particular, were among the most well-received in recent years, featuring acclaimed films such as “The Piano,” “Farewell My Concubine,” Kieslowski’s “Three Colors” trilogy and “Heavenly Creatures.” But growing tension between Evans and Kutza led to the program director’s departure last Sept. 1, at which point only about a third of the 1995 festival’s films were booked, Evans says.
“Michael and I started getting along very poorly over just a dozen things,” says Evans, who is now working on screenplays in Los Angeles. He adds that the biggest rifts came over programming decisions; he says Kutza didn’t share his concern about limiting the number of movies, and the founder’s unilateral decision to book a 15-film Lina Wertmuller retrospective was the last straw.
(Kehr, who reviles Wertmuller’s films, would agree with Evans’ disgust; Tribune movie critic Michael Wilmington contends that the Italian director is a worthy series subject.)
The 1995 festival was deemed a box-office success, and its supporters touted that it continued to fulfill its primary mission: bringing the world of cinema to Chicago. But reviews tended once again to bemoan the scarcity of major works that previously had played in Toronto and other festivals.
Still, the festival’s ability to snare the best films–as well as its directors and stars–is far from totally reliant on its programmer’s tastes. Not only does Chicago face ever-increasing competition, but many in the industry say the festival’s timing presents a large handicap.
The Toronto International Film Festival, which has become the dominant event in North America, shows about 300 films–including 225 features–over 10 days in early September. The New York, Telluride (in Colorado) and Boston Film Festivals also take place that month, while Chicago’s traditionally begins in mid-October.
“Telluride and Toronto and the New York Film Festival are quite the troika, and then everybody’s looking to Sundance in January,” says John Pierson, who has represented independent movies such as “She’s Gotta Have It,” “Roger & Me” and “Slackers.” “There’s no need for anything in between.”
At least one distributor also views Chicago as non-essential–both for gaining exposure for a film and finding new movies to acquire. “Chicago is not a festival we look at to further the reputation of our film on a national basis,” says Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, which played “Persuasion” at this year’s festival.
He sees Chicago’s event mainly as “a local festival” that at best could give a film a boost when it opens in commercial theaters. For his purposes, Bernard ranks Chicago 10th among North American festivals after Toronto, New York, Sundance, Telluride, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, Montreal and Miami.
The money factor
Kutza finds the comparisons to Toronto particularly galling given the Canadian festival’s abundance of resources. Toronto International Film Festival director Piers Handling says federal, provincial and municipal governments provide 25 percent of the event’s $4.5 million (Canadian) annual budget.
The 1995 Chicago festival, in contrast, received a $5,000 grant and some fee waivers from the city, says Lois Weisberg, Chicago’s Commissioner of Cultural Affairs. Morris estimates that Cinema/Chicago’s annual budget is $1.2 million, which includes $600,000-$700,000 specifically for the festival.
“It got hard to compete because the Toronto Film Festival could say, `We’ll bring the director, we’ll bring the producer, we’ll bring the cast, we’ll put them up in a hotel,’ ” Evans says.
The Chicago festival has lured numerous celebrities–recent tributes feted Sally Field and Tom Cruise–but falls short of Toronto’s star power. The actors and directors were out in full force for Toronto’s 1995 world or North American premieres of “Leaving Las Vegas,” “To Die For,” “Unstrung Heroes,” “Cry the Beloved Country,” “A Month by the Lake,” “Devil in a Blue Dress,” “Four Rooms,” “The Crossing Guard,” and the yet-to-open “The Grotesque” (starring Sting) and Kenneth Branagh’s “In the Bleak Midwinter.”
Toronto is a lower-cost city than Chicago in terms of accommodating out-of-town film-biz types and journalists, yet not all of its advantages are by happenstance. Richard Pena, a former director of the Film Center at the School of the Art Institute who now oversees the New York Film Festival (which screens 25 films), notes that the Toronto festival is known to be well run, friendly and organized.
“I think that’s never been a strong point of the Chicago festival,” he says.
In addition, the Toronto festival has managed to position itself not only as the industry’s most important event on the continent but also as a people’s festival. Handling says this year’s screenings were “close to a completely sold-out scenario.”
Morris says this year’s Chicago festival was sold to 30 percent of capacity.
“In Toronto you can have a festival screening at 9 in the morning midweek, and people will be lined up around the block,” says Film Center director Barbara Scharres. “It’s hard to know whether that’s possible in Chicago.”
My kind of town?
Yet distributors and exhibitors attest that Chicago has a stronger specialty-film market than Toronto for the rest of the year. “Chicago is a tremendous movie town,” Bernard says. “I certainly think there’s an audience to support a big film festival.”
“If the Chicago Film Festival had Toronto’s budget, it would probably outdraw Toronto easily,” Wilmington says.
Others are not so sure. “For better or worse, Chicago is a sports town,” Evans says. “All of the arts organizations have a hard time with an audience, maybe save the Lyric (Opera) and the symphony.”
“I don’t know if Chicago fully appreciates the concept of international films,” says Dori Wilson, an emeritus festival board member associated with the event since its third year.
Kehr calls the pairing of Kutza and Chicago’s filmgoing audience “a bad match in a lot of ways: The City of Big Shoulders meets a dedicated aesthete. It’s like Mike Royko at the ballet or something.”
Still, the city does find takers for international films year-round at the Film Center, Facets Multimedia, the Music Box and Chicago Filmmakers. One viewpoint says these venues somehow compete with the festival; the other says they represent resources that Kutza, who has chilly relations with most of the above, should be more willing to tap.
At any rate, almost everyone who deals with the festival agrees that some adjustments are needed.
Wilson’s theory is that the festival’s biggest need is better marketing, both to deep-pocketed corporations and moviegoers.
Weisberg says she would most like to see a permanent home for the festival and a steadying of the boat after this latest round of rocking. “It would be really nice if they could project an image to the corporate community and the arts community that they’re together,” she says.
Morris describes a refocusing as not only necessary but natural. “Every organization, for-profit and not-for-profit, has to change with the times,” she says. “You just have to survive. Companies go out of business if they make the same widget they made 30 years ago if it’s not necessary anymore.”
MAJOR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALS
Sundance, Park City, Utah, mid-January
Berlin, mid-February
San Francisco, late April
Cannes, mid-May
Montreal, late August
Venice, early September
Telluride (Colo.), early September
Toronto, early September
New York, late September
Chicago, mid-October
Source: Indpendant Feature Project/West.
