“I’m sure you’re going to have a wonderful time, and thank you for being here.” That’s how Mayor Donna Lind welcomed attendees to the Scotts Valley Alfred Hitchcock Festival on March 6.
The film fest is now in its fourth year and organizers are really getting the drill down pat.
Once again, Tere Carrubba, the famous filmmaker’s granddaughter, appeared on stage with local historian Jay Topping as part of a panel on Friday night. This year they were joined by Rich Karat from Seattle, Wash., as well as Tony Lee Moral from London, England.
Many in the audience had attended the slideshow of archival behind-the-scenes and family photos in years past, but no one seemed to mind hearing some of the same stories again.
“That’s my younger sister,” Carrubba would say, or, “That patio is still there.”
The mostly-older audience was drinking it up. (And later in the festival, they’d get the chance to drink some of the last bottles of tasty Armitage wine, which had been operating on the Hitchcock estate until recently.)
One could almost feel the locals beaming with pride when Moral called Hitchcock London’s most famous director—and to think he had a place right here in little ole’ Scotts Valley!
Carrubba told the Press Banner she really enjoys supporting the event focused on her granddad.
“I think he would be thrilled that the community that he loved was honoring him in this way,” she said after the panel. “When he lived here, it was like his happy place. He was comfortable here. He loved the area. This was the place to come and relax away from work.”
The festival has grown nearly to an almost ideal level of prominence. It still feels quite intimate—with an impromptu back-and-forth taking place between audience and presenter at points. But it also carries an air of sophistication, likely due to its proximity to the headquarters of Pixar and Netflix—and with Hollywood a few hours’ drive to the south.
Throughout the weekend, the Landing’s auditorium was generally about half to three-quarters full. There were moments when sound carried further than it should have (from people in the side bar area, or from a few overly enthusiastic audience members). But it does seem the theater has made efforts to control the sound using dampening techniques.
After being filled with tales about columnist Herb Caen dining with the suspense master in San Francisco, or Hitch’s playful conversation with a local child about naming with cow (in defiance of her parent’s grown-up orders), and how Jack O’Neill had taken the family out sailing—amongst plenty of other riveting accounts—it was time for the feature presentation.
A rare copy of Hitchcock’s first-ever film, “The Pleasure Garden,” was exhibited. Reprising his role as live piano accompanist, Kylan DeGhetaldi was having the time of his life.
Over the coming days, the settings contemplated by Hitchcock would go from a fading British Empire, to modernist America in all its mid-century glory, to a 1970s-era proto-’80s opulence that hinted at a malignant element growing in the North American democracy.
But more than anything, it was the speakers that elevated the festival from a potentially campy local romp to an event with a unique perspective, and in some cases, a program airing new scholarship first.
Saturday began with Rich Karat, who let everyone in on his “magnificent obsession” of trying to visit all of Hitchcock’s film locations.
“I was hooked,” said Karat, describing some of his early travels in this vein. That included visiting the Lake Como bridge that festivalgoers had seen on screen the night before.
“The bridge and surrounding buildings are very well preserved,” he said. “I was there on a hot day in September, 98 years later.”
As time went on, it became harder to identify where certain locations are situated. One white whale turned out to be a site in San Francisco, with a unique white sign.
“After much searching, look what I found—a photo from about 1980, from Mission and 19th,” Karat said. “Like a ghost, the white sign had appeared to me. ‘Unlock my secret,’ it commanded, ‘then spread the word. Don’t let me be forgotten,’ it seemed to insist.”
Attendees were also able to watch “Family Plot”—Hitchcock’s last film—right after learning about some of the filming locations minutes earlier.
That evening, Tony Lee Moral walked the audience through his fascination with Hitchcock and what he’d aimed to accomplish with each of his books about the man. He described interviewing key figures behind Hitchcock classics while they were still alive, and outlined the man’s “cinematic grammar.”
Over the years, he’s scoured the archives and put actual storyboards up on the screen.
But he spent the biggest chunk of his lecture deriding Donald Spoto’s biography “The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock” (1983). Moral said he’d opted to wait until Spoto had died to write the book, given how litigious the man behind the unflattering biography of Hitch was known to be.
“Spoto takes a story and completely distorts it,” he said.
Moral said the sources he spoke with, who actually knew Hitchcock, sided with the great director and not Spoto. For example, the filming of “The Birds” wasn’t as harrowing an experience as some have suggested, he stated—countering a narrative that really took hold during the #metoo era.
Next, “North by Northwest” (1959) was up. All these years later, the movie still commands your full attention.
And on Sunday, two films created during the Hitchcock 48 Hour Film Festival period were screened. No winner was picked this time, but the young Monkey Business team took questions from audience members—who were clearly impressed by the quality of the material.
The festival ended with a successful showing of “Rope,” which was the film that wasn’t played last year due to technical difficulties.
Attendee E. Hughes Martinez, the former vice president of Eclectic Pictures (who’s originally from Santa Cruz), was one of the folks who was lucky enough to experience this year’s festivities.
“I’m just happy to be here,” the screenwriter said. “It’s a great turnout.”
Martinez said it’s a somewhat different vibe from the Los Angeles film scene, where too often people are at events working an angle, instead of out of a pure love of the art.
“Hollywood is not all that it’s cracked up to be,” he said. “I think the sense of community is better here.”
