Still in its infancy, the Wisconsin Film Festival is filling seats and earning accolades.

By Michael Penn MA’97

22 ON WISCONSIN F THE 138 FILMS Organizers expect similar hordes programming all five Wisconsin festivals. shown during last this year, when the festival takes over “The way you pick a [standard] movie is year’s Wisconsin Film six Madison theaters from March 27 to that you wait for a review, or word of Festival, almost all 30. Mary Carbine ’86, MA’88, who mouth, or something to let you know went off without a directs the festival for the UW-Madison that it’s worth your time. At a festival, hitch. One that didn’t Arts Institute, its presenting organiza- you can’t wait for the buzz. The reason was a three-hour story about Inuit life tion, says she began fielding calls for it’s fun is because you have to just dive O tickets in December, two months before in and take chances. Sometimes you called Atanarjuat — The Fast Runner, which accidentally began without sound. the festival announced what films it misfire, but sometimes you have this For a few minutes, the film rolled word- would show. liberating, exhilarating experience, lessly on, until projectionists got the “There’s a real sense of excitement at because you had no idea that a film problem fixed and started it from the being able to see all these different types would take you to those places.” beginning. of films together in one event,” she says. It’s like a giant, celluloid buffet, Remarkably, no one seemed to mind. But it’s the kind of audience, rather where there’s every reason to try new There were no catcalls or disgusted than the size, that sets the festival apart tastes. And if the patient way in which groans from audience members. “People from your average trip to the local audiences digested the unintentionally just took in what was there,” says Liesel multiplex. This is no multiplex crowd, silent Fast Runner shows anything, it’s that de Boor, a filmmaker who was in the and these are no multiplex movies. Madison is ready for the unexpected. audience that night. “They were happy to In these days of test marketing and “I just thought it was the most watch it that way. It was almost like it was targeted demographics, genuine surprise incredible audience I’d seen,” says de a treat to get to see it in a different way.” hardly ever enters a movie theater. Major Boor, a Madison native who came back Those few moments of silence say a motion pictures are carefully tailored to from New York City to show her film, great deal about the kind of event that meet audience expectations, and when Cat Lady. “I remember thinking that this the festival has become. Starting in disappointments are expensive, spon- would only happen in Madison.” 1999 as a modest on-campus showcase taneity is expendable. Film festivals, on for a few obscure films, the festival has the other hand, typically piece together mushroomed into a regional happening, variegated rosters of foreign, independ- Few people will mistake showing more films to more people at ent, and experimental film. Surprise is Madison for a Midwestern tinseltown. more Madison theaters. Last year, the house special. Yet the trappings of civic cinephilia are about 18,500 tickets were sold for the “A festival is like a game,” says there. UW-Madison hosts frequent film four-day fete — a 30 percent jump James Kreul ’92, MA’96, a film studies series and owns one of the largest from 2001 and six times the number graduate student who has had a hand in archives of film history and ephemera in of people who attended the first year. Local arts writers have described it as a “monster hit,” a “critical and audience blockbuster,” and “a first-rate Midwest-

ern cultural expo.” ERIC TADSEN But such thesaurus-mining praise only begins to get at the spirit that seems to take hold of downtown Madison dur- ing the festival. In short order, the event has become the kind of phenomenon that generates its own buzz. People stop each other in the street to talk about it. Gossip flows. Tickets are scarce. Nearly one- third of the movies shown last year sold out before the first reel ever ran, and many of the rest — like The Fast Runner, which nearly filled the Orpheum’s Main

ERIC PEARLE Theatre — attracted long lines of people who sometimes queued up without know- The Wisconsin Film Festival earned its marquee billing last year, drawing long lines of movie ing what movie they were waiting to see. enthusiasts at the Orpheum and other downtown venues.

SPRING 2003 23 the world. And downtown is home to the gloriously restored Orpheum Theatre, as ERIC TADSEN well as the Four-Star Video Heaven rental shop that Roger Ebert once called “the best video store outside Chicago.” “There has been a particularly long interest in film here, going back to the time when I was a young assistant professor,” says Tino Balio, executive director of the Arts Institute, who came to Madison in 1966. (See related story, page 27.) “In those days, you could see a foreign film on almost any night.” The ultimate hallmark of a movie town, though, is a film festival of its own. As many as 1,200 communities around the world have them, from the big and glamorous ones at Sundance and Cannes, to idiosyncratic little celebrations organ- ized around a specific director or theme. A film festival isn’t just about seeing the films — it can also bring chances to see the people (Get your tickets now for the New who made them. Last year, director Arliss Howard, right, and actress Debra Winger sat down Orleans Worst Film Festival, devoted to talk about their movie, Big Bad Love, with film critic Michael Wilmington. to the most dismal in new cinema.) Ideally, festivals are more than just tourism department, hosted a party April 1999. Then, with two months agglomerations of film. They bring for Hollywood insiders, many of them to go and still no big-name premiere to together communities of movie lovers, former Badgers who had gone on to anchor the event, the state gave up and united by popcorn and long hours of influential roles in movie production and canceled nearly all its plans. sitting in dark rooms, who give the events distribution. Because the business of the About all that remained was a sched- ethos and attitude. At Cannes, for film office is business — and, specifically, ule of films to be shown on campus, example, there’s an overwhelming air of generating some for Wisconsin — its which originally was supposed to be a celebrity, and who you see is as important officials were less interested in commu- side dish to the big feast going on up as what you see. At Sundance, industry nity-building than in getting the Holly- State Street. Sponsored by the Arts networking is the name of the game. At wood film industry to take notice of Institute and programmed by students Slamdance, an alternative festival that (and, in turn, make movies in) the Kreul and Weger, the films were mostly runs parallel to its more famous cousin, Badger state. off-the-radar independents and docu- it’s about slamming the films at Sundance. Over brats and beer, the partiers mentaries; there were certainly no Red- “Festivals are about celebrating the plotted an event that would put Madison fords among them. But the planners whole idea of film,” says Wendi Weger on the film map. A few months later, figured that, even if a Great Wisconsin ’98, one of the Wisconsin festival’s origi- state officials initiated the Great Wiscon- Film Festival was no longer possible, nal programmers, who now coordinates sin Film Festival, an event whose name they had a shot at a pretty good one. the New York Underground and Hamp- signaled its optimism. The big draw was “We had a good idea of what we tons film festivals. “There are loads of to be an appearance by Robert Redford, wanted to do, and we thought it would reasons that films get into commercial who had agreed to drop in to accept have been crazy to cancel the whole theaters, and many of those reasons aren’t something called the Cheesehead thing,” says Kreul, who was then a pro- based at all on the merit of the films.” Award — a self-deprecating honor gram assistant for the UW’s Cinemath- Festivals, she says, give films outside the that promised the sort of klieg-lighted eque film series. “We knew that if there mainstream a chance, while at the same celebrity that was sure to accompany any was no festival at all, if we let the whole time allowing audiences to appreciate a Hollywood megastar on State Street. thing end, there probably wouldn’t be fuller scope of creative work. But Redford later backed out, any film festival in Madison for a long Wisconsin’s foray into that realm beginning a string of setbacks that time. We had to take advantage of that began, as do all good Badger ideas, at a threatened to end the event before it momentum.” tailgater. In February 1997, the Wiscon- could begin. The festival was initially Kreul and Weger, then a senior com- sin Film Office, a division of the state postponed from October 1998 until munication arts major who coordinated

24 ON WISCONSIN the Wisconsin Union’s Starlight Cinema, went with Warhol.” To his surprise, so manager, and a public relations agent in stuck with the goal that guided their did a lot of other people. Three thousand one body — a blessing, Balio says, given campus programming efforts: find high- people attended the festival that year — the festival’s scant budget for bodies. quality movies that were out of the main- and almost all thought it was, well, great. “Really, we need three people,” Balio stream and stood little chance of enjoying says, “but we can only afford half of one. wide commercial release. “We thought it Fortunately, Mary gives us about 110 was very important to build it from Perhaps the most important percent.” within the film community,” says Weger. thing that happened during the first festi- In her first year as director, Carbine The festival featured sixteen films, val was that Mary Carbine came. A grad- more than tripled the number of films headlined by an eighty-minute, black- uate of UW-Madison’s film department, shown, expanded the festival off-campus and-white comedy titled Man of the Carbine had been working for Wisconsin into downtown theaters, and turned Century, produced by Adam Abraham, Public Television as a fund raiser. But she screenings into ticketed events. The plan- a first-time filmmaker and the twenty- was fresh from stints in Los Angeles and ning team also scheduled the festival for eight-year-old brother of a UW student. Chicago, where she worked for a collec- earlier in spring, hoping to avoid a repeat The rest of the schedule offered little tion of film organizations, including the of the previous year’s crowd-thinning high-caliber celebrity, but some tantaliz- University of Chicago Film Studies weather. With the event still half a year ing story lines. One film, made by Carrie Center, IFP/Midwest, and the Academy away, someone noticed that they had Ansell ’93, revolved around what goes of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It chosen the same weekend as the NCAA on (aside from the obvious) in the rest seemed obvious to Kreul that she should men’s basketball championships. rooms of New York City nightclubs. be involved. Kreul recalls dismissing the concern. Another was a restored copy of the 1928 Kreul invited her to take part in a “I said, ‘Don’t worry. There’s no chance Frank Capra film The Matinee Idol, which panel on the future of the film festival, Wisconsin will even get close to the Final had almost disappeared from circulation. which took place on May 2, the last day Four,’ ” he laughs. The state film office also came through of the 1999 event. But, as it turned out, the Badgers by landing Jim Abrahams x’66, of On May 3, he says, Carbine essen- tipped off in Indianapolis right in the Airplane! fame, for a lecture on comedy. tially began running the next festival. middle of the festival, competing with at The screenings were free, and, “If Mary hadn’t been involved, year two least three movie showings and stealing although Kreul and Weger had toiled to would not have happened. There is no the spotlight. Walter Mirisch ’42, the arrange appearances by filmmakers and doubt about that,” Kreul says. “She longtime independent producer who was participatory discussions, there were few turned it into a professional film festival.” there to appear at a tribute honoring his trappings that evoked a “festival” atmos- Carbine has a caffeinated personality career, carried around a portable televi- phere. “It felt more like a really great that matches the intensity of her blaze- sion, so that he could catch the Badgers weekend of films,” Kreul says. red hair. A fitness fanatic who is training between films. Opening night was the last Thursday for a triathlon, she had not only the expe- Yet the filmgoing public was unde- in April, when students were busy with rience, but the resolve, to build on what terred. Even screenings that went head- term papers and preparing for spring the students had started. Living inside to-head with the game sold out, and, semester finals. And it didn’t help that the Hollywood bubble had taught her when the stubs were totaled, the festival Mother Nature picked the same week- not only the operations and language of had drawn in twelve thousand people — end for the debut of warm weather. the movie business, but its often quirky more than twice Carbine’s own projec- “It was gorgeous,” Kreul recalls. The realities. Once, at a Women in Film gala, tions. “I think at that point I realized that sun broke through the interminable gray Carbine was appointed to secret Robin this was going to be big,” she says. of Madison spring, and temperatures Williams through a back entrance where These days, Carbine has what many neared seventy degrees. It seemed like he wouldn’t be mobbed by crowds. people might consider the perfect job, the weekend’s hottest seat would be a That’s how things got done out there; given that a lot of her work is watching prime Terrace chair, not one for, say, most of the really interesting stuff movies. But there are so many movies. Outer and Inner Space, a nearly plotless happened in the backrooms. She sees three hundred films each year, experimental video shot by Andy Warhol After the modest success of the 1999 many of them during blitzkrieg trips to in 1965. event, the Arts Institute allocated money film festivals around the country, where “If you had a choice between sitting to hire Carbine half time to coordinate she works overtime to recruit films for outside on the first nice day in a long future events. She was, says Tino Balio, Madison’s event. At Toronto’s ten-day time, or going inside to watch this mini- the only person who possibly could do international film festival in September, malist Warhol film, well, I know what the job. Carbine combined the talents of a she will take in about fifty screenings. most people would do,” Kreul says. “I film programmer, a fund raiser, an event At Sundance, she’ll try to catch another

