BLOODSWORTH: AN INNOCENT MAN—The Evening Class Interview With Gregory Bayne

Quite possibly, Gregory Bayne might know more about alternate funding strategies for independent film—including crowd funding—than most Idaho filmmakers. This "faithful pragmatist" has funded four successful Kickstarter campaigns for three separate films (A Person of Interest, Jens Pulver / Driven, and Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man), negotiated a hefty distribution deal through video on demand and streaming aggregates, has written columns for Filmmaker magazine, and has been cherry-picked as an expert panelist to discuss funding for independent film at this weekend's Idaho Cineposium Film Conference (May 18-19, 2012).

Keen to the association between crowd funding and audience building, Bayne follows-up his successful Kickstarter campaign for documentary-in-progress Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man with an evening with Kirk Bloodsworth at Boise's Egyptian Theater on Thursday, May 17.

As part of a suite of research interviews conducted for an overview piece for Fusion magazine on Idaho film production, Bayne and I sat down to discuss Bloodsworth late last month.

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Michael Guillén: Gregory, you started with a feature and have now shifted to documentaries. Does that mean that documentary filmmaking has become more your medium or are these simply the stories you want to tell right now?

Gregory Bayne: Well, you can easily get pigeonholed. For me it was more like, "What's the most reasonable thing for me to do after Driven? What will people be waiting for? Likely a documentary." I like documentaries. I like the stories that I can tell through them that maybe I can't tell through narrative features. It took me a long time to even say, "I'm a filmmaker", but that's what I do for a living and that's how I spend my time. But I guess I want it to be more encompassing? I want to be format-agnostic and genre-agnostic, y'know?

Basically, filmmaking is just storytelling for me. For example, my next project is Bloodsworth because Kirk's story really intrigued me. It's a great story to tell. Somebody had been looking into making his story into a feature; but, I liked him, I liked him as a person and I thought that the best way to tell his story was to do a documentary and let him be the star of it. Stylistically, it will be different to a degree than Driven; but, they're the same in that they're both stories centered on their subjects. I feel that the State of Maryland has told their version of the story several times at court, people have read it in the news, but what does it feel like to be a guy ripped off the face of the earth and thrown into prison for something he didn't do? What's that story? I can tell that story better as a documentary through somebody's true experience rather than trying to dramatize it.

Guillén: Clearly, finding the story is essential to building an audience. And a story of direct human experience has a better chance of having an audience relate to that direct experience through a shared humanity. But your decision to tell that story through documentary involves many choices along the way that intrigue me. For example, with Driven—and, I anticipate, with Bloodsworth—I respect that the story is told through the voice of its subject. You don't have a lot of talking heads in Driven, for example, to tell Pulver's story. Jens Pulver tells his own story. And it sounds like you're taking a similar approach with Bloodsworth? In some ways, it might be considered a no-no to give one face so much screen time; but, in the case of Jens Pulver, it revealed an emotional authenticity that engaged the audience. You can run with emotional authenticity for hours, I think.

Bayne: I totally agree. To be perfectly honest, I mostly watch narrative films and mostly just wanted to direct narrative features. That was my initial impulse. But then I fell into editing documentaries and began to like that approach to storytelling. I felt documentaries gave me a greater sense of how to tell stories than all the years of writing and watching dramatized narratives. One of my major inspirations are the Maysles Brothers, especially their film Salesman (1969). I love that movie. It's so interesting and heartbreaking and real and raw. One thing that documentaries have over narrative features—unless they're genuine classics—is this level of timelessness. So the Maysles Brothers inspired me and, more recently, Errol Morris's films, and one Chris Smith did called Collapse (2009), which I watched before making Driven and thought, "Oh wow!" Have you seen Collapse?

Guillén: I haven't.

Bayne: It's about this guy that supposedly predicted the financial collapse. He's something of a conspiracy theorist and Collapse is basically a movie that's just him in a room being interviewed through several different camera angles. It's just him for 80 minutes and I thought, "Holy shit! This is incredibly interesting." The guy was totally engaging and I knew from meeting Jens and having talked with him that there would be no problem with him carrying a movie too. There was a certain amount of the trifecta going on: a great back story, a totally engaging personality, and he had something happening. It's the same with Kirk Bloodsworth. The intensity level turns up to 11 from Driven in terms of what he experienced: being wrongfully convicted, sentenced to death, having to go through that, and then being the first death row inmate in the U.S. to be exonerated through DNA evidence.

