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Hooray for Valleywood!

03/21/2004

The armed robbers bursting into his bedroom were the last straw.

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Hollywood producer Larry Jackson and his wife had been considering a move out of Los Angeles at the time, and had even scouted out Western Massachusetts as a likely destination.

"Amherst is looking very good right now," whispered his wife, Judith, as they huddled under their sheets and the pistol-packing men looted their home.

Shortly thereafter, Jackson and his family moved to Amherst.

Now Jackson is president of film distributor Northern Arts Entertainment in Northampton, works with the Amherst Center for Stage and Screen, and has even opened a new restaurant, Mr. Cecil's California Ribs in Northampton.

"If you do a little travel, you can do everything else by telephone," he said.

Jackson, 55, is part of what some believe is a new trend of film industry professionals moving to Western Massachusetts. He will be the keynote speaker Tuesday at "Valley Goes Hollywood," a conference focusing on film industry businesses in the region. The conference will be held at 5-9 p.m. at Hampshire College's Franklin Patterson Hall.

A growing number of people - most, like Jackson, already involved in filmmaking and video production - have chosen to move to Hampshire County because of its quality of life.

Jackson said he does not miss the social culture of Los Angeles' film industry, where networking for professional gain is relentless.

"The value system in L.A. is kind of skewed; people have turned themselves, and people they have relationships with, into strictly commodities," he said.

Others in the business tell a similar story.

"More and more people are coming all the time," said Williamstown animator Terrence Masson. "A producer friend of mine just bought a house here, and those who can't come wish they could," he said.

While many documentary filmmakers are gravitating towards Amherst and Northampton, animators and special effects houses have tended to head towards Berkshire County.

Masson, whose company Digital Fauxtography does computer graphics for major Hollywood studios, moved here three years ago after lengthy stints in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He had worked in Berkshire County with Douglas Trumbull, who did the pioneering special effects for "2001: A Space Odyssey," before moving to California.

Living on the East Coast can be forbidding to movie industry people, but Masson and other said their existing contacts in Los Angeles allow him to get work regularly.

"It's a challenge, but it gets easier and easier every year with the technology and the growing willingness of Hollywood producers (to give work to out-of-town companies)," Masson said.

Technological changes mean that special effects artists, sound and film editors can work on personal computers in home offices instead of in large workplaces, industry experts said. Some of the same changes have reduced the cost and size of video equipment while increasing the quality to levels where it can compete with film.

"I was sitting in the Haymarket Cafe (in Northampton) with my editor, and she was editing our movie right there (on a laptop computer) while we were having coffee," said videographer Nancy Fletcher of Belchertown.

As recently as 10 years ago, all editing had to take place inside hot editing suites filled with large, specialized videotape machines.

"More and more can be done for less money," she said.

Some group members have taken to calling the region "Valleywood," only partly in jest.

The conference Tuesday is being organized by Hidden-Tech, a non-profit group representing technology-based businesses operating from homes and small offices in Western Massachusetts. Jackson will offer a keynote address about his work as an executive for Samuel Goldwyn Co., Orion and Miramax.

"It became clear to me that people have been coming into the area very recently who are in the film industry," said Amy Zuckerman, Hidden-Tech founder.

The event, which will include sessions on animation, documentaries, screenwriting, acting and videography, is co-sponsored by Hampshire College, the National Writers Union, the Northampton Film Festival and the Amherst Center for Stage and Screen. Following the discussions, film clips will be shown, as will the feature "Mystic Pizza," a film with which Jackson was involved.

Admission to the conference is $10 for adults, $5 for children under 12 and free for college students with identification. For information go to www.hidden-tech.net

The Pioneer Valley film and video community has concerns that go well beyond just making money, organizers said.

Videographer Fletcher, who started and sold a video production company, now directs the Act Now program that introduces girls to video production. She believes increasing access to the tools of making films and videos can bring a variety of images, especially of women, to the screen.

"The richer mix of perspectives is going to be healthy," she said.

Western Massachusetts has been the scene of many film productions, since the days of a 1916 film called "A Romance in Springfield." A number of other silent films were made in Blandford, where film star and director Edward K. Lincoln lived until about 1920.

Other productions to grace Western Massachusetts over the years include "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "The Reincarnation of Peter Proud," "Stanley and Iris" and "Malice," among others. In 1997, part of the movie "In Dreams" was filmed at the former Northampton State Hospital.

In the fall of 1998, "The Cider House Rules" was filmed in Northampton, Lenox and Vermont. The Oscar-winning movie included dozens of extras from Western Massachusetts.

In 2001, portions of "The Human Stain," starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, were filmed in Williamsburg and Charlemont.

Perhaps most recently, Springfield native Sean Ireland, an independent movie producer, shot scenes for his film "Sway" at the former York Street Jail last summer. The film is expected to premiere soon.

"Western Massachusetts is particularly rich for movie-making because it offers such a variety of backgrounds," said Fletcher.

Ironically, the state closed its official film office, which worked to attract film productions to the state, in 2002. A private non-profit group, the Massachusetts Film Bureau, was established through donations to help promote the area for film locations.

Several of the recent films were made using several area crew members, a sign of the growing number of such workers locally.

However, those in the business believe that a home-grown film industry will rely on more than visiting Hollywood productions shooting here on location for a few days or weeks.

More and more work by Western Massachusetts filmmakers is finding its way onto film festival screens around the region.

"I think it's growing. I'm monitoring it more," said David A. Kleiler, chairman of the board of the Northampton Film Festival. "There's a vitality out there."

Kleiler lives in Brookline, and helps program several of the most prominent film festivals in New England. He became involved with the Northampton festival two years ago.

Fletcher said she is surprised by the quality as well as the quantity of film and video people in the area. "It's remarkable what kind of talent we have here to put together films," she said.

The goal of the Hidden-Tech group and other sponsors of the event Tuesday is to promote the creativity of film and video, but also has a more practical goal.

"Normally, people put on a film festival to showcase art," said Zuckerman. "We're doing it to help people get work and promote their profession."

Daniel M. Giat, who will speak at the conference, had lived the life of a struggling screenwriter for 14 years in Los Angeles when he decided to move out of the city of angels. "We'd socialize out there and all people would talk about is the entertainment business," he said.

"We had heard wonderful things about Amherst," he said. He and his wife moved to Pelham in 1996 and have not looked back.

He wrote the screenplay for the 2002 HBO movie "Path to War," and continues to write for projects at the pay-cable channel.

He loves living in Western Massachusetts and feels his distance from Hollywood may be healthy for him. "I'm no longer obsessed with my envy of writer friends that are more successful."

Another speaker, Rikk Desgres, owner of Pinehurst Pictures and Sound in Northampton, does video editing and DVD creation. He said he is not sure if film and video are a growing industry for the Pioneer Valley.

"There have always been pockets of people doing work here," he said. His company has done work for some of the documentaries produced by Ken Burns' Florentine Films, a branch of which is located in the Haydenville section of Williamsburg.

Jackson said there is no reason that Western Massachusetts could not develop a thriving entertainment industry.

"As long as there are people with good ideas and some talent, as well as access to people outside the region, it could happen."

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