Host an at-home film festival

Movies are a great way to spend a few hours on a rainy night or weekend afternoon. To both extend the experience and make it a family affair, try organizing your own personal film festival.
Just pick a theme or a subject, arrange to rent or borrow the movies, and set the schedule. Then, talk up the flicks and maybe do some homework so you — as the “festival” organizer — can discuss each like a true motion picture connoisseur.
Marathons of the “James Bond” or “Star Trek” or “Harry Potter” movies are obvious choices, and an animation theme can be a sure winner if there are youngsters. These days, you can also get entire seasons of many network TV shows on DVD.
But more complex themes can be fun, as well. These will typically involve films from a variety of eras on a variety of subjects, increasing the odds that your series will have something for everyone. Examples might be movies starring Cary Grant or Tommy Lee Jones, or movies about sailing.
My most recent film festival was instigated when I discovered that a friend had neither seen nor heard of “Out on a Limb,” a movie filmed largely in Boulder Creek, with many locals in bit parts, crowd scenes and background shots.
For the next several weekends, we watched one or two movies that had been made in whole or in part in Santa Cruz County. There are a staggering number of them, and after almost 20 of them, we agreed to take up the theme again later.
The film industry came to the Central Coast early on, just a year or so after motion pictures evolved from a penny arcade attraction to a theater experience. In 1910, moviemaker “Bronco Billy” Anderson arrived in Santa Cruz with his studio in a boxcar. Westerns were already popular, and he wanted to make pictures with real cowboys in authentic Western scenery.
Wowed by our majestic redwoods, Anderson in one year filmed 31 Western features in and around the San Lorenzo Valley and along the railroad that still existed between Felton and Los Gatos. His romantic depiction of cowboys as rough-edged tough guys with hearts of gold is still the standard used in Westerns.
In 1911, the Selig Film Co. filmed several Westerns in Santa Cruz and at Cowell Ranch.
In 1914, the first movie from California Motion Picture Corp., known as Cal Pic, was filmed near Boulder Creek. “Salomy Jane” opened to national acclaim, and Cal Pic director George Middleton bought up land around Boulder Creek to build a permanent gold rush town set used in several films.
The first production out of the Boulder Creek facility was “The Lilly of Poverty Flat” in 1915, and the area surrounding Middleton’s set and sound stage was called Poverty Flat by locals for decades thereafter. The full-scale village consisted of several log and shake cabins, a few saloons and general merchandise stores, a post office and an overland stage station. Poverty Flat was used for scenes in Cal Pic movies over the next 10 years, but its value to the company diminished, and it was abandoned in the late 1920s.
Still, the area remained a magnet for filmmakers and production companies. William Hart came here to film “The Aryan,” Douglas Fairbanks was here for “The Halfbreed,” and Mary Pickford chose this area for “The Romance of the Redwoods” and “Freckles.”
By 1926, more than 100 movies had been made using San Lorenzo Valley and Santa Cruz locations. Another 100 have included scenes or been centered here since then, with locals filling many of the minor on-screen roles or working elsewhere in the production.
The town of Boulder Creek was featured prominently in “Out on a Limb.” Filmed in 1992 and starring Matthew Broderick, it was originally to be titled “Welcome to Buzzsaw,” and Boulder Creek was made up to be that city. There are familiar places, familiar businesses (in movie disguise) and familiar faces in almost every scene.
Other cool flicks with scenery you’ll recognize include “Harold and Maude” from 1971, No. 45 on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 funniest films ever; “Sudden Impact,” the third of Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” movies; “The Lost Boys,” a 1987 coming-of-age action-horror movie starring Keifer Sutherland; “Killer Klowns from Outer Space,” an over-the top 1988 movie with Santa Cruz as the town of Crescent Cove; “Homegrown,” a 1998 film starring Billy Bob Thornton; “Back To The Beach,” a 1987 update of 50s-era beach flicks — with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello and cameos from the likes of David Bowie, Peewee Herman, Jerry Mathers and Bob Denver; “Steel Heel.” a 1993 release from local cinematographer, director and producer Eric Thiermann; and “Kinsey,” the 2004 big-screen biography of human sexuality research pioneer Dr. Alfred Kinsey.
There are oodles more. That’s the fun of staging your own film festival — doing the research to see what movies fit into whatever theme you select. Get the family or a group of friends involved in the selections; that way everyone’s vested.
A homemade film festival is cheap, fun and perfect fare for winter family time and social gatherings. It can encompass an evening, a weekend or one night a week for an extended period.
• Steve Bailey of Boulder Creek has spent plenty of time in recreational activities. Contact him at [email protected].