SPRING 2003 25 twenty-five. What she hasn’t seen Work on the 2003 line-up was ongo- magazine. “The fun of a festival is herself she gets a read on by working ing as On Wisconsin’s deadline arrived. presenting and seeing those films that |the phones, staying in constant contact (For a few highlights, see below, or will be big in the specialty arena ahead with critics, fellow programmers, film check wifilmfest.org for a full schedule.) of everyone else,” says Carbine. professors, and others who closely follow But expect the festival to follow the The festival’s roots, however, are in moviemaking. pattern of years past, offering diverse the joys of discovering the next little “Being able to do that is the part selections encompassing foreign and thing — in seeing movies that have only a that reminds me why I do all the other domestic features, documentaries, new remote chance of appearing on the radar things,” she says. media, animation, and revivals of forgot- screen of the wider public. For all its As the festival has grown, so has ten classics. There will be some familiar growing pomp, the event is still deeply the effort needed to pull it off. Carbine names and faces, including an appear- provincial, with about one-fifth of the manages arrangements for the more than ance by Roger Ebert, but most of the films coming from writers and directors one hundred events during the long films will arrive with more hope than with Wisconsin ties. And, as much as the weekend, including appearances by some hype, having drawn little attention from Wisconsin Film Festival is about bringing sixty filmmakers and other speakers. She mainstream audiences or press. good movies to audiences, it’s also about sweats all the details personally, from But that doesn’t mean that they bringing good audiences to the movies. shipping films to booking hotel rooms to won’t. Festivals usually operate ahead “It’s just a thrill to show your movie to approving marketing materials. Finding of the grapevine, often giving audiences audiences like the ones in Madison,” says money is never far down the to-do list. their first taste of movies that may go on Liesel de Boor, who has screened Cat Last year’s festival cost about $650,000, to bigger things. In past years, Wiscon- Lady, a dark comedy, at festivals through- and ticket revenue covered less than 10 sin’s festival has featured such emerging out the country. “I got to sit in the audi- percent of the tab. More than 80 percent independent hits as The Straight Story, ence and hear people laugh at my movie. of the budget comes from in-kind dona- Thirteen Conversations about One Thing, and And that’s kind of the whole reason you tions; the rest consists of cash gifts, Y tu mamá también, as well as dozens of make movies — for audiences like that.” secured from as many as fifty companies other films on the cusp of notoriety. and organizations. “It’s not just a matter Typical of this year’s crop is Better Luck Michael Penn MA’97 is senior editor of On Wisconsin and of getting a bunch of films and showing Tomorrow, whose director, Justin Lin, not the brother of Sean, although he loved his work in them,” says Balio. recently graced the cover of Filmmaker Sweet and Lowdown. Building the Lego-like structure of screenings, lectures, and other events takes months of viewing, reviewing, and ON THE MARQUEE recruiting. This year, Carbine’s office received 170 tapes from filmmakers hop- More than one hundred films are on tap for the fifth annual Wisconsin Film ing to be part of the festival, and each Festival, representing the usual eclectic mix of independent, world, and was screened carefully. Most of the films, experimental film. Movies will be shown March 27–30 at the Orpheum though, are solicited by Carbine and a Theatre, the Bartell Theatre, the Club Majestic, and the Madison Art Center, handful of programming volunteers, as well as University Square Theatre, the Memorial Union Play Circle, and the including several students from the UW’s Cinematheque screens on campus. communication arts department. A few A few of the films likely to be talked about include Better Luck Tomorrow, themes usually emerge in the final sched- Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, ule, but films are chosen primarily based and Satin Rouge. The festival will also highlight new African films from Tunisia, on what’s good and what’s available. Senegal, Rwanda, the Ivory Coast, and beyond, as well as profile works In many cases, the festival organizers dealing with science in culture. try to woo not only the films, but also the Another showcase will be experimental and avant-garde film, including filmmakers, to Madison. Screenings are an appearance by influential filmmaker Michael Snow, who made the 1960s often followed by audience dialogues film Wavelength, widely considered a classic of the genre. Snow will show with the people behind the films, helping selections from his digital work, as well as a new feature film. to ensure that the festival offers more “There are just so few opportunities to see films like this,” says Carbine than just passive viewing. “We always of Snow’s work. “But really, I think these films are more accessible than people try to find ways to create a filmgoing may realize.” community so that we can foster a For ticket information and show times, visit wifilmfest.org or call (877) 963- deeper understanding of the film and the FILM (3456). process of making it,” says Carbine.

26 ON WISCONSIN student centers and hangouts (like the A GOLDEN AGE Green Lantern Eating Cooperative), where sixteen-millimeter films were THE WISCONSIN FILM FESTIVAL REVIVES MEMORIES OF screened every night. It was a fabulously MADISON’S LONG LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE MOVIES. eclectic bill of fare, from The Battle of Algiers, City Lights, and Wild Strawberries to Bringing Up Baby, Notorious, and Duck Soup. UW–MADISON ARCHIVES We were crazy about movies. And we all seemed to know each other. We wrote about films, studied them in classes, and joined film societies and selection committees. When you’re young, you’re often poor in money (as I was), but rich in acquaintance — and you often make the friends and enemies who will haunt your whole life. Once, I could walk down State Street and almost immediately bump into someone I knew — or two or three. Sometimes, since it was an age of student protest, we’d emulate Barry Fitzgerald as Michaeleen Oge Flynn in The Quiet Man, and “talk a little treason.” But more often than not, we would talk movies — talk about John Ford and Jean Luc Godard, and the morality of tracking shots, and A campus kiosk advertises a typical night at the movies during the 1970s. the truth twenty-four times a second, and whether Ingmar Bergman was really a complacent. And that wonderful treasure By Michael Wilmington x’68 better director than Don Siegel. We trove of movies on campus, which When I got a call several years ago invit- would pore over the latest issues of the marked Madison in the sixties and ing me to attend the first Wisconsin Film various journals, for which most of us Festival — as a representative of Madi- seventies, has largely vanished — except wrote: The Velvet Light Trap, a homegrown son’s “Movie Golden Age” — I was happy when the festival and a few other venues independent film magazine with an inter- to accept. But why had it taken so long? try to bring it back. Once, there were national reputation; the Daily Cardinal, The Madison I knew — where I dozens of movies shown every week, which, from 1971 to 1973, may have had came at the age of seventeen to study and passionate buffs arguing about them the best student film reviewing staff ever English, where I acted onstage in the everywhere. Now, the campus kiosks assembled; or TakeOver, a proudly sensa- Wisconsin Union Theater and elsewhere, are bare of the movie posters that once tional underground paper of alternative where I went to the Field House and crowded them top to bottom. The movies culture and outright scandal. Camp Randall for sports and to the have largely ended. At night, if there wasn’t an uprising Majestic, Orpheum, and Memorial The Golden Age overlapped the Viet- somewhere, we’d settle down to another Union Play Circle for movies, where I nam War protest years and was, in many movie in another classroom, put on marched against the Vietnam War, wrote ways, part of the same cultural ferment. by one of the many film societies that for newspapers, and became a certified During those years, amazingly, in addition flourished on campus then. There were member of the notorious Madison Film to everything else happening, the UW several dozen societies at one time or Mafia — no longer really exists. Some of played host to a film culture and commu- another, with names like the Fertile my old film friends are still in town, but nity that matched the activity, intensity, Valley Film Society, the Praeteorius, El most have scattered to the far corners of and productivity of the more famous film Dorado, Phoenix, Green Lantern, and, the country. I see them only rarely now, communities at UCLA or NYU. Movies most venerable of all, the Wisconsin Film when my job takes me to the coasts or were critiqued, movies were shot, and Society — the one film group that pre- when I bus back to Madison. most of all movies were shown — an dated all the others, and, sadly, the last to And the Golden Age, as I knew it, endless stream every week, not just in the fall, after home video killed them all. is long gone. The city seems less volatile regular theaters, but in campus auditori- Why did this campus film culture and exciting, the student body more ums and classrooms, and off-campus spring up so suddenly and why did it dis-

SPRING 2003 27 appear? For years, I was so caught up in Society, then ensconced in the basement pany, Magic Lantern, bears the name of that world that I couldn’t have analyzed auditorium of the Commerce Building the school’s then most successful society. what made it special. But it’s obvious (now known as Ingraham Hall). In 1967, Up to then, the world of student the- that the terror and turbulence of those I began writing movie reviews for the ater had eaten up most of my after-school years had a lot to do with its birth. Vio- Daily Cardinal, an association that contin- life. But I gradually became consumed lence in the world and on campus made ued, off and on, into the seventies. That by film, as we all did. I joined the Memo- people want to gather together, to retreat same year, I befriended Joe McBride, a rial Union film committee, a contentious into fantasy. There was also a specific tall, bespectacled Milwaukee guy who group that picked the films for the Play chemistry to the student body — the mix also contributed to the Cardinal, under its Circle. The film committee attracted all of kids from the Dairy State and kids old film critic-editor Larry Cohen. The kinds of movie buffs, and it brought me from the East. The city kids were more first time I saw Joe (outside of Professor in touch with faculty such as Tino Balio, fluent in art-film lore, but the country Richard Byrne’s film history class) was D. W. Griffith scholar Russell Merritt, kids (like me) may have been more pas- on the day of the Dow Chemical demon- and David Bordwell, the ubiquitous sionate about learning it. All of us were strations, when he raced into the Play author who shared the pages of Film predisposed to the easy, cheap entertain- Circle during a showing of They Were Comment with Joe and me and later ment of movies. We sopped it all up. Expendable to announce that students became the country’s foremost academic Certainly I did. I came to Madison were being gassed on Bascom Hill. writer on film. from the village of Williams Bay, Wis- Joe and I began staging plays, shoot- Thanks to Balio and others, the uni- consin (population: 1,114 or so, at the ing movies, and writing film articles versity’s Wisconsin Center for Film and time), from a high school graduating together, which we got published in Theater Research acquired the film col- class of twenty-eight. We were tiny; in national or international magazines. lection of United Artists, which included the fifties and sixties, the only movie the- Through him, I met other Mafiosi: the movies made at Warner Brothers, RKO, ater in the Bay was the Lakes Outdoor darkly comic cynics Tim Onosko and and Monogram studios from the thirties Theater (since demolished and replaced Mark Bergman, and John Davis and through the early fifties. Inspired by the by a compost field) on the outskirts of Tom Flinn, who ran the Fertile Valley accessibility of the collection, a bearded, town. I grew up going to see movies in Film Society and also turned out killer lanky graduate student from New the surrounding towns, becoming a riffs with the White Trash Blues Band. Zealand named Russell Campbell started devotee of Alfred Hitchcock, Billy It was also through Joe that I became The Velvet Light Trap, which he typed by Wilder, David Lean, and Elia Kazan. involved with the film societies. Movies hand on an old manual typewriter. Rus- But I longed to see the more unattainable could be rented cheaply and shown sell looked something like a Hammer ones — the movies with subtitles that cheaply; you could set up two Kodak Studio horror movie Rasputin, but was were written about in Esquire and The Pageant projectors at the back of a class- probably the gentlest and most collegial New Yorker. When I went to Madison in room and show the films on the pull- of all of us — and his magazine gradually 1964, I had seen only two foreign films down screens. Joe was chairman of the became world famous. — Rififi, from France, and The Magician, Wisconsin Film Society as a freshman, TVLT, as we nicknamed it, published from Sweden — both dubbed. and he was succeeded by Wayne Merry, thematic issues in which local writers In Madison, things changed. I a frizzy-haired guy who later worked for could analyze the films in the UA collec- became active in student theater and the State Department. Bergman suc- tion and elsewhere. The Mafia became the student paper, and I saw two movies ceeded him, and he was followed by the staff, and, unfortunately, it was there every week, and sometimes more. Even- skinny, little Reid Rosefelt, who became that our film community suffered a tually, I dropped into the Wisconsin Film a well-known film publicist, whose com- schism that marked the beginning of the T H E M A D I S O N M A F I A

A partial list of Madison’s Mark Bergman ’69, longtime campus Tony Chase ’72, author of Movies on Sandy Searles Dickinson x’68, acted Golden Age vets, and what film coordinator; died in 2001 Trial: The Legal System on the Silver Screen in movies and television productions they’ve done lately: David Bordwell, UW professor of Lawrence D. Cohen ’69, wrote Carrie, Tom Flinn ’66, writer, teacher, musician communication arts; author of many Ghost Story Jim Abrahams x’66, Douglas Gomery MA’70, PhD’75, co-wrote and film books directed Airplane!, Ruthless People, Susan Dalton ’66, former archivist for wrote under the alias John Mont- Police Squad series Barry Alexander Brown, co-made The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater gomery; now a journalism professor War at Home; editor of Do the Right Thing, Research, American Film Institute Tino Balio, Bette Gordon ’72, MA’75, MFA’76, professor of communication Malcolm X, 25th Hour, others arts, director of Arts Institute John Davis ’67, comic book mogul, director for movies and television Russell Campbell MA’72, director musician Andrew Bergman MA’66, PhD’70, Stuart Gordon ’69, of film studies, Victoria University, wrote and directed The Freshman, Honeymoon in Vegas André De Shields ’70, Re-Animator wrote Wellington, New Zealand veteran and other horror movies Broadway actor and director

28 ON WISCONSIN end of the Golden Age, splitting into two cancer a few years ago. But Tim a kind of paradise — but like all false cliques dubbed (by Gerry Peary) the Onosko and I have memorialized him heavens, it was one that would eventu- Aesthetes and the Politicos. in an annual film festival event, called ally pass away. The Aesthetes were supposedly “Bergman’s Show.” There we show the Could it all happen again some day? devoted to aesthetics above political con- kind of noirish, auteurist cult movies It hasn’t yet. Despite the flourishing of tent; more precisely, we were auteurists, Mark liked and gather to talk about programs like the festival and Bordwell’s devoted to the directorial achievements the old days. Cinematheque, Madison now seems more of the filmmakers John Ford, Hitchcock, But back then it seemed deadly seri- an ordinary college film town. Yet there Welles, Howard Hawks, Jean Renoir, ous. And, actually, it was. We wrangled are elements that could trigger another and others. The Politicos adopted the about movies, obsessed and fought about renaissance. Projected DVD is now so quasi-Marxist angle then popular in the them, because we loved them so much. refined that students may well be able to groves of French academe. The Politicos Yet, though most of the group succeeded show DVDs in classrooms and start up mostly were film majors, and the arcane as writers, historians, and critics, few cheap campus film programs again. theories they studied eventually split the actually achieved their real goal — which I wish they would, because now, academic film community, as well. was, of course, to make films. Instead, a when I walk down State Street, as I do Russell generously tried to keep both bunch of Madisonians not quite at the when I visit the festival every year, I’m groups happy, alternating the magazine’s heart of the Mafia made it in Hollywood. an outsider. I rarely see someone I theme issues between the two groups. (See the box below for details.) know. But I do occasionally sight the Although there was no overt hostility at The seventies were in many ways a ghosts. I see them by day, pouring down first, there were differences. And they terrible time for me. I had left school, I the sidewalks on Langdon, Mifflin, and grew. Some Politicos thought some Aes- had no money and lived on small-job pit- State Streets. I watch them at night, set- thetes were obnoxious and politically tances and money sent by my mother — tling into chairs at Ingraham or Van incorrect. Some Aesthetes — myself who, despite having a master’s degree in Vleck or the Social Science building. I included — thought some Politicos were art from the UW, worked in a factory. hear the whir of the old Kodak Pageant uptight phonies. It should have ended at Violence was always somehow in the air. projectors and see that magical bright that, with semihumorous clashes, but the Both in my undergraduate years and beam flooding the classroom screens, arguments eventually broke up the staffs afterward, I often saw my campus aflame and finally, I hear the deep, magical of both TVLT and the Cardinal, as well as and in riot. But I also saw and heard voice from my favorite movie, Citizen the Union film committee. amazing things — and not just at the Kane, whispering, “Rosebud.” I settle When I say broke up, I’m not movies. For me, the whole spirit of that down in darkness. It’s the last picture kidding. There was an actual brawl in era is summed up by two frantic days show all over again, and this time, it the Union between Gerry and me after back in 1968, when Joe and I and our can’t fade away, because it’s playing in the Politicos ousted me from my chair- buddy Steve Wonn traveled to Chicago my head. It’s safe and untouchable, and manship of the Union film committee, for the Democratic national convention. so are all those people — veterans of the beginning with Mark Bergman tossing a In that span, I saw Luis Buñuel’s Belle De War at Home and the War for Film, cupful of coffee in Gerry’s face, and Jour for the first time, lost my virginity, children of the Golden Age — watching ending with Gerry and me wrestling on and witnessed the police-and-protestor it with me. the floor. Gerry and I are now friends riots from atop a van where cameramen again — I sponsored him for member- recorded the carnage for all time. Michael Wilmington has reviewed films for Isthmus, L.A. Weekly, and the Los Angeles Times and now is the chief ship in the National Society of Film And I also lost my heart, perma- film critic for the Chicago Tribune, in addition to teaching Critics. Mark, sadly, died of pancreatic nently, to the movies. We were living in and authoring books.