My whole point is that—through watching films like Errol Morris' The Fog of War (2003)—if you see these engaging personalities and you allow them to speak and know you have the editor's touch in the end, you can in an authentic way shape what they're saying and tell it to the audience who is watching.

Guillén: Let's talk a bit about where you are with Bloodsworth. You're doing a benefit at the Egyptian Theater on Thursday, May 17, 2012 with Kirk Bloodworth in attendance to Q&A with the audience? My understanding is that part of that event is to film audience reaction? How much longer will you need after that to finish up the film?

Bayne: I also like the process to be as simple as possible. I'm working on two tracks with the Bloodsworth story. Along with my own documentary, we're doing a short piece for PBS for some new program they're developing. I filmed him throughout February back East but I'm not sure that footage will actually be part of the film. The concept I have for Bloodsworth encompasses four elements. First is his speaking in front of people and telling his story from beginning to end. It's compelling and he's a great storyteller. He's shaped his story really well and it resonates because—even though it's second nature and a little bit rehearsed at this point—it's still very emotional and authentic. It comes back to that. So, having him in front of an audience telling his story is just engaging. I look forward to being able to shoot that.

My favorite quote about documentaries is from Errol Morris who said that the best thing and the worst thing about documentaries is that they can be about anything. I love that and it's one of the things that draws me to documentary filmmaking over narrative filmmaking. That principle could be inherent in narrative filmmaking as well, but there's still formulaic storytelling tropes that one way or the other you have to fit in. With documentaries you're bound to a degree with the tenets of storytelling but the way in which you present the story is wide open.

So, the first element is filming him in front of an audience. Then there's the second element of interviewing him, much like I described the Collapse interview, with several cameras. I'm going to sit down with him for four solid days, which is what I did with Jens, and go through the whole story, hoping through that process to get beyond the technical aspects and go deeper. The third element is archival footage from day one of the murder, all the coverage around it, his arrest, his conviction, his appeal, prison.

Guillén: That sounds like a costly element of the film?

Bayne: Yeah. I don't know how costly it's going to be yet. It depends on how much of the archival footage I'll actually use. First, I have to pay a fee to get the footage to look at and then—once I actually use it—I'll have to pay money.

Guillén: You have earned a reputation as being something of a master of crowd funding. How successful were your Kickstarter campaigns for Bloodsworth? Could you use a Kickstarter campaign to offset the costs of securing archival footage?

Bayne: The original Kickstarter campaign for Bloodsworth was fully funded. The way it works in the documentary world—which I'm sure you're fully familiar with—is that you can't get any money from any agencies or granting organizations unless you're already way deep into the process. I raised the original money to get through the initial production process to come up with 20-25 minutes of good footage that tells a story, gives the scope of what I'm making, and present it to people at Sundance, at the Ford Foundation, to people at PBS, etc.

I didn't want to do the Kickstarter campaign because it was already my fourth, all of which have been successful. That's nice, but, I do perceive a burnout. So I was really nervous about the Kickstarter campaign for Bloodsworth. I had tried other ways to raise the money. The initial seed money I was supposed to get fell through but I knew there were a lot of things I needed to do that would require money, because the budget for Bloodsworth would probably be larger than it was for Driven. So I went ahead and did the Kickstarter campaign and I did it for various reasons. First, a lot of people just think about the money-making aspect of Kickstarter; but, if you treat crowd funding right, if you respect the process, and follow through with what you say you're going to do, Kickstarter can be a pretty amazing audience-building tool.

I had a nice track record already. For Person of Interest, we did what we said we were going to do with that movie and it got out. With Driven, there were two campaigns and, again, when the movie was done and it was released, everyone got what they were promised. So with the Kickstarter campaign for Bloodsworth, it was nervewracking and yet it worked. It also gave me the opportunity to create another level of audience for this new project that I didn't have prior. It's always good to do that. It gets the conversation rolling.

The campaign kind of sucked because it had the Thanksgiving holiday right in the middle of it and I thought it was going to be very hard to make the funds happen. But the story got picked up all over the place—there was a tidbit in The Washington Post and coverage in all the major online magazines—and the reason the Kickstarter campaign for Bloodsworth got picked up all over the place was because the Idaho State Tourism Board sent out a press release for me. I called them and I said, "Hey, remember that time you said that you really liked what I was doing and to call on you if you could ever be of help?" And they said, "Yes!" I was a little nervous towards the end of the campaign but then one day this writer who I've never met threw in $5,000 and that was the last little chip that needed to fall and then it was done.

