Better A Film Festival Than A Harley Festival

By Dan Rattiner

Ever wonder what would have happened to the Hamptons if twenty years ago Joyce Robinson had been in the motorcycle business? Our story would be very different. And I will get to that.

Fortunately, however, Ms. Robinson was in the filmmaking business. She and her husband had a house in Los Angeles, an apartment in New York City and a summer home on Skimhampton Road in East Hampton. And Mrs. Robinson worked as a casting director for some of the big Hollywood studios. Then they got a divorce. And Ms. Robinson got the house on Skimhampton Road, where, as luck would have it, she would have to raise their small child. What would she do? She was too far to commute to New York City to do her work. So she thought maybe she could bring the work to the Hamptons.

Wouldn't the Hamptons be a perfect place to have a Film Festival? You bet. And so she started one, ran it for a year or two as a little bitty thing, and then, as it grew bigger and bigger, got involved with the politics of running it, which included, as the main creation, the film festival board she had created, which, in a matter of two years, pushed her out.

Today, for four days, the Hamptons International Film Festival featured 17,000 filmgoers and about 5,000 filmmakers and hangers-on. We had people in sunglasses and gold chains running around in hot pink t-shirts and we have limousines, celebrities, more than a hundred films being shown in six movie theatres at the same time, and conversation that more often than not was about distribution rights, auditioning, choreography, acting studios, production facilities and marketing.

This army of people in the film business, standing around talking on our various Main Streets, wore badges on chains around their neck that denoted their status at the festival such as STAFF, PRESS, FOUNDER, SPONSOR, FILMMAKER and so forth and so on. All the badges have four starfish on them, the logo of the festival.

Then there were the parties and the events and the lectures and the roundtables. They were all over the place in the Hamptons and at them you would have found Alec Baldwin and Ellen Burstyn and Robert Altman and Roy Scheider, sometimes separately and sometimes together.

And then there were the awards. There were awards for Narrative Feature Films, Narrative Feature Films in Competition, Documentary Feature Films in Competition, Short Films in Competition, Films of Conflict and Resolution, and Student Film Awards.

As for the films themselves, here are some of the liner notes from the big, two pound, glossy program.

"This powerful drama offers a brutally honest depiction of life as a junkie."

"......Then Harold starts hearing a voice in his head. When she mentions Harold's imminent death, he knows it's time to seek professional help."

"......Jake, who would like to start a family, tries to bond with Allegra's two adopted children, while intermittently taking care of his sick father......"

"Lucien runs a kickboxing school in the Netherlands......"

"Shot with an almost documentary-style grittiness, the German film The Red Cockatoo follows Siggi as he first meets the bohemian Luise, a poet and factory worker, and falls for her instantly. Luise, however, is married to the rebellious and often drunk Wolle, and the three soon become inseparable."

"When Robert Fabry comes to the rescue of a drunken prostitute in a hotel bar......"

There is not, this year, a film about the tragedy of strangely docile polar bears adrift on an ice floe off Greenland. But the committee did, I'm told, consider one.

All of which, amidst the windmills, old New England Villages and beaches, lent a wonderfully intellectual, woolly and creative air to the Hamptons in the autumn.

Which brings us to the Harley Davidson Motorcycle Festival and Rallye, a bullet which we just dodged.

Had Ms. Robinson taken that turn, today, the day after the festival, we would be remembering the thousands of motorcycles and riders and girl friends who descended on the Hamptons from all over. The army would be wearing helmets and leather jackets and headbands, and most of the events, such as drag racing, gang wars, fistfights and drunken brawls would have taken place at night. A pall of oil and gas fumes would be still be hanging over the community as the cleanup committee went around picking up all the beer cans, yoo hoos, whiskey bottles, condoms and other assorted trash.

Would we call it a success? Probably. With no frame of reference, we'd be counting our money and thanking our lucky stars for a convention of something, anything, in the off season.

Thank you, Ms. Robinson, wherever you are, for making it the movie business.

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