Peter Lehman ’67, MA’73, PhD’78, Errol Morris ’69, made documentaries Danny Peary ’71, writer of several Larry Sloman MS’72, former editor professor and author of film criticism Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, and books, including Cult Movies series of High Times; author of Reefer Madness Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control Richard Lippe x’71, film critic for Reid Rosefelt ’75, independent film Kristin Thompson PhD’77, honorary Canada’s CineAction magazine Peter Neufeld ’72, screenwriter and publicist and producer fellow in UW film program; author of lawyer in the O.J. Simpson trial Storytelling in the New Hollywood Ken Mate ’68, writer, Mark Rosenberg ’79, produced Bright Emmy-winning TV reporter Tim Onosko x’70, former journalist; Lights, Big City; Major League; Presumed Michael Wilmington x’68, author, now consultant for major studios Innocent; died in 1992 teacher, film critic Joseph McBride x’67, film critic and author of several film biographies Dennis Paoli ’69, wrote Re-Animator Nancy Schwartz ’63, screenwriter, David Zucker ’70 and Jerry Zucker and many other Stuart Gordon films critic, historian; died in 1979 ’72, made Airplane!, Ruthless People, Patrick McGilligan ’74, film historian, many others author of several books Gerald Peary PhD’77, film critic for Glenn Silber ’72, co-maker of The the Boston Phoenix and other papers War at Home; ABC News producer

SPRING 2003 29 JAMES NOEL SMITH by John Allen

30 ON WISCONSIN As universities across the country try to get a handle on the often silent crime of rape on campus, one researcher suggests that the best way to prevent assault starts with changing the way we look at it. But is it that easy?

Some memories are difficult. of my guy friends came up to me, Sexual assault, he says, is not merely Two years ago, Jennifer Cinelli and he said, ‘Are you sure you want a criminal issue, nor just a cultural x’04 was raped. Many of the details to do this?’ I didn’t know what he and social issue. Bottom line, it’s a of that night are still sharp in her was talking about.” safety issue, yet the debate about mind, but the event itself is a trau- And then the four men she how to address it tends to focus matic blur. knew left. She was alone with the more on agendas than on practical “I don’t have a clear sense of the stranger. “They all left me with this solutions. And while focusing on the sequence of things,” she says. “I one guy, and he just shut the door various social forces that turn peo- didn’t know what was going on. It and locked it. And that was it.” ple into rapists may help us under- just, sort of, happened.” III stand underlying causes of rape, it Cinelli remembers the group doesn’t offer much that individuals she’d gone out with that evening — “The most dangerous thing I can can do to stop sexual assault today. five male students and herself. She do,” says Douglas Koski ’81, “if I “As an individual,” Koski says, had come to UW-Madison for row- am a woman at the University of “I can’t reconstitute society. There’s ing, and she knew four of the men Wisconsin or any other place, the nothing I can do about the fact that from crew. “They were friends of the most dangerous thing I can do is there are a lot of young males in the guy I was dating at the time,” she drink alone with a nineteen-year- world raised in emotionally charged, says. “I knew these guys really well. old male I know little about.” unstable families, with too much I was excited that they were living in Though Koski is a sociologist and access to alcohol and drugs and not my apartment complex — we could criminologist with the National Cen- enough money. If you focus on root hang out. It would be great.” ter for the Advanced Study of Social causes, you can’t develop a practical, The fifth male was a friend of the Forces in New York City, he talks do-it-now rape prevention model.” other four, but a stranger to Cinelli. more like an actuary, speaking in And so Koski is turning to a She remembers the bars — terms of statistics, risks, and proba- more pragmatic model that he feels Amy’s Café on West Gilman and bilities, rather than assigning blame may fit with the erratic nature of Wando’s on University — and she or exploring emotions. His new human society. He’s following the remembers drinking far too much. book, The Jury Trial in Criminal Jus- example of public health. “I couldn’t walk, and they literally tice, is to be published this month, A basic presumption of the public had to hold me all the way home,” but he’s been examining rape from health model is that you don’t neces- she says. “We went to their place both academic and nonacademic sarily need to cure a problem if you for an after-bar, and they gave me a perspectives for nearly twenty years. can successfully avoid it. This view lot of beer, which I probably would “And,” he says, “you’d be surprised isn’t as rose-colored as it sounds. not have accepted in a different sit- at how little college women know Consider the case of John Snow, uation. At the time, I didn’t drink about what puts them at risk.” one of the discipline’s founders. beer. We were running around the According to Koski, identifying Snow was a nineteenth-century house and just being stupid.” risk factors — and helping potential London physician, and he didn’t And she remembers the crucial rape victims avoid them — may be have any particular concern with moment, though it didn’t seem so the most useful thing universities rape, or with crime in general. What important to her at the time. “One can do to combat rape on campus. did concern Snow was cholera, a

SPRING 2003 31 disease that, by modern standards, he did- information about the risk factors, he Perhaps with good reason. Rape on n’t understand very well at all. He thought may well help them to avoid situations in college campuses seldom meets the popu- it was caused by something bad in water, which rape is likely to occur. lar conception of strangers lurking in the but he didn’t know what, and neither did And rape happens alarmingly often bushes. The overwhelming majority of anybody else. But he did understand that on college campuses. According to a sur- cases are so-called acquaintance rapes, when cholera appeared, corpses followed, vey released by the U.S. Department of in which the victim knows the attacker. and usually in large numbers. Justice in 2000, “nearly 5 percent of col- These rapes occur most often in a home In 1854, there was a cholera out- lege women are victimized [by rape or — either the victim’s or the attacker’s — break in London’s Golden Square. attempted rape] in any given calendar and usually both parties arrived there Within ten days, five hundred people year. Over the course of a college career voluntarily. These factors present author- had died. As Britain’s leading scientists — which now lasts an average of five ities with uncomfortable uncertainties debated what might be causing the dis- years — the percentage of completed or about whether what took place was ease and how medicine might cure it, actually criminal rape. Snow pursued a different course: statis- “The most “We’ve gotten much better about tics. He catalogued every case of cholera stranger assault,” says Henn. “I don’t and discovered that almost all the victims dangerous thing I think we’re quite there with acquain- had consumed water drawn from one can do is drink tance assault. We’re still willing to pur- particular pump. Snow couldn’t prove port blame to victims to a larger extent.” that this pump was the source of the alone with a Making matters worse is the pres- disease, nor could he make Londoners ence of intoxicants. A survey by the change their drinking habits. Still, he 19-year-old male I national Core Institute found that in talked a good enough game to convince know little about.” more than three-quarters of acquain- local authorities, who had the handle tance rape cases, either the victim or the removed from the suspicious pump. attempted rape victimization among attacker had voluntarily consumed drugs The next morning, residents of Golden women in higher education might climb or alcohol before the incident occurred. Square discovered they’d have to go else- to between one-fifth and one-quarter.” This figure is repeated in surveys at where for their water, and within a few UW-Madison’s female student popu- campuses around the nation, and the days, the cholera epidemic vanished. lation is over 21,000, so if that national intoxicant factor, perhaps more than any Snow’s work was proximate, focusing survey accurately reflects conditions other, tends to keep legal authorities on the exact time and place that people here, there would be more than a thou- from deciding an incident is a criminal became ill, not on the underlying cause of sand rapes or attempted rapes every year. sexual assault. the disease. He didn’t bring medical sci- However, in November 2002, the Madi- “If a victim was drinking, her ability ence any closer to destroying — or even son Police Department released statistics to recall, relate, and testify about events discovering — the deadly bacterium. He on the city’s crime rate: in 2001, Madison is diminished,” says Koski. “Alcohol merely saved lives — and gave the field recorded only sixty-three rape cases. So decreases the likelihood of reporting of public health its basic tenet: that the what happened to all the assaults the and increases the likelihood of delayed one thing better than being cured is never Justice Department says are occurring? reporting. This plays into police refusing getting sick in the first place. Many, it seems, never reach police to arrest, prosecutors being unwilling to This is the principle that Koski files. “There’s still a fear out there file, and judges and juries being unlikely hopes to bring to the fore on rape. [among victims] that they won’t be taken to convict. It’s really a snowball effect.” “Perhaps interpersonal violence per se seriously,” says Lori Henn, coordinator All of this, he says, “leaves me pretty doesn’t fall within the public health for relationship violence prevention at well convinced that we need to look at domain,” he says, “but injury is clearly UW-Madison’s University Health Ser- alternatives if we’re going to reduce the a health issue. And rape causes both vices. “For some people, the legal route number of rapes. And that’s where I physical and psychic injury.” doesn’t bring the resolution they’re look- think the public health model can help.” Like Snow with cholera, Koski ing for.” III believes that rape-prevention efforts will In fact, the Justice Department sur- be most effective if they focus on the vey found that only around two-thirds Cinelli was raped in the summer of 2001, moment of the attack. He hopes to of sexual assault victims ever tell anyone the year that Madison officially recorded quantify the factors that most commonly about the incident, and most of those only sixty-three rape cases. Unlike most surround rape and identify which ones confided in friends, not family or college victims, Cinelli did report her attack to might be pump handles. By giving officials. Fewer than 5 percent of victims the Madison police, though it wasn’t her authorities and potential victims reported the incident to law enforcement. decision to do so.

32 ON WISCONSIN PAVEing the way

For Jennifer Cinelli x’04, the story of her rape is more than personal history. It’s also the beginning of a mission. Cinelli is the vice chair of PAVE (Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment), and her story holds a message for her UW-Madison classmates. When PAVE was founded in the spring of 2001, the university already offered a variety of services for the victims of sexual assault. “First and foremost, they can receive counseling and consultation through University Health Services,” says dean of students Luoluo Hong. “In my office, the assistant deans can act as victim advocates to advise victims of their rights within the legal system and at the university. And though the Rape Crisis Center is run by Dane County officials, it has a satellite office on campus.” But what PAVE aims at is more than just support for rape victims. Its members are hoping to turn the group into a wider force in Madison. “We want to be more than just a survivors group,” says Heather Logghe x’03, the organization’s educational outreach coordinator. “We see our role as educating — as promoting awareness of all aspects of this issue.” The organization is already widening its network to other campuses, with chapters in Illinois and California, and in April, PAVE is planning a national rally in Washington, D.C. “They’ve really taken the university com- munity by storm,” says Lori Henn, who acts as UW-Madison’s faculty adviser for PAVE. “They’re passionate and really have a vision about what can be done.” What they hope to do is twofold. “They want to see that works tag-team with Logghe, knows that her story embodies most campus takes this issue seriously,” says Henn. And then there’s their of the elements common to campus sexual assault. “I’m like a poster educational work. Like Cinelli, many PAVE members are survivors child for this kind of thing,” she says. of sexual assault, and they tell their stories to students to get both Among PAVE’s other activities are legislative advocacy, particu- potential victims and potential perpetrators thinking about how to larly working with other groups to overturn the Wisconsin law that prevent rape. excludes alcohol as an intoxicant in rape cases. The organization “Just as women don’t think they’ll be raped by someone they has also run a poster project, spreading information about the link know,” says Logghe, “often men don’t realize that what they’re between alcohol and rape at Madison bars, and is conducting committing is rape.” training to encourage other students to speak out about rape. PAVE sends members out to classrooms and dorms to do a pro- “I can confidently say we’re changing a little part of the world,” gram it calls “Silent Crimes, Outspoken Voices.” Cinelli, who often says Logghe. “In small corners, we’re making big changes.” — J. A.