The nice thing about this experience was this it was my quickest Kickstarter campaign. Ordinarily, to get a campaign 10% funded early on is the best strategy possible. If you can make it there, oddly enough you can get it funded the rest of the way. Within 24 hours, the Bloodsworth campaign went past 10% funded and then the work really began. Still, again, it went the fastest of all my campaigns in achieving the 10% but, again, I think that had to do with all this work I'd done prior, had delivered on my promises, and people were beginning to trust that I wasn't an asshole.

Guillén: So any sense of when the film will be ready to be released?

Bayne: Well, I'll have the bulk of the footage I'll need by the end of May, but then the animation aspect is a new element for me that I've never worked with before and I'm assuming that's going to take more time than I imagine it will. Half of the film will be animated by Matthew Wade.

Guillén: How did you decide to film this story? Had you read some news coverage and that's what lured you into the project? How did you then contact Kirk Bloodsworth?

Bayne: A friend of mine in Boise was friends with Bloodsworth and she had read Tim Junkin's book Bloodsworth: The True Story of One Man's Triumph over Injustice. She contacted me about the possibility of making a film about him, gave me the book and I started reading it, and I thought, "This is a great story." Then Bloodsworth and his people all watched Driven and thought I was pretty good at what I was doing so I sat down with Kirk and decided we would make a documentary about his story. That's how the process began. It was very simple.

Guillén: When you approach a prospective subject, what do you offer them? What do they get out of your telling their story?

Bayne: With Jens Pulver / Driven, because it's a first person movie, Jens owns half the movie. I think that's totally fair. I put in most of the equity, I made the movie and all that, so I should get something; but, then, Jens put in his life story. If Driven is making money right now and Jens isn't getting some of that, I would be a total asshole. So that's how I approach it. It's not like making a movie about Japanese whaling ships. When you're making a movie that's so specified and it's so definitively about one person and their story and they're investing their time to be with you and to tell their story and to allow you the creative freedom to make and own the movie, it nonetheless at the end of the day has to be shared. If there's a financial benefit, it's a shared financial benefit. I don't really see any other way to do it. You can litigate a project to the end of time, but there's a right and a wrong. If you're going to tell a story about a specific person and they're on camera for 90% of the movie, you both share the money, period.

SFIFF53: ROGER EBERT TRIBUTE

Roger Ebert was the distinguished recipient of the Mel Novikoff Award at this year's edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF53). The presiding theme that ran throughout the celebratory evening held at San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre was that—at a time when (as Jason Sanders states it in his tribute essay) "the future of film criticism remains a real question"—Ebert has proven by example that film criticism's role in championing the work of new filmmakers has kickstarted many a career and encouraged others to hone their craft. To prove that point, the San Francisco Film Society invited four guests whose directorial careers have been personally encouraged by Ebert to share their thoughts: Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff, Henry & June), Errol Morris (The Fog of War, The Thin Blue Line), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno) and Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World, Crumb).

Letter From Tilda Swinton

One guest who had been invited but was unable to attend due to a conflict in her filming schedule was festival favorite Tilda Swinton, whose brave performance in Erick Zonca's Julia was singled out by Ebert for reconsideration. In lieu of attendance, Swinton forwarded a letter to Ebert, which Program Director Rachel Rosen read to the audience:

"Dear Roger: I cannot tell you how sad I am to miss out on our San Francisco moment. I am—as my daughter would describe her dog when it pines—'pretty low to the ground' about the whole thing. Were it not that I'm in Connecticut shooting what I sincerely hope is a great film with Lynne Ramsay, and were there flights that existed that could get me there and back between the end of a Friday night shoot and an early call on Monday without our company suffering one collective heart attack, you know I would be there.

"You do me and Julia such great honor. Such a beloved film for me and all those who made it. Your support has kept us warm over the past months. The witness you provide for this kind of work is incalculably valuable to all filmmakers working outside the frame of studio movie's muscle and your inexhaustible passion as a film fan means everything. Tilda."

Terry Zwigoff

Introducing Terry Zwigoff as a "director who makes a specialty of literate antisocial oddballs", Rachel Rosen qualified: "that he does it with comedy takes more guts than doing it in tragedy."