SPRING 2003 33 The day after her rape, she “was just It’s the connection between alcohol refusal clear to a more-or-less intoxi- sort of numb,” she says. She told her and rape, in fact, that drove him in the cated defendant. boyfriend, who encouraged her to file a direction of public health. “Alcohol use In a 2002 study, Koski examined how complaint. “He called the police and my itself is a health issue,” he says, “and as juries came to their verdicts in such con- parents. He reported it with me.” I looked at the various elements that sent-defense sexual assault trials. He Cinelli’s tour through the criminal showed up most often in rape cases, divided people into various mock juries justice system was swift and far from alcohol just rose to the top.” and presented each group with evidence satisfying. A detective came and asked “We can’t talk about sexual assault that was intentionally ambiguous, as in her about the incident. She admitted that without talking about alcohol,” agrees a genuine trial. In every case, the basic she hadn’t fought, that she didn’t even Henn. “We hear stories about people get- conflict came down to whether the jury say no to her attacker. There was still ting really intoxicated and losing control believed the victim or the accused. Before time to take her to a hospital for a sexual of their ability to make decisions, or of the jurors started their work, Koski sur- assault nurse exam — a rape kit — but waking up and finding a used condom veyed them and found that they answered the police decided they didn’t need to and that’s how they know they had sex. much the way one would expect people to collect physical evidence. after exposure to years of political advo- “They talked to my attacker, and he “Should we tell new cacy on behalf of rape victims. said, ‘Yeah, we had sex. But it was con- “Before they deliberated, most sensual,’ ” she says. And then things students, ‘Don’t people said they were likely to convict went from bad to “horrible. They told the an accused rapist,” even if the only evi- boy I’d been dating — they actually said make friends?’ dence was the victim’s word, he says. to him — ‘We think she’s just really How do you say “But during deliberations there was a upset that she slept with this guy, so complete reversal. We couldn’t get a that’s why she’s in hysterics.’ Like it’s that to freshmen? single conviction.” fun. Like I’d enjoy pretending.” They don’t know Watching videotapes of the delibera- But in the eyes of the police, there tions, Koski began to understand just had been no rape, or at least nothing anybody.” how much of a problem alcohol pre- they could prove in court. Under Wis- sented to those attempting to determine consin statute, a second-degree sexual It would take a very brave D.A. to prose- the legitimacy of a rape claim. “When- assault occurs when an attacker “has cute a case like that [as rape].” ever you mix alcohol with sex,” he says, sexual contact or sexual intercourse with Koski knows just what kind of men- “you get a lot of miscommunication and a a person who is under the influence of tality it takes to try a rape case. After lot of confusion. [Alcohol consumption] an intoxicant to a degree which renders graduating from the UW, he studied law increases miscommunication about the person incapable of appraising the at Washington University in St. Louis female consent at the time of the event person’s conduct.” and then became a criminal attorney, and all through the criminal justice Cinelli had been drunk — in her first as a prosecutor, then as a defender. process. And it increases confusion about own estimation too drunk to have sex. “I realized I had a talent for trying rape male intent. Criminal law 101 says that, But in Wisconsin, intoxication is curi- cases,” he says. “I handled a lot of rapes, for a crime to occur, you have to have an ously defined within the context of sex- and a lot of child rapes, and I’d pick up act and a requisite mental intent.” ual assault. In 1997, when so-called date cases like that, ones that other attorneys Alcohol, then, is one possible pump rape drugs came to the forefront, state didn’t want.” Over the course of his handle. “If you remove this element,” legislators responded by criminalizing career, he brought more than 150 cases says Koski, “and because it pops up certain substances. Yet, they specifically into court and won 80 percent of them. again and again in so many contexts, excluded alcohol as an intoxicant in sex- Even now, as a sociologist, Koski the use of alcohol and drugs is clearly a ual assault cases. No matter how drunk maintains a deep fascination with the major risk factor — if you remove alco- a victim is, Wisconsin law says, she isn’t jury trial system, even though, he says, hol from interpersonal contact situations, considered intoxicated unless she’s it has “assumed the dignity of a Turkish rape becomes significantly less likely.” unconscious. Otherwise, the law rug market” in which “prosecutors and Koski began looking at other factors assumes the sex was consensual. defense attorneys haggle not about the that showed up commonly in rape cases, merits of a given case, but the relative and found that many could be avoided by III worthiness of the defendant and the vic- potential victims. One factor was being For Koski, any mention of drug-related tim.” This is especially true in acquain- with seventeen- to twenty-year-old males rape that ignores the influence of alcohol tance rape cases, he says, which often who were drinking. Another was being is dishonest. “With rape,” he says, “alco- revolve around the question of whether alone with a male the victim did not know hol is the drug.” a more-or-less intoxicated victim made a very well. Another was dating a number

34 ON WISCONSIN of different partners. “Each date,” he an approach lays too much responsibility For Koski, too, the struggle is about says, “presents a chance that the person on the shoulders of potential victims. lowering the number of rapes, even if it will be raped. So more dates, with more “If someone wants to assault a woman, means encouraging the innocent to alter people, create more risk.” they’re going to go and get her,” she says. their behavior. “Who wants to hear, Although Koski focuses on American A model like Koski’s “implies that rape ‘Don’t date’?” he asks. “But if I don’t society as a whole, not on campuses, he can be significantly reduced because a want to become the victim of aggression, points out that all of these factors are woman doesn’t go and get a beer or keeps it’s probably best to avoid the circum- common in university communities. her door locked. It’s not about doors.” stances in which it’s likely to occur — “College women are only a tiny percent- Similarly, Koski expects resistance to pubs and clubs and places where alcohol age of the population,” he says. “Still, some of his recommendations, especially is served.” they’re a high-risk group.” But being as they may impinge on the freedoms that III aware of risk opens opportunities for college students cherish. “If someone had reducing it. By educating potential said that the university should increase The question of how to avoid rape is long victims about risk factors, Koski says, a surveillance of its students when I was an past relevance for Jennifer Cinelli, who’s university could help its students avoid undergraduate,” he says, “I would have still struggling to rebuild her life two dangerous situations. screamed. But increased police presence years after her attack. And by being aware of where and and simple things like lighting and video The rape put her through “a list of when rapes most often take place, cameras — even if they’re not turned disorders,” she says. “I had posttraumatic authorities can perform “crime map- on — these things work. Nobody likes stress disorder. I had horrible nightmares ping,” which would enable authorities surveillance, but it works.” that were always visions of what had to increase surveillance, not on students, Henn, too, is skeptical of the willing- happened. I had anxiety if I was walking but on the physical spaces in which ness of the campus community to accept to class alone — I never wanted to attackers most commonly operate. This, restrictions, and she believes the university be alone.” he says, “allows us to put surveillance has to strike a balance between offering Her grades dropped, and she began where it’s needed most — that is, where students the data that will help them make seeing a therapist and was put on anti- crimes have occurred with high fre- informed choices and allowing them to be depressants. She gave up rowing and split quency in the past.” Either action would free. “I feel some resistance to continually up with the boyfriend who had helped her take the offender’s opportunity away and telling women to curb their behavior,” she report the attack. An eating disorder she’d eliminate a potential rape. says. “Should we tell new students, ‘Don’t battled in high school returned. “It’s not a value judgment; it’s just a make friends’? ‘Don’t be with people you “Depression gets to be a safe place,” fact,” Koski says. “If I spend a lot of time don’t know’? How do you say that to she says. “A really good week was when with nineteen-year-old males, sooner or freshmen? They don’t know anybody I would smile once. Somebody would later, I might become the victim of some here. We don’t want to instill fear or have to tell me to go to class, to go to the act of interpersonal violence.” But, he paranoia,” she says, “but we do want our library, to eat dinner. I had no ambition. adds, “if you change the environment at students to have common sense.” There’s a feeling — even now — that the proximate point of the attack, you And so she would keep ownership of I’m not ready to succeed, that I don’t can make a rape much less likely to sexual assault as much with men — with deserve to succeed.” occur. Drinking and violence are socially potential offenders — as with women. But in January 2002, she joined a integrated into college campuses. And “That this is deemed a women’s issue is sexual assault prevention group called there’s a hyperglorification of legal reme- severely misguided — it’s first and fore- PAVE, Promoting Awareness, Victim dies and their enforcement to solve prob- most a human issue,” she says. Her office Empowerment (see sidebar). Since then, lems. But the public health model gives helps connect speakers with residence “a lot changed,” she says. “It gave me ownership of problems back to potential halls and groups such as fraternities, an outlet and let me know that there are victims, the people who actually have where Henn hopes the university can other people out there going through the some control over their environment in find leaders to combat the behaviors that same stuff that I am.” the first place.” turn men into rapists. She feels that Even so, she says her healing is far However, not everyone sees it that changing male, not female, attitudes is the from over, and she has a hard time driv- way. Although Lori Henn at University ultimate key to preventing rape. “After ing memories of her attacker out of her Health Services also speaks of rape in all,” she says, “if I help Jane avoid an mind. “I think a lot about him,” she says. terms of risk reduction (“I don’t talk assault and not Becky, and then Becky is “He lives a normal life, and I — well, about rape prevention anymore, because assaulted, did I prevent an assault? No. I I wonder if he ever thinks about it. I can’t guarantee prevention. All I say is just moved it from Jane to Becky. If Because I do.” that we try to help students realize how we’re going to reduce the number of to reduce risks”), she worries that such rapes, we have to look at the source.” John Allen is associate editor of On Wisconsin Magazine.

SPRING 2003 35 Mutual Admiration AN EARLY LESSON BILL NYGREN MS’81 often pops into living rooms via the 2001 that he actually stopped accepting FROM HIS FATHER, was just ten years old when he got business cable network CNBC. In short, new investors. his first lesson about the dangers of Nygren, a graduate of the business During the past five years, Nygren’s A FASCINATION WITH gambling. school’s elite Applied Securities Analysis trademark Oakmark Select fund has During a family vacation to Disney- Program (ASAP), has become a bona posted an impressive 13 percent return, NUMBERS, AND THE land that had a stopover in Las Vegas, fide celebrity. compared to a 1 percent loss for the S&P his father, John Nygren ’51, led him to a “I just feel fortunate that I get to do 500 stock index, a common measuring PULL OF INVESTING slot machine in the entryway of a Kroger something I love,” he says. stick for mutual funds. REAL MONEY HAVE grocery store and began a lecture about Nygren refutes the common percep- foolish risks. tion that money managers spend twenty- SHAPED UW GRAD Nygren’s father took five nickels out AT FIRST GLANCE, four hours a day locked away in their of his pocket, smiled at his son, put the Nygren looks like a typical, number- offices in order to achieve the best BILL NYGREN first coin into the machine, and pulled crunching finance guy. He’s tall and results. “That’s just silly,” he says. the handle. Seven nickels clanged down. spindly, has a toothy grin, and wears thin Even though the markets have been INTO ONE OF THE The older Nygren frowned. Determined, wire-frame glasses. His dark, swirling roiling over the past year, Nygren, who’s he dropped the second nickel into the hair looks like it was combed in several single, sets aside plenty of time to attend COUNTRY’S MOST coin slot. Five more nickels dropped directions at once. the sporting events of his thirteen-year- SUCCESSFUL MUTUAL noisily into the tray. But when Nygren speaks, it’s with a old daughter and fourteen-year-old “I was begging Dad to stop while deep and confident voice. He looks you son. He also blows off steam as a pitcher FUND MANAGERS. he was ahead,” the younger Nygren right in the eye and talks in a matter-of- for the company softball team, The remembers. “It took half an hour, but fact tone that’s easy to understand. He Mighty Oaks. the smile finally returned to his face uses a constant rhythm and never trips when he succeeded in losing his over his own words. BY ERIK AHLBERG ’97 twenty-five cents. The lesson he had Put simply, Nygren sounds smart. MUCH OF NYGREN’S hoped to teach me wasn’t quite the one Really smart. And in a business that topnotch performance on Wall Street I learned — the seed was planted for a depends on trust and a lot of brainpower, comes from his approach to buying and lifelong fascination.” it’s clear after just a few minutes that he’s selling stocks. He is a so-called value More than thirty years later, Nygren got the right tools. investor, which means that he uses a now makes a living by betting on the Each day, from his modest office number of basic accounting and financial biggest and riskiest slot machine of them in a shiny downtown Chicago building, measures to determine a company’s all: the stock market. And thankfully, the Nygren keeps watch over more than value. Nygren then hunts for good com- nickels have continued to fall. $9 billion of other people’s money — an panies that are selling at bargain-base- Nygren’s back-to-basics approach to amount roughly equal to 300,000 times ment prices and buys stock before other investing has made him one of the most the cost for an out-of-state student to investors realize the discount. He is successful mutual fund managers attend UW-Madison for one year. always on the lookout for diamonds in

JEFF MILLER around. His name often peppers the Nygren manages two different mutual the rough. pages of publications such as the Wall funds for Harris Associates, Inc., one of “One thing you hear throughout the Street Journal and TIME, and his face which became so wildly popular in May mutual fund industry is that people are

SPRING 2003 37 just impressed with how smart Nygren performers wins less often than the would scour columns of data on batting hood library, located about one mile jobs, and family obligations. It’s a hefty Strong Financial Corporation in Mil- really is,” says Scott Cooley, a senior Chicago Bears do,” he wrote, adding that averages and on-base percentages. from his house — though he admits the task, as is the responsibility of managing waukee, remembers Nygren’s contrarian analyst at Morningstar, Incorporated, a you know you’re in trouble when “the In 1965, when Nygren was seven selection was limited to a single, four- someone else’s money, says ASAP stance well. Nygren once came upon a Chicago firm that studies mutual funds. line for a new Internet initial public offer- years old, the Minnesota Twins and slug- foot-long shelf space. founder Stephen L. Hawk ’63, MBA’64, complex financial model that, when Cooley talks with Nygren about four ing is longer than the line to buy Furby. ger Harmon Killebrew made it to the Upon graduation from high school, PhD’69. entered with certain figures and statis- times a year to pick apart Nygren’s recent “Our investment approach identifies World Series against the Los Angeles Nygren attended the University of Min- “The idea is to get students together tics, would spit out a list of companies investment decisions and thoughts on stocks at substantial discounts to current Dodgers. Four of the games were played nesota, where he obtained an accounting each year and start a new investment likely to file for bankruptcy. But instead where the market may be headed. In business value, where we are confident at Metropolitan Stadium, located about degree in 1980. He was then faced with a firm with new rules, new employees, and of letting the model do its job, Nygren 2001, Nygren was named Morningstar’s business values grow with time, and fifteen miles from Nygren’s boyhood tough decision: where to go for graduate a new investment philosophy,” he says. started tinkering. domestic stock manager of the year for his home. The stadium was demolished in school. Though Stanford University’s “It’s a full-time job.” “He was thinking, ‘What about the top-tier analysis and adept stock picking. 1985, and the site later became home to business school had a trendy, glossy cata- And he should know. While leading companies that will survive?’ ” Sontag What always stands out during the the sprawling Mall of America. log and the pull of a warmer California the ASAP program, Hawk helped start says. In the end, Nygren created an discussions, Cooley says, is Nygren’s Nygren’s conservatism As it turned out, 1965 wasn’t climate, Nygren had other ideas. Northern Capital Management LLC, entirely new model that helped find com- levelheadedness and extreme attention to Minnesota’s year. Sandy Koufax, the “At Madison, the students were the Madison finance firm where he panies that would come close to financial detail. “I don’t think that other managers can put him at odds with Dodgers’ pitching ace, silenced Min- allowed to run portfolios of real money,” now serves as chair and chief executive ruin, but survive — those were the are quite as diligent as Nygren is — it’s nesota’s bats in the seventh game of the Nygren says. “The day I graduated, I officer. He oversaw ASAP from 1970 stocks that Nygren wanted to buy. amazing how logically he thinks about the rest of the market. In series, leading Los Angeles to a dramatic moved down there.” to 1982. The ASAP students’ investments everything,” he says. 2-0 victory and the world championship. Hawk’s background as a teacher posted a 13.1 percent gain in 1981, Nygren’s approach brings frequent the late 1990s, when Just as his father’s gambling lesson and a real-world investor is what drew according to the annual report pub- comparisons to billionaire investing guru had led to an unexpected result, so, too, REAL MONEY HAS Nygren to Wisconsin, though after lished that year, though Nygren says he Warren Buffett, often called “the Oracle did Nygren’s unyielding devotion to balls been attracting young investment profes- talking to both, it’s unclear who’s more doesn’t really remember the perform- of Omaha.” Buffett, known just as well Internet stocks were and strikes. As Nygren grew older, his sionals to Madison since 1970, when the impressed with whom. ance statistics. That’s a typically modest for his love of cheeseburgers as his finan- eyes would often drift from the box business school kicked off one of the first “There wasn’t an issue of whether he Nygren response, says Mark Shank cial know-how, made a name for himself booming and investors scores to the business section’s stock programs in the nation that allowed stu- would be selected for the program. He MBA’81, a vice president at Loomis by sticking to a simple but often ignored charts, which were located on an adjoin- dents to manage real portfolios. Begun had all of the qualifications you’d want,” Sayles & Company in Milwaukee. The mantra: buy low, sell high. The philoso- were swooning, he ing page of the newspaper. Though he with $150,000 from the Brittingham Hawk says. two, in the ASAP program at the same phy has also worked well for Nygren, didn’t know much about what the Foundation, the program allows students Upon arriving in Madison, Nygren time, worked together for more than dubbed a “Warren Wannabe” by Fortune refused to get swallowed numbers and fractions represented, to oversee about $12 million in stocks, quickly became a balancing force within a year at Northwestern Mutual Life magazine last year. As it turns out, the he scanned them anyway. bonds, and real estate investment trusts, the ASAP group, breathing some much- Insurance Company in Milwaukee two often make identical investment “I later learned from my dad that including about $10 million belonging to needed perspective into other students upon graduation. decisions, buying shares of the same up by the party. these numbers actually meant money, the board of regents. with rather wild ideas about where to “He hasn’t let his success go to his companies at nearly the same time. where we believe managements will get and that made them even more interest- Each spring semester, about fifteen invest, Hawk recalls. Though the school head — it hasn’t changed him a bit,” “Buffett’s thinking has helped shape rich only if the outside shareholders do. ing,” Nygren says. “By the time I got to twenty students, both undergraduates encourages students to develop an Shank says. “There are certain competi- how we approach investing,” Nygren The Internet names fail on all measures,” into high school, I knew that I wanted to and graduates, are hand-picked to investment style that best matches their tive people who will step all over you in told Fortune. “And because of that, there he wrote. study finance.” act as interim portfolio managers of the personalities, sometimes there’s a big their quest to get ahead — Bill’s not one is an overlap — enough of an overlap The rest, as they say, is history. The From his mom, Nygren learned accounts. The students make all the deci- learning curve. of those guys.” that it shouldn’t surprise people when we Internet craze turned out to be just that, how to be frugal. On shopping trips for sions — what to buy and when, what to “Nygren was a calming influence on That’s an important lesson for the buy the same stocks.” and Nygren’s Top 10 list is still talked groceries for her middle-class family, sell and why — and take on all of the the animal spirits of the group,” Hawk young portfolio managers-to-be, says Nygren’s conservatism, however, can about as one of the first warnings. she always looked for price-cuts and risks. Only three times in the program’s says. “It was a very vibrant and very ASAP’s current adviser, Professor Mark put him at odds with the rest of the mar- coupons, sometimes spending hours thirty-year history has the faculty over- dynamic group that year.” Fedenia ’77, MS’79, PhD’87. Students ket. In the late 1990s, when Internet driving around town to seize upon sales ruled a student investment decision. It was also very close. Given their see Nygren on television long before they stocks were booming and investors were NYGREN GREW UP IN at different stores. Little did she know The hard work can pay big divi- daily stress, ASAP students often form actually get the chance to meet him. And swooning, he refused to get swallowed St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended St. that her son was a pint-sized mutual dends. ASAP’s roughly four hundred relationships that you wouldn’t find in a when they do, they’re usually impressed up by the party. The bargain-basement Paul’s Harding High School. His father fund manager in training. alumni have gone directly from State normal classroom. with his extreme discipline and restraint, prices were gone, he said, as were many was a director of credit for 3M, known “I’m still the same way today — I still Street to Wall Street as pension and “The people I know from Madison Fedenia says. of the fundamental signs of healthy busi- for its Post-it Notes and Scotch Tape buy two cases of soda during a sale and mutual fund managers for some of the are still my closest friends,” Nygren says. “He reinforces a lot of the things we nesses. Some investors complained; oth- products, and his mother was a stay-at- look for buy-one, get-one-free shampoo,” largest and most successful financial He has returned to the school often hope to emphasize here,” he says. “It’s ers simply cashed out of his mutual funds home mom. Nygren says. firms in the world. since his ASAP graduation to be a guest good to see some homegrown talent out and starting making their own bets. From a very young age, Nygren had His hunger for learning about busi- But before their turn with fame and speaker and to hear presentations by there — it’s what these people should be But Nygren stuck to his guns, even a fascination with numbers. Each day, ness and the stock market during his fortune, ASAP students are expected to current students about the performance striving for.” publishing a sarcastic “Top 10 Reasons he eagerly ripped through the St. Paul teenage years was insatiable. Nygren dedicate at least thirty hours a week to of their investments. to Sell Internet Stocks” list in January newspaper in search of sports statistics. boasts that he read every book about the program — and that’s on top of their Tom Sontag ’81, MBA’82, a former 1999. “Catching up by buying hot A self-acclaimed baseball fanatic, Nygren investing he could find at the neighbor- regularly scheduled class load, part-time classmate and bond fund manager for Erik Ahlberg is a business writer based in Chicago.

38 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2003 39 A Mountain Music Master History major Wayne Erbsen has carved out a niche promoting vintage American music and folklore.

BY NIKI DENISON PHOTOS BY TIM BARNWELL

EVERY YEAR IN JANUARY, WAYNE ERBSEN MA’68 CELEBRATES HIS BIRTHDAY by inviting one hundred of his closest friends to his home in Asheville, North Carolina, for a potluck and jam session. At the height of this year’s party, six different groups are playing old-time tunes, and a stream of people comes and goes all evening, despite frigid temperatures and a crippling snowstorm the day before. The living room, the bedrooms, the office, and the dining room are pulsating with the sounds of the fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and bass. Coats and instrument cases are piled high near the front door, on top of the washer and dryer, or anywhere that’s convenient. MARC MUENCH Women are clogging in the kitchen, But Erbsen says that it was a long The movie Deliverance had just come young children are chasing each other and crooked road to his eventual business out, and it seemed that everybody and his around, and Erbsen’s son and daughter venture. His master’s thesis was titled brother wanted to learn to play “Dueling have invited their high school and college “The Seekers: The Beat Generation and Banjos.” When Erbsen went to buy an friends, one of whom is expertly picking a Psychedelic Drugs.” He was the last invoice book, the sales clerk saw the guitar. Erbsen’s group in the living room student to be advised by the respected manual and asked if he could buy one. is playing “Bury Me Beneath the Willow” historian Merle Curti, who was in his Erbsen knew he was onto something. and “There’s a Rabbit in the Log and I seventies at the time. “I’m sure this was He eventually found a publisher, went Ain’t Got No Dog.” Friends in the kitchen one of the stranger theses that he had on to write other instruction books, are playing “Richmond Blues,” and from ever supervised,” says Erbsen. “For a and then decided to publish them himself every room comes the driving sound of the banjo or the sprightly fiddles, which only become discordant when the group Just a touch of the past is all I’m asking in the nearest vicinity stops and all the Just a feeling I’m wanting to know others become evident. The sprawling house, which is reminiscent of a log cabin ? It’s a time when my spirit is walking with fireplaces, quilts, log beds, butter It’s a place that I’m longing to go. churns, and other Americana, is the perfect setting for the rustic sound. From “Just a Touch of the Past” by Gary L. Williamson The scene is a metaphor for Erbsen’s life and career, which have been geared conservative history department to sup- so that he could have more control over toward preserving rural, traditional port something like that was pretty out- the marketing. music and the culture that spawned it. landish. So I have to give them credit that Since then, he’s released twenty For the past thirty years, his company, they allowed me to do my own thing.” titles, branching out into almanac-style Native Ground Music, has produced and Erbsen completed his master’s degree volumes that focus on themes such as sold music and books highlighting Amer- in just one year and then returned home to cowboy songs, railroad music, rural ican history and rural culture to fans, California. He taught American history at America, and the Civil War. They museums, specialty shops, and other out- a community college and knocked around include a mix of rustic stories, jokes, lets. Party guests attest to Erbsen’s influ- in various bands for a while, including one songs, and sayings (“Nostalgia ain’t what ence on the cultural life of Asheville and called Colonel Sanders and the Southern it used to be,” and “Ugly is to the bone; beyond. In addition to hosting a radio Fried Chickens. But he eventually decided beauty lasts only a day; ugly holds its show called Country Roots and selling to move to the southeast to nurture his own”). Erbsen enjoys using the research instruction books, he’s taught tens of love for traditional music. skills he honed in college to ferret out thousands of people to play various By the time he landed in Charlotte, archival photos, stories, and songs for his string instruments over the years. North Carolina, he had nothing but $100 books and CDs. He’s produced nearly It all started when Erbsen walked in his pocket, his instruments, and a few two dozen recordings featuring old-time into Professor William O’Neill’s history clothes. He was living out of his car and tunes played by himself and others. class in Bascom Hall back in 1967. had to borrow a decent pair of shoes so O’Neill, who soon learned that Erbsen that he could attend a job interview at played folk music, suggested that the Central Piedmont Community College. A TOUCH OF THE PAST graduate student bring in his guitar and But, as it turned out, just the mention of What exactly is old-time music? It’s the play labor songs for the class in lieu of Merle Curti’s name was an excellent call- kind of question that people often refer to writing a paper on labor history. ing card. On the spot, the college hired Bill Malone. Malone teaches courses for Erbsen jumped at the chance. He Erbsen to teach history and Appalachian the UW Extension on the history of coun- sang and strummed tunes such as “Soli- music. During this stint, he had a second try music and is perhaps the nation’s fore- darity Forever,” “Union Maid,” and “Pie revelation that took him a step closer to most expert on the topic. An emeritus in the Sky” to the delight of instructor his eventual career. He decided to put his professor of history from Tulane Univer- and class, and a light bulb went on. For banjo lessons in book form for his stu- sity and the author of Country Music U.S.A., the first time, Erbsen realized that he dents, and the result was an informal he moved to Madison seven years ago. could combine his passion for music with manual that he called How to Play the 5- Malone defines old-time music as an his interest in American history, and the String Banjo for the Complete Ignoramus. He acoustic genre that “preceded but at the revelation ultimately led the history figured that he might as well try to sell same time anticipated bluegrass and major to what he does today. the extra copies to local music stores. other old styles.” There wasn’t any music

SPRING 2003 41 Generals. A movie producer found his disks in a battle site gift shop and asked if he’d like to perform a song from one of them called “Southern Soldier Boy.” “It’s a really haunting, mournful, soul-grabbing piece,” says Erbsen. “It’s actually an old tune called ‘The Star of the County Down,’ (star meant a woman), and it’s also called ‘The Girl with the Auburn Hair.’ I could get you a list of a hundred names for that tune. Many people consider it one of the finest Irish-Scottish tunes that was ever created, and there were millions of those tunes, so he made a wise choice.” Erbsen recruited some friends to play the song with him, and in September of 2001, they reported to a former battlefield outside of Hagerstown, Maryland. Wayne Erbsen’s sprawling house turns into Jam Central Station every year when he hosts “They dressed us up in Confederate his gigantic birthday party. This group laid claim to Erbsen’s home office, which is the head- uniforms,” says Erbsen, “and they took quarters for Native Ground Music. The company produces books and CDs celebrating rural culture and music. these bags of dirt and dust and they banged them on us, so that we were available to people outside their home music, which has now become so main- filthy, and then they took this black, communities until the 1920s, when radio stream that the New York Times dubbed it tar-looking stuff, and they worked it and recording came along, he says. Old- “the new pop.” through our hair so it looked like we time is “an attempt to revive or recreate Malone says that when musicians hadn’t washed our hair in four years. the sound of that earliest music that was play pre-1920s music, such as that found That was pretty entertaining. Then

Will my soul pass through the Southland? Through the old Virginia grants Will I see the hills of Georgia And the green fields of Alabam’?. . . &Will you see my little daughter Will you make her understand Oh, parson, tell me quickly Will my soul pass through the Southland? From “Legend of the Rebel Soldier” by Charlie Moore recorded back in the twenties and thir- on Erbsen’s Civil War CDs, “you have to they bussed us over to the site.” It was ties.” Malone says that Mike Seeger, the make a bold leap, because there were no nighttime, and the huge Civil War brother of folk singer Pete Seeger and recordings back then. You just make an encampment had fog machines, tents, an old-time music guru, would probably educated guess. But we can assume that campfires, soldiers, wagons, and can- define it as “pre-World War II rural what we hear from those old 78-rpm nons. “We sat under a little tarp near a stringband music.” records from the 1920s is probably what campfire,” says Erbsen. They met the Between 1944 and 1946, Bill Mon- it would have sounded like earlier, too.” director, Ron Maxwell, who is known roe, the father of bluegrass, “took the old for creating a friendly working atmos- sound and converted it into something phere on the set, and Maxwell told them high-powered and dynamic. He created a THEY’RE GONNA that he really loved the piece. really supercharged, high-pitched sound” Erbsen was touched when the cast, — the high lonesome sound — that was PUT ME IN THE MOVIES crew, and cameramen gave them a big built on an old-time framework, but One such recording nearly landed Erb- round of applause after they had fin- became something new. This was eventu- sen a bit part in Ted Turner’s recently ished filming the song. Unfortunately, ally superseded by commercial country released Civil War movie Gods and the tune was cut from the final movie,