"I make films about 'antisocial oddballs'?" Zwigoff countered behind the podium. "I guess that's fair. You write about what you know. I'm actually so antisocial myself these days I find it very difficult to watch a film in a theater among other people. I'm not saying that to be self-serving; it's just the truth. I feel very uncomfortable and I prefer, these days, to watch films at home, especially comedies. I know Roger prefers that communal audience experience—he's a much more well-adjusted, sane person—but, I really can't stand it when I go to a film and the audience starts laughing at something I don't find funny and when they don't laugh at something I do find funny. It's a very alienating experience for me and I'm alienated enough, so.... But whenever I watch a film at home, I got into this habit of wanting to talk or think about it with somebody and, of course, the guy I always choose to think about is Mr. Ebert. I can go to the computer and hope that he has written a review of what I've just watched. Why do I do this? I'm not even sure to tell you the truth because I don't fully agree with him; but, why I do it is because he's a great writer.

"I brought something to read and I hope he doesn't mind but it's part of a review that he wrote for one of my favorite films, which is Army of Shadows: 'Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows is about members of the French Resistance who persist in the face of despair. Rarely has a film shown so truly that place in the heart where hope lives with fatalism. It is not a film about daring raids and exploding trains, but about cold, hungry, desperate men and women who move invisibly through the Nazi occupation of France. Their army is indeed made of shadows: They use false names, they have no addresses, they can be betrayed in an instant by a traitor or an accident. They know they will probably die. This is not a war film. It is about a state of mind. ...[A]bout the war within the minds of Resistance members, who must live with constant fear, persist in the face of futility, accept the deaths of their comrades and expect no reward, except the knowledge that they are doing the right thing. ...Their immediate commander is Philippe Gerbier, played by Lino Ventura with a hawk nose and physical bulk, introspection and implacable determination. To overact for Ventura would be an embarrassment.' That's like the greatest line I've ever heard: 'To overact for Ventura would be an embarrassment.' People forget that Roger is a very funny writer as well as a smart one. I know that's known without my reading that.

"I often times read things he's written and take on a new appreciation for something I've seen, and watch it again, and learn something. Anyway, I'm so socially retarded that I don't think I've ever become friends with Roger in the traditional sense. I don't know him very well personally so I don't have very many anecdotes to share. I had dinner with Roger and Chaz once, but Malkovich's whole crazy family was there.... He's interviewed me a couple of times. He's had me at Ebertfest. I don't know, part of it's—I guess—that you have to keep a little bit of a professional distance if a guy's reviewing your films as well.

"I first met him at the Telluride Film Festival in 1984 where I had my first film Louie Bluie and I had only been accepted in one other film festival before that; it was down at Filmex, which is now called the L.A. Film Festival. I think 12 people showed up to see the film down there. So I didn't expect much when I went to Telluride; but, one of the people in line to see the film was Roger Ebert, which was a big deal to me. I remember I was in the lobby selling LPs—that sort of dates the whole thing; but, at least they weren't 78s—and they were soundtracks to the film Louie Bluie. Roger wanted to buy a few. He came up and I said, 'Just take a few, man, take some.' He seemed rather put off and rather irritated by that because maybe he thought I was trying to bribe him or something.

"I guess the biggest criticism I have of Roger is that his reviews are often too easy on films, except for my films of course—he could never be too easy on them—but, the guy loves films so much that it's almost contagious. He's open, he's smart, he's thoughtful, he's always very clear, and he's got a really good heart and—like I said—he's really funny, which is hard to do as a writer. He manages to make you think critically without making it seem like homework. God knows the world needs more people thinking critically these days about a lot of things.

"Finally, I'm going to tell a short story for Roger's benefit that he's never heard and that probably most of you have never heard. I don't tell many people this; but, I get a kick out of it so what the hell? When I made my film Crumb years ago, my executive producer Lynn O'Donnell suggested that we have a few informal test screenings before we locked picture. She wanted some feedback from an audience and so she got about 200 people to come and she handed the audience survey cards. They would ask you things like: What do you like most about the film? Do you like this? Is it too long? Too short? That sort of thing. After the screening was over, I realized it hadn't gone very well and so I went up to Lynn and I said, 'You know what? Let me take those cards home with me and read them over tonight and I'll give them back to you tomorrow morning.' She said, 'Okay.' So I took them home.