42 ON WISCONSIN which features an original song written and sung by Bob Dylan, among other music. But Erbsen’s scene was retained HE for the five-hour DVD version of Gods T O and Generals. Music played a key role in the Civil BROTHER War, Erbsen says. “Many times, soldiers were ordered to play their instruments PHENOMENON while marching into battle with bullets flying around their ears,” he says, adding The Coen Brothers movie O Brother, that the bands and the drummer boys Where Art Thou?, a goofy tale of often picked up the wounded and the three escaped convicts loosely based on The Odyssey, grossed $45 million. But it was the soundtrack to this movie that dead. “These people were hurting. celebrated American roots music that was a real sleeper. With no marketing and Music helped them to deal with the lone- virtually no radio airplay, the CD sold 6 million copies and is still going strong. It liness and pain, and it buoyed up their won five Grammys, including the one for best album of the year, which was patriotism and their military zeal. Songs unheard of in an industry where slick country stars usually scoop up all the awards. unite people, so you’ve got soldiers who How did this roots music CD become so popular? That’s one of the questions are united in song as well as spirit. that Professor Jim Leary poses in his Introduction to American Folklore class, which You’ve got a potent force there.” he teaches every spring. “When there’s something that’s making a big impact on There were times during the war popular culture,” says Leary, “if it has strong folklore elements, I try to work that when the opposing armies were camped into the class. I raise the question of why is this happening now, what’s been done close to one another, he says, and the to this stuff to make it palatable, and what’s the relationship between this and soldiers would hear the other side original sources, just to give them a heightened awareness.” singing, and they would actually join in For instance, he plays a recurring song from the movie, “I Am a Man of Constant and sing the same songs, especially the Sorrow,” along with the original recording by Kentucky singer Emry Arthur, a rendi- hymns. “There were some pretty tion by Bob Dylan, and the Stanley Brothers’ 1959 version on which the O Brother poignant moments.” rendition is closely based. (The song has been recorded by artists ranging from Joan Baez to Jerry Garcia, Tom Waits, and Rod Stewart.) Leary also plays an early version After a few years in Charlotte, of the unaccompanied song “Oh Death,” which has brought down the house for Erbsen moved to Asheville, in part Ralph Stanley at concerts ever since he intoned his version for the movie. because he felt he would have a greater One reason the O Brother soundtrack is so popular, Leary says, is because the opportunity to learn from the masters movie came out at the end of the century and the millennium, and there is a ten- in the Asheville area. And he was not dency to look back and take stock at such times. He cites numerous boxed sets of disappointed. “I have met hundreds and traditional music and the 2001 PBS series American Roots Music. hundreds of folk artists and musicians, But it goes beyond that, he says. “There is clearly this unabated folk revival and I’ve learned all about them and their movement that’s been going on with ebbs and flows in a pretty powerful way since lives and their skills, and they’ve been the 1930s. Especially in the sixties and nineties, the folk revival has had strong happy to share them,” he says. countercultural or antimodern elements to it.” One form of opposition to commer- He was offered a visiting artist cial music is punk and indie rock and elements of hip-hop, he says, where propo- position at a local college and then took nents define themselves in stylistic opposition to the “mainstream music machine” a job as the director of the Appalachian through sound, dress, and attitude. But another form of opposition is to go back in Music Program at Warren Wilson time and look to rural areas and people on the margins of society. And, of course, College in nearby Swannanoa. Erbsen there are musicians who are doing both in the alt country movement. has taught classes in banjo, fiddle, gui- Overall, Leary says, “There is this musical social movement where people are looking away from the mass marketing and the boy bands and the Mariah Careys tar, and mandolin. When he has a class or the Celine Dions, and looking for something that seems more pure or authentic of adults, he says, “I ask, ‘How long or gutsy. That’s a powerful movement in American society that’s had different have you been wanting to do this?’ And peaks and valleys, but I think it’s pretty strong right now.” often, it’s older people who come and Leary says there is always more demand for Introduction to American Folklore say, ‘I’ve been wanting to do this for than he can fill. This semester, he increased enrollment to ninety-four students, but thirty, forty, fifty years. But I’ve raised still had to turn scores away. When he teaches the segment on O Brother, the stu- a family, I’ve had a job, and finally I’m dents are “surprised and amazed to encounter some of the other sources and to retired.’ I’ve helped a lot of people really get a sense of what the Coens are drawing on,” he says. “There are so many actualize their dreams,” says Erbsen. rich strands that go into the film, and the students just had no idea.” — N.D. “To me, that feels mighty good.”

SPRING 2003 43 part of it. A lot of people, even if they’re from New York or wherever, get a taste of it and really like it.” It naturally appeals to people who grew up in the South and stayed there, he says, as well as to Southerners who moved north looking for work in the factories of Michigan and Ohio. “But there’s another group of people like myself who grew up far from the moun- tains of North Carolina, who had a hunger for something real, something that has roots, that is really American, and that goes beyond the flash and glit- ter of Hollywood near where I grew up.” It was something, he says, “that you could trace back to our earliest settlers,

Erbsen’s daughter Annie and friend Lief Stevens (left of Erbsen), are examples of the younger and the songs were about real things — generation of fans. Folklore professor Jim Leary (see sidebar) says that one reason for the whether it was murder or lonesome popularity of roots music is “antiquarianism and connoisseurship: a fascination with rare, mountain life or horses — something residual fragments of older cultural elements that persist at the edges of the mainstream.” that had substance.” Did Erbsen have any problem being pantheon of traditional music. The Ash THE PLACE WHERE HE accepted as an outsider coming in to Grove was a big influence on musicians teach? Before he even made the move to AS ORN AND AISED who were just getting their start in the W B R North Carolina, he says, he discovered Erbsen grew up in southern California, sixties, says Erbsen. that “music is really good at breaking about as far as you can get from the “For instance, one of my friends was down the barriers. I went to a Bill Mon- hills of Appalachia. The son of first- Ry Cooder, and Linda Ronstadt was roe bluegrass festival in Bean Blossom, generation immigrants from Poland and right around there at that time, as well as Indiana. Here I was, fresh off the boat Austria, he went to Berkeley for his members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. from California, and I was playing nose- undergraduate degree. The campus had A lot of us were just kind of soaking this to-nose, knuckle-to-knuckle, knee-to- a thriving traditional music scene at the all in,” he says. “We were just spoiled out knee with these really hard-core, time, and he sharpened his skills play- of our minds with an incredibly high level working class, incredible musicians.” ing with some high-caliber musicians. of musicianship. The performers not only Erbsen has a friendly, open, and During his high school days, and when- exposed us to the tunes, but they gave us adaptable nature that probably helped ever he went home to West LA for col- a wonderful insight into the rural moun- lege breaks, he “practically lived” at a tain life that produced this music.” him to fit in. And of course, it doesn’t legendary club called The Ash Grove, Erbsen maintains that there is a hurt that, after thirty years in North which was a lightning rod for the folk strong interest in this type of music Carolina, he has picked up a Southern drawl. When he prefaces his answers to questions with a thoughtful “Well … ,” it DEFINITION OF PERFECT PITCH: is definitely the two-syllable pronuncia- tion of the word. When you throw a banjo into a Dumpster, “One of my students is an old local and it misses the rim and lands on an accordian. mountain guy who is a plumber, and he’s just as country as corn bread, and he From The Outhouse Papers, Country Humor and Trivia by Wayne Erbsen said, ‘Wayne, you’re a good ol’ boy,’ ” Erbsen says. “Yesterday, someone from revival of the early sixties. Performers worldwide. And “there’s something Missouri called me and said that I was a included Doc Watson, Mississippi about this Southern, rural music that has good old country boy. And that was a John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bill a tremendous interest to Americans. It’s compliment from them, because it meant Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, kind of a contagious music, whether that I was someone they approved of Mother Maybelle Carter, and just about they see it performed or go to a square and accepted as if I was from their own every name that now looms large in the dance or contra dance and become a culture. That means a lot.”

44 ON WISCONSIN PICKIN’ AND GRINNIN’ Gordy (Ralph) Hinners MA’95 is another old-time musician with UW roots. He’s known Erbsen for twenty years through a community of people in the Asheville area who play traditional music. “Wayne is one of the few people who’s been able to make a living either playing or produc- ing old-time music,” he says. Hinners should know. He dropped out of the UW in the late seventies and spent seven years dancing with the Green Grass Cloggers and playing banjo professionally. But he eventually decided that he’d like to have a family, and that required financial stability. So he finished his bachelor’s degree, taught high school for several years, Erbsen, left, and Gordy Hinners paused for a quick duet at Erbsen’s party. There is a big old- time community in Asheville, and the members get together frequently. Hinners had recently and then returned to Madison to get a thrown his own party with the requisite 100 guests and “musicians hanging out the windows.” master’s degree in Spanish. He now teaches Spanish at Mars Hill College, (see sidebar, page 43), has contributed to movie. So I know it’s making a big north of Asheville. But he still plays a new awareness and popularity of impact, and I think that the impact has banjo professionally on a part-time American homegrown music. “It’s hard yet to be felt all over.” basis along with master fiddler Ralph to say whether it’s coming out of the Erbsen is one of those folks who Blizard. same feelings that people felt in the sev- claims that if he won the lottery, he’d still Hinners credits Erbsen with intro- enties, or whether it’s just today’s latest be doing the same thing. The sixties, he ducing a much wider audience to tradi- fad,” says Hinners. But “here’s a way says, was a really idealistic generation. tional music and culture. Because Native that we can really connect on a more “Some people went into politics; other Ground’s sales outlets range from train soulful level than sitting around the people dropped out and moved to a depots to the homes of six U.S. presi- dents, rather than just specialty stores for music or dance, he notes, “someone who Just at the close of a bright summer day might not be looking for this might run Just as the twilight had faded away across it. Wayne’s got a really broad view of what this music is.” ? Soft on the breeze like the coo of a dove The music appeals to Hinners for Someone was singing an old song of love … some of the same reasons that it does to Erbsen. “It’s fun,” he says, “and it speaks From “Give Me Your Love” by A.P. Carter to my soul in some way or another. In the seventies, there was a movement of peo- water cooler and discussing the latest commune,” he says. “And I guess I’ve ple, predominantly young people, who Friends episode. This has the potential to tried to make a difference in my own felt drawn to a simpler way of life, and connect in a more visceral way.” way by helping to preserve and perpetu- that included music and dance, and in While Erbsen says that the popular- ate this music. I’ve taught people to play many cases, doing things for yourself. I ity of O Brother hasn’t had much impact banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin and think a lot of people got into playing this on his CD sales, he has noticed an effect to sing the old songs, and I’m honored kind of music partly as a way to entertain on his students. He recently taught a and proud to help make their dreams themselves. People were looking to par- class of twenty beginning guitar students come true.” ticipate in something that seemed much “who are normally interested in rock ’n’ more community based.” roll and reggae and rap and this kind of Hinners thinks the same sort of thing stuff, and when I asked about their inter- Visit nativeground.com to hear samples of Erbsen’s music might be happening now. The popularity est in O Brother, eighteen out of the and uwalumni.com for related topics. Co-editor Niki Denison has loved old-time music ever since she can of the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art twenty people said they were sitting remember, for all of the reasons mentioned above, and Thou?, with its roots music soundtrack there to learn guitar because of that some she hasn’t thought of yet.

SPRING 2003 45 Still in its infancy, the Wisconsin Film Festival is filling seats and earning accolades.

By Michael Penn MA’97

22 ON WISCONSIN F THE 138 FILMS Organizers expect similar hordes programming all five Wisconsin festivals. shown during last this year, when the festival takes over “The way you pick a [standard] movie is year’s Wisconsin Film six Madison theaters from March 27 to that you wait for a review, or word of Festival, almost all 30. Mary Carbine ’86, MA’88, who mouth, or something to let you know went off without a directs the festival for the UW-Madison that it’s worth your time. At a festival, hitch. One that didn’t Arts Institute, its presenting organiza- you can’t wait for the buzz. The reason was a three-hour story about Inuit life tion, says she began fielding calls for it’s fun is because you have to just dive O tickets in December, two months before in and take chances. Sometimes you called Atanarjuat — The Fast Runner, which accidentally began without sound. the festival announced what films it misfire, but sometimes you have this For a few minutes, the film rolled word- would show. liberating, exhilarating experience, lessly on, until projectionists got the “There’s a real sense of excitement at because you had no idea that a film problem fixed and started it from the being able to see all these different types would take you to those places.” beginning. of films together in one event,” she says. It’s like a giant, celluloid buffet, Remarkably, no one seemed to mind. But it’s the kind of audience, rather where there’s every reason to try new There were no catcalls or disgusted than the size, that sets the festival apart tastes. And if the patient way in which groans from audience members. “People from your average trip to the local audiences digested the unintentionally just took in what was there,” says Liesel multiplex. This is no multiplex crowd, silent Fast Runner shows anything, it’s that de Boor, a filmmaker who was in the and these are no multiplex movies. Madison is ready for the unexpected. audience that night. “They were happy to In these days of test marketing and “I just thought it was the most watch it that way. It was almost like it was targeted demographics, genuine surprise incredible audience I’d seen,” says de a treat to get to see it in a different way.” hardly ever enters a movie theater. Major Boor, a Madison native who came back Those few moments of silence say a motion pictures are carefully tailored to from New York City to show her film, great deal about the kind of event that meet audience expectations, and when Cat Lady. “I remember thinking that this the festival has become. Starting in disappointments are expensive, spon- would only happen in Madison.” 1999 as a modest on-campus showcase taneity is expendable. Film festivals, on for a few obscure films, the festival has the other hand, typically piece together mushroomed into a regional happening, variegated rosters of foreign, independ- Few people will mistake showing more films to more people at ent, and experimental film. Surprise is Madison for a Midwestern tinseltown. more Madison theaters. Last year, the house special. Yet the trappings of civic cinephilia are about 18,500 tickets were sold for the “A festival is like a game,” says there. UW-Madison hosts frequent film four-day fete — a 30 percent jump James Kreul ’92, MA’96, a film studies series and owns one of the largest from 2001 and six times the number graduate student who has had a hand in archives of film history and ephemera in of people who attended the first year. Local arts writers have described it as a “monster hit,” a “critical and audience blockbuster,” and “a first-rate Midwest-

ern cultural expo.” ERIC TADSEN But such thesaurus-mining praise only begins to get at the spirit that seems to take hold of downtown Madison dur- ing the festival. In short order, the event has become the kind of phenomenon that generates its own buzz. People stop each other in the street to talk about it. Gossip flows. Tickets are scarce. Nearly one- third of the movies shown last year sold out before the first reel ever ran, and many of the rest — like The Fast Runner, which nearly filled the Orpheum’s Main

ERIC PEARLE Theatre — attracted long lines of people who sometimes queued up without know- The Wisconsin Film Festival earned its marquee billing last year, drawing long lines of movie ing what movie they were waiting to see. enthusiasts at the Orpheum and other downtown venues.

SPRING 2003 23 the world. And downtown is home to the gloriously restored Orpheum Theatre, as ERIC TADSEN well as the Four-Star Video Heaven rental shop that Roger Ebert once called “the best video store outside Chicago.” “There has been a particularly long interest in film here, going back to the time when I was a young assistant professor,” says Tino Balio, executive director of the Arts Institute, who came to Madison in 1966. (See related story, page 27.) “In those days, you could see a foreign film on almost any night.” The ultimate hallmark of a movie town, though, is a film festival of its own. As many as 1,200 communities around the world have them, from the big and glamorous ones at Sundance and Cannes, to idiosyncratic little celebrations organ- ized around a specific director or theme. A film festival isn’t just about seeing the films — it can also bring chances to see the people (Get your tickets now for the New who made them. Last year, director Arliss Howard, right, and actress Debra Winger sat down Orleans Worst Film Festival, devoted to talk about their movie, Big Bad Love, with film critic Michael Wilmington. to the most dismal in new cinema.) Ideally, festivals are more than just tourism department, hosted a party April 1999. Then, with two months agglomerations of film. They bring for Hollywood insiders, many of them to go and still no big-name premiere to together communities of movie lovers, former Badgers who had gone on to anchor the event, the state gave up and united by popcorn and long hours of influential roles in movie production and canceled nearly all its plans. sitting in dark rooms, who give the events distribution. Because the business of the About all that remained was a sched- ethos and attitude. At Cannes, for film office is business — and, specifically, ule of films to be shown on campus, example, there’s an overwhelming air of generating some for Wisconsin — its which originally was supposed to be a celebrity, and who you see is as important officials were less interested in commu- side dish to the big feast going on up as what you see. At Sundance, industry nity-building than in getting the Holly- State Street. Sponsored by the Arts networking is the name of the game. At wood film industry to take notice of Institute and programmed by students Slamdance, an alternative festival that (and, in turn, make movies in) the Kreul and Weger, the films were mostly runs parallel to its more famous cousin, Badger state. off-the-radar independents and docu- it’s about slamming the films at Sundance. Over brats and beer, the partiers mentaries; there were certainly no Red- “Festivals are about celebrating the plotted an event that would put Madison fords among them. But the planners whole idea of film,” says Wendi Weger on the film map. A few months later, figured that, even if a Great Wisconsin ’98, one of the Wisconsin festival’s origi- state officials initiated the Great Wiscon- Film Festival was no longer possible, nal programmers, who now coordinates sin Film Festival, an event whose name they had a shot at a pretty good one. the New York Underground and Hamp- signaled its optimism. The big draw was “We had a good idea of what we tons film festivals. “There are loads of to be an appearance by Robert Redford, wanted to do, and we thought it would reasons that films get into commercial who had agreed to drop in to accept have been crazy to cancel the whole theaters, and many of those reasons aren’t something called the Cheesehead thing,” says Kreul, who was then a pro- based at all on the merit of the films.” Award — a self-deprecating honor gram assistant for the UW’s Cinemath- Festivals, she says, give films outside the that promised the sort of klieg-lighted eque film series. “We knew that if there mainstream a chance, while at the same celebrity that was sure to accompany any was no festival at all, if we let the whole time allowing audiences to appreciate a Hollywood megastar on State Street. thing end, there probably wouldn’t be fuller scope of creative work. But Redford later backed out, any film festival in Madison for a long Wisconsin’s foray into that realm beginning a string of setbacks that time. We had to take advantage of that began, as do all good Badger ideas, at a threatened to end the event before it momentum.” tailgater. In February 1997, the Wiscon- could begin. The festival was initially Kreul and Weger, then a senior com- sin Film Office, a division of the state postponed from October 1998 until munication arts major who coordinated

24 ON WISCONSIN the Wisconsin Union’s Starlight Cinema, went with Warhol.” To his surprise, so manager, and a public relations agent in stuck with the goal that guided their did a lot of other people. Three thousand one body — a blessing, Balio says, given campus programming efforts: find high- people attended the festival that year — the festival’s scant budget for bodies. quality movies that were out of the main- and almost all thought it was, well, great. “Really, we need three people,” Balio stream and stood little chance of enjoying says, “but we can only afford half of one. wide commercial release. “We thought it Fortunately, Mary gives us about 110 was very important to build it from Perhaps the most important percent.” within the film community,” says Weger. thing that happened during the first festi- In her first year as director, Carbine The festival featured sixteen films, val was that Mary Carbine came. A grad- more than tripled the number of films headlined by an eighty-minute, black- uate of UW-Madison’s film department, shown, expanded the festival off-campus and-white comedy titled Man of the Carbine had been working for Wisconsin into downtown theaters, and turned Century, produced by Adam Abraham, Public Television as a fund raiser. But she screenings into ticketed events. The plan- a first-time filmmaker and the twenty- was fresh from stints in Los Angeles and ning team also scheduled the festival for eight-year-old brother of a UW student. Chicago, where she worked for a collec- earlier in spring, hoping to avoid a repeat The rest of the schedule offered little tion of film organizations, including the of the previous year’s crowd-thinning high-caliber celebrity, but some tantaliz- University of Chicago Film Studies weather. With the event still half a year ing story lines. One film, made by Carrie Center, IFP/Midwest, and the Academy away, someone noticed that they had Ansell ’93, revolved around what goes of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It chosen the same weekend as the NCAA on (aside from the obvious) in the rest seemed obvious to Kreul that she should men’s basketball championships. rooms of New York City nightclubs. be involved. Kreul recalls dismissing the concern. Another was a restored copy of the 1928 Kreul invited her to take part in a “I said, ‘Don’t worry. There’s no chance Frank Capra film The Matinee Idol, which panel on the future of the film festival, Wisconsin will even get close to the Final had almost disappeared from circulation. which took place on May 2, the last day Four,’ ” he laughs. The state film office also came through of the 1999 event. But, as it turned out, the Badgers by landing Jim Abrahams x’66, of On May 3, he says, Carbine essen- tipped off in Indianapolis right in the Airplane! fame, for a lecture on comedy. tially began running the next festival. middle of the festival, competing with at The screenings were free, and, “If Mary hadn’t been involved, year two least three movie showings and stealing although Kreul and Weger had toiled to would not have happened. There is no the spotlight. Walter Mirisch ’42, the arrange appearances by filmmakers and doubt about that,” Kreul says. “She longtime independent producer who was participatory discussions, there were few turned it into a professional film festival.” there to appear at a tribute honoring his trappings that evoked a “festival” atmos- Carbine has a caffeinated personality career, carried around a portable televi- phere. “It felt more like a really great that matches the intensity of her blaze- sion, so that he could catch the Badgers weekend of films,” Kreul says. red hair. A fitness fanatic who is training between films. Opening night was the last Thursday for a triathlon, she had not only the expe- Yet the filmgoing public was unde- in April, when students were busy with rience, but the resolve, to build on what terred. Even screenings that went head- term papers and preparing for spring the students had started. Living inside to-head with the game sold out, and, semester finals. And it didn’t help that the Hollywood bubble had taught her when the stubs were totaled, the festival Mother Nature picked the same week- not only the operations and language of had drawn in twelve thousand people — end for the debut of warm weather. the movie business, but its often quirky more than twice Carbine’s own projec- “It was gorgeous,” Kreul recalls. The realities. Once, at a Women in Film gala, tions. “I think at that point I realized that sun broke through the interminable gray Carbine was appointed to secret Robin this was going to be big,” she says. of Madison spring, and temperatures Williams through a back entrance where These days, Carbine has what many neared seventy degrees. It seemed like he wouldn’t be mobbed by crowds. people might consider the perfect job, the weekend’s hottest seat would be a That’s how things got done out there; given that a lot of her work is watching prime Terrace chair, not one for, say, most of the really interesting stuff movies. But there are so many movies. Outer and Inner Space, a nearly plotless happened in the backrooms. She sees three hundred films each year, experimental video shot by Andy Warhol After the modest success of the 1999 many of them during blitzkrieg trips to in 1965. event, the Arts Institute allocated money film festivals around the country, where “If you had a choice between sitting to hire Carbine half time to coordinate she works overtime to recruit films for outside on the first nice day in a long future events. She was, says Tino Balio, Madison’s event. At Toronto’s ten-day time, or going inside to watch this mini- the only person who possibly could do international film festival in September, malist Warhol film, well, I know what the job. Carbine combined the talents of a she will take in about fifty screenings. most people would do,” Kreul says. “I film programmer, a fund raiser, an event At Sundance, she’ll try to catch another

SPRING 2003 25 twenty-five. What she hasn’t seen Work on the 2003 line-up was ongo- magazine. “The fun of a festival is herself she gets a read on by working ing as On Wisconsin’s deadline arrived. presenting and seeing those films that |the phones, staying in constant contact (For a few highlights, see below, or will be big in the specialty arena ahead with critics, fellow programmers, film check wifilmfest.org for a full schedule.) of everyone else,” says Carbine. professors, and others who closely follow But expect the festival to follow the The festival’s roots, however, are in moviemaking. pattern of years past, offering diverse the joys of discovering the next little “Being able to do that is the part selections encompassing foreign and thing — in seeing movies that have only a that reminds me why I do all the other domestic features, documentaries, new remote chance of appearing on the radar things,” she says. media, animation, and revivals of forgot- screen of the wider public. For all its As the festival has grown, so has ten classics. There will be some familiar growing pomp, the event is still deeply the effort needed to pull it off. Carbine names and faces, including an appear- provincial, with about one-fifth of the manages arrangements for the more than ance by Roger Ebert, but most of the films coming from writers and directors one hundred events during the long films will arrive with more hope than with Wisconsin ties. And, as much as the weekend, including appearances by some hype, having drawn little attention from Wisconsin Film Festival is about bringing sixty filmmakers and other speakers. She mainstream audiences or press. good movies to audiences, it’s also about sweats all the details personally, from But that doesn’t mean that they bringing good audiences to the movies. shipping films to booking hotel rooms to won’t. Festivals usually operate ahead “It’s just a thrill to show your movie to approving marketing materials. Finding of the grapevine, often giving audiences audiences like the ones in Madison,” says money is never far down the to-do list. their first taste of movies that may go on Liesel de Boor, who has screened Cat Last year’s festival cost about $650,000, to bigger things. In past years, Wiscon- Lady, a dark comedy, at festivals through- and ticket revenue covered less than 10 sin’s festival has featured such emerging out the country. “I got to sit in the audi- percent of the tab. More than 80 percent independent hits as The Straight Story, ence and hear people laugh at my movie. of the budget comes from in-kind dona- Thirteen Conversations about One Thing, and And that’s kind of the whole reason you tions; the rest consists of cash gifts, Y tu mamá también, as well as dozens of make movies — for audiences like that.” secured from as many as fifty companies other films on the cusp of notoriety. and organizations. “It’s not just a matter Typical of this year’s crop is Better Luck Michael Penn MA’97 is senior editor of On Wisconsin and of getting a bunch of films and showing Tomorrow, whose director, Justin Lin, not the brother of Sean, although he loved his work in them,” says Balio. recently graced the cover of Filmmaker Sweet and Lowdown. Building the Lego-like structure of screenings, lectures, and other events takes months of viewing, reviewing, and ON THE MARQUEE recruiting. This year, Carbine’s office received 170 tapes from filmmakers hop- More than one hundred films are on tap for the fifth annual Wisconsin Film ing to be part of the festival, and each Festival, representing the usual eclectic mix of independent, world, and was screened carefully. Most of the films, experimental film. Movies will be shown March 27–30 at the Orpheum though, are solicited by Carbine and a Theatre, the Bartell Theatre, the Club Majestic, and the Madison Art Center, handful of programming volunteers, as well as University Square Theatre, the Memorial Union Play Circle, and the including several students from the UW’s Cinematheque screens on campus. communication arts department. A few A few of the films likely to be talked about include Better Luck Tomorrow, themes usually emerge in the final sched- Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, ule, but films are chosen primarily based and Satin Rouge. The festival will also highlight new African films from Tunisia, on what’s good and what’s available. Senegal, Rwanda, the Ivory Coast, and beyond, as well as profile works In many cases, the festival organizers dealing with science in culture. try to woo not only the films, but also the Another showcase will be experimental and avant-garde film, including filmmakers, to Madison. Screenings are an appearance by influential filmmaker Michael Snow, who made the 1960s often followed by audience dialogues film Wavelength, widely considered a classic of the genre. Snow will show with the people behind the films, helping selections from his digital work, as well as a new feature film. to ensure that the festival offers more “There are just so few opportunities to see films like this,” says Carbine than just passive viewing. “We always of Snow’s work. “But really, I think these films are more accessible than people try to find ways to create a filmgoing may realize.” community so that we can foster a For ticket information and show times, visit wifilmfest.org or call (877) 963- deeper understanding of the film and the FILM (3456). process of making it,” says Carbine.

26 ON WISCONSIN student centers and hangouts (like the A GOLDEN AGE Green Lantern Eating Cooperative), where sixteen-millimeter films were THE WISCONSIN FILM FESTIVAL REVIVES MEMORIES OF screened every night. It was a fabulously MADISON’S LONG LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE MOVIES. eclectic bill of fare, from The Battle of Algiers, City Lights, and Wild Strawberries to Bringing Up Baby, Notorious, and Duck Soup. UW–MADISON ARCHIVES We were crazy about movies. And we all seemed to know each other. We wrote about films, studied them in classes, and joined film societies and selection committees. When you’re young, you’re often poor in money (as I was), but rich in acquaintance — and you often make the friends and enemies who will haunt your whole life. Once, I could walk down State Street and almost immediately bump into someone I knew — or two or three. Sometimes, since it was an age of student protest, we’d emulate Barry Fitzgerald as Michaeleen Oge Flynn in The Quiet Man, and “talk a little treason.” But more often than not, we would talk movies — talk about John Ford and Jean Luc Godard, and the morality of tracking shots, and A campus kiosk advertises a typical night at the movies during the 1970s. the truth twenty-four times a second, and whether Ingmar Bergman was really a complacent. And that wonderful treasure By Michael Wilmington x’68 better director than Don Siegel. We trove of movies on campus, which When I got a call several years ago invit- would pore over the latest issues of the marked Madison in the sixties and ing me to attend the first Wisconsin Film various journals, for which most of us Festival — as a representative of Madi- seventies, has largely vanished — except wrote: The Velvet Light Trap, a homegrown son’s “Movie Golden Age” — I was happy when the festival and a few other venues independent film magazine with an inter- to accept. But why had it taken so long? try to bring it back. Once, there were national reputation; the Daily Cardinal, The Madison I knew — where I dozens of movies shown every week, which, from 1971 to 1973, may have had came at the age of seventeen to study and passionate buffs arguing about them the best student film reviewing staff ever English, where I acted onstage in the everywhere. Now, the campus kiosks assembled; or TakeOver, a proudly sensa- Wisconsin Union Theater and elsewhere, are bare of the movie posters that once tional underground paper of alternative where I went to the Field House and crowded them top to bottom. The movies culture and outright scandal. Camp Randall for sports and to the have largely ended. At night, if there wasn’t an uprising Majestic, Orpheum, and Memorial The Golden Age overlapped the Viet- somewhere, we’d settle down to another Union Play Circle for movies, where I nam War protest years and was, in many movie in another classroom, put on marched against the Vietnam War, wrote ways, part of the same cultural ferment. by one of the many film societies that for newspapers, and became a certified During those years, amazingly, in addition flourished on campus then. There were member of the notorious Madison Film to everything else happening, the UW several dozen societies at one time or Mafia — no longer really exists. Some of played host to a film culture and commu- another, with names like the Fertile my old film friends are still in town, but nity that matched the activity, intensity, Valley Film Society, the Praeteorius, El most have scattered to the far corners of and productivity of the more famous film Dorado, Phoenix, Green Lantern, and, the country. I see them only rarely now, communities at UCLA or NYU. Movies most venerable of all, the Wisconsin Film when my job takes me to the coasts or were critiqued, movies were shot, and Society — the one film group that pre- when I bus back to Madison. most of all movies were shown — an dated all the others, and, sadly, the last to And the Golden Age, as I knew it, endless stream every week, not just in the fall, after home video killed them all. is long gone. The city seems less volatile regular theaters, but in campus auditori- Why did this campus film culture and exciting, the student body more ums and classrooms, and off-campus spring up so suddenly and why did it dis-

SPRING 2003 27 appear? For years, I was so caught up in Society, then ensconced in the basement pany, Magic Lantern, bears the name of that world that I couldn’t have analyzed auditorium of the Commerce Building the school’s then most successful society. what made it special. But it’s obvious (now known as Ingraham Hall). In 1967, Up to then, the world of student the- that the terror and turbulence of those I began writing movie reviews for the ater had eaten up most of my after-school years had a lot to do with its birth. Vio- Daily Cardinal, an association that contin- life. But I gradually became consumed lence in the world and on campus made ued, off and on, into the seventies. That by film, as we all did. I joined the Memo- people want to gather together, to retreat same year, I befriended Joe McBride, a rial Union film committee, a contentious into fantasy. There was also a specific tall, bespectacled Milwaukee guy who group that picked the films for the Play chemistry to the student body — the mix also contributed to the Cardinal, under its Circle. The film committee attracted all of kids from the Dairy State and kids old film critic-editor Larry Cohen. The kinds of movie buffs, and it brought me from the East. The city kids were more first time I saw Joe (outside of Professor in touch with faculty such as Tino Balio, fluent in art-film lore, but the country Richard Byrne’s film history class) was D. W. Griffith scholar Russell Merritt, kids (like me) may have been more pas- on the day of the Dow Chemical demon- and David Bordwell, the ubiquitous sionate about learning it. All of us were strations, when he raced into the Play author who shared the pages of Film predisposed to the easy, cheap entertain- Circle during a showing of They Were Comment with Joe and me and later ment of movies. We sopped it all up. Expendable to announce that students became the country’s foremost academic Certainly I did. I came to Madison were being gassed on Bascom Hill. writer on film. from the village of Williams Bay, Wis- Joe and I began staging plays, shoot- Thanks to Balio and others, the uni- consin (population: 1,114 or so, at the ing movies, and writing film articles versity’s Wisconsin Center for Film and time), from a high school graduating together, which we got published in Theater Research acquired the film col- class of twenty-eight. We were tiny; in national or international magazines. lection of United Artists, which included the fifties and sixties, the only movie the- Through him, I met other Mafiosi: the movies made at Warner Brothers, RKO, ater in the Bay was the Lakes Outdoor darkly comic cynics Tim Onosko and and Monogram studios from the thirties Theater (since demolished and replaced Mark Bergman, and John Davis and through the early fifties. Inspired by the by a compost field) on the outskirts of Tom Flinn, who ran the Fertile Valley accessibility of the collection, a bearded, town. I grew up going to see movies in Film Society and also turned out killer lanky graduate student from New the surrounding towns, becoming a riffs with the White Trash Blues Band. Zealand named Russell Campbell started devotee of Alfred Hitchcock, Billy It was also through Joe that I became The Velvet Light Trap, which he typed by Wilder, David Lean, and Elia Kazan. involved with the film societies. Movies hand on an old manual typewriter. Rus- But I longed to see the more unattainable could be rented cheaply and shown sell looked something like a Hammer ones — the movies with subtitles that cheaply; you could set up two Kodak Studio horror movie Rasputin, but was were written about in Esquire and The Pageant projectors at the back of a class- probably the gentlest and most collegial New Yorker. When I went to Madison in room and show the films on the pull- of all of us — and his magazine gradually 1964, I had seen only two foreign films down screens. Joe was chairman of the became world famous. — Rififi, from France, and The Magician, Wisconsin Film Society as a freshman, TVLT, as we nicknamed it, published from Sweden — both dubbed. and he was succeeded by Wayne Merry, thematic issues in which local writers In Madison, things changed. I a frizzy-haired guy who later worked for could analyze the films in the UA collec- became active in student theater and the State Department. Bergman suc- tion and elsewhere. The Mafia became the student paper, and I saw two movies ceeded him, and he was followed by the staff, and, unfortunately, it was there every week, and sometimes more. Even- skinny, little Reid Rosefelt, who became that our film community suffered a tually, I dropped into the Wisconsin Film a well-known film publicist, whose com- schism that marked the beginning of the T H E M A D I S O N M A F I A

A partial list of Madison’s Mark Bergman ’69, longtime campus Tony Chase ’72, author of Movies on Sandy Searles Dickinson x’68, acted Golden Age vets, and what film coordinator; died in 2001 Trial: The Legal System on the Silver Screen in movies and television productions they’ve done lately: David Bordwell, UW professor of Lawrence D. Cohen ’69, wrote Carrie, Tom Flinn ’66, writer, teacher, musician communication arts; author of many Ghost Story Jim Abrahams x’66, Douglas Gomery MA’70, PhD’75, co-wrote and film books directed Airplane!, Ruthless People, Susan Dalton ’66, former archivist for wrote under the alias John Mont- Police Squad series Barry Alexander Brown, co-made The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater gomery; now a journalism professor War at Home; editor of Do the Right Thing, Research, American Film Institute Tino Balio, Bette Gordon ’72, MA’75, MFA’76, professor of communication Malcolm X, 25th Hour, others arts, director of Arts Institute John Davis ’67, comic book mogul, director for movies and television Russell Campbell MA’72, director musician Andrew Bergman MA’66, PhD’70, Stuart Gordon ’69, of film studies, Victoria University, wrote and directed The Freshman, Honeymoon in Vegas André De Shields ’70, Re-Animator wrote Wellington, New Zealand veteran and other horror movies Broadway actor and director

28 ON WISCONSIN end of the Golden Age, splitting into two cancer a few years ago. But Tim a kind of paradise — but like all false cliques dubbed (by Gerry Peary) the Onosko and I have memorialized him heavens, it was one that would eventu- Aesthetes and the Politicos. in an annual film festival event, called ally pass away. The Aesthetes were supposedly “Bergman’s Show.” There we show the Could it all happen again some day? devoted to aesthetics above political con- kind of noirish, auteurist cult movies It hasn’t yet. Despite the flourishing of tent; more precisely, we were auteurists, Mark liked and gather to talk about programs like the festival and Bordwell’s devoted to the directorial achievements the old days. Cinematheque, Madison now seems more of the filmmakers John Ford, Hitchcock, But back then it seemed deadly seri- an ordinary college film town. Yet there Welles, Howard Hawks, Jean Renoir, ous. And, actually, it was. We wrangled are elements that could trigger another and others. The Politicos adopted the about movies, obsessed and fought about renaissance. Projected DVD is now so quasi-Marxist angle then popular in the them, because we loved them so much. refined that students may well be able to groves of French academe. The Politicos Yet, though most of the group succeeded show DVDs in classrooms and start up mostly were film majors, and the arcane as writers, historians, and critics, few cheap campus film programs again. theories they studied eventually split the actually achieved their real goal — which I wish they would, because now, academic film community, as well. was, of course, to make films. Instead, a when I walk down State Street, as I do Russell generously tried to keep both bunch of Madisonians not quite at the when I visit the festival every year, I’m groups happy, alternating the magazine’s heart of the Mafia made it in Hollywood. an outsider. I rarely see someone I theme issues between the two groups. (See the box below for details.) know. But I do occasionally sight the Although there was no overt hostility at The seventies were in many ways a ghosts. I see them by day, pouring down first, there were differences. And they terrible time for me. I had left school, I the sidewalks on Langdon, Mifflin, and grew. Some Politicos thought some Aes- had no money and lived on small-job pit- State Streets. I watch them at night, set- thetes were obnoxious and politically tances and money sent by my mother — tling into chairs at Ingraham or Van incorrect. Some Aesthetes — myself who, despite having a master’s degree in Vleck or the Social Science building. I included — thought some Politicos were art from the UW, worked in a factory. hear the whir of the old Kodak Pageant uptight phonies. It should have ended at Violence was always somehow in the air. projectors and see that magical bright that, with semihumorous clashes, but the Both in my undergraduate years and beam flooding the classroom screens, arguments eventually broke up the staffs afterward, I often saw my campus aflame and finally, I hear the deep, magical of both TVLT and the Cardinal, as well as and in riot. But I also saw and heard voice from my favorite movie, Citizen the Union film committee. amazing things — and not just at the Kane, whispering, “Rosebud.” I settle When I say broke up, I’m not movies. For me, the whole spirit of that down in darkness. It’s the last picture kidding. There was an actual brawl in era is summed up by two frantic days show all over again, and this time, it the Union between Gerry and me after back in 1968, when Joe and I and our can’t fade away, because it’s playing in the Politicos ousted me from my chair- buddy Steve Wonn traveled to Chicago my head. It’s safe and untouchable, and manship of the Union film committee, for the Democratic national convention. so are all those people — veterans of the beginning with Mark Bergman tossing a In that span, I saw Luis Buñuel’s Belle De War at Home and the War for Film, cupful of coffee in Gerry’s face, and Jour for the first time, lost my virginity, children of the Golden Age — watching ending with Gerry and me wrestling on and witnessed the police-and-protestor it with me. the floor. Gerry and I are now friends riots from atop a van where cameramen again — I sponsored him for member- recorded the carnage for all time. Michael Wilmington has reviewed films for Isthmus, L.A. Weekly, and the Los Angeles Times and now is the chief ship in the National Society of Film And I also lost my heart, perma- film critic for the Chicago Tribune, in addition to teaching Critics. Mark, sadly, died of pancreatic nently, to the movies. We were living in and authoring books.

Peter Lehman ’67, MA’73, PhD’78, Errol Morris ’69, made documentaries Danny Peary ’71, writer of several Larry Sloman MS’72, former editor professor and author of film criticism Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, and books, including Cult Movies series of High Times; author of Reefer Madness Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control Richard Lippe x’71, film critic for Reid Rosefelt ’75, independent film Kristin Thompson PhD’77, honorary Canada’s CineAction magazine Peter Neufeld ’72, screenwriter and publicist and producer fellow in UW film program; author of lawyer in the O.J. Simpson trial Storytelling in the New Hollywood Ken Mate ’68, writer, Mark Rosenberg ’79, produced Bright Emmy-winning TV reporter Tim Onosko x’70, former journalist; Lights, Big City; Major League; Presumed Michael Wilmington x’68, author, now consultant for major studios Innocent; died in 1992 teacher, film critic Joseph McBride x’67, film critic and author of several film biographies Dennis Paoli ’69, wrote Re-Animator Nancy Schwartz ’63, screenwriter, David Zucker ’70 and Jerry Zucker and many other Stuart Gordon films critic, historian; died in 1979 ’72, made Airplane!, Ruthless People, Patrick McGilligan ’74, film historian, many others author of several books Gerald Peary PhD’77, film critic for Glenn Silber ’72, co-maker of The the Boston Phoenix and other papers War at Home; ABC News producer

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