"I was mortified reading the cards because they were unanimously down on the film. The consensus was that I should take Robert Crumb's brothers out of the film, which to me was the whole point of the film. But everyone wanted to go in a more cheery, upbeat direction, and spend most of the time on underground comic books or something, which I had no interest in. So I thought, 'Well, I better take a few of these cards and fill in my own comments to balance this out.' I knew I wasn't going to be able to find any blank cards so I took some Wite-Out and I whited out their comments, then I went down to Kinkos and I Xeroxed about a hundred of these things. I came home and got a bunch of different pens and tried to disguise my handwriting on these cards and wrote, 'Oh, the brothers were great! More of them!'

"Eventually, we had one more screening and I couldn't do that again and, luckily, at that test screening this guy Walter Murch came and everybody felt the same way except him; but, he had enough clout as an Oscar®-winning editor to just say, 'Y'know, the film is great. Just leave it alone.' He went on beyond that to do a free sound mix for me, because we had no money.

"So we locked picture and started submitting it to film festivals and everyone turned us down. Eventually, somehow, the New York Film Festival let us in and it did well there. Roger and his ol' pal Gene Siskel saw it and they started championing the film on their show. They got it on there three or four times. The first time they did an early review to encourage theaters to actually book the film. Then after that they did it again when it came out to review it. And after that to remind people to go see the film. Eventually, by then all the other critics had gone along and come out for it. Ultimately Roger argued for it at Oscar® time and eventually it made its way onto Roger's list of great films, which was probably a greater thrill for me than winning the Oscar® itself.

"A few years ago Roger did a commentary for the film. The truth of the matter is that Sony Pictures had done a poor transfer the first time they did it and I had been on their case to correct it. Ever since then they sort of made it clear that—if they were going to do that—they wanted me to do a commentary and that's how I could pay them back for all the expense. But I just wasn't comfortable doing a commentary for a film. I think it takes the mystery and the magic out of it and it diminishes the film sometimes if you're not careful. So I was a little reluctant to do it, but I said, 'Y'know, why can't Roger Ebert do it? He could talk about this film. He knows it pretty well.' They said, 'Okay. That's a great suggestion.' So they called Roger and Roger agreed to do it and I said, 'Great! I'm off the hook.' And they said, 'No. You have to do it as a conversation with Roger.' So Roger came and we did this commentary and I tried to sit there the whole time and not say anything. I let him talk. I later found out they had used a lot of his voice from that DVD commentary to help restore his computer voice, which was great.

"Anyway, it's been my greatest hope and fondest joy to talk about Mr. Ebert here. Again, I'm glad he's been given this award. He truly deserves it."

Errol Morris

"It's an honor for me to be here tonight. Roger Ebert has given out so many awards to so many filmmakers, it's nice to be part of giving him an award this time around. Anybody who's done this long enough knows that there are two, three, four people who have made an extraordinary difference in their careers for many many many reasons. For me, Roger is most certainly one of those people. He champions unlikely films. His own film festival is the perfect example of this. It's my perfect trophy, by the way, the thumbs up. ...It's something I'm very very proud of, although I was disappointed to find out it was not Roger's thumb.

"I had made my first film Gates of Heaven. I think this is true many many films later, you don't really know if they're good or bad. You really depend on someone to tell you that they're not as bad as you might think and, in fact, they might be good! For me, very early in my career Roger Ebert—because my film went to the New York Film Festival; I was really lucky to be accepted—but, there was a newspaper strike that year in New York so no one read about the film. And then out of seemingly nowhere these reviews appeared on television and in the newspaper from Roger and Gene Siskel, almost as if he would not give up. In fact, he hasn't given up—I think it's now something like 30 years—his obsession with this film and other films I've made. I owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.

"What do you hope for when you make a film? That someone out there will appreciate it, perhaps see it in a kindly light, or maybe see things in it that you saw in it, or maybe even see things in it that you never even noticed. It's truly a blessing and Roger has certainly played that role in my life over the years. For that alone—aside from all the great writing and the great criticism—I am grateful.

"It also occurred to me—I will be brief—that there's something very odd about this man. He's not really just a film critic. He's also an icon, quite clearly. I remember when I first met him—I believe I first met him at the Cannes Film Festival years and years ago—I was told, 'Y'know, Roger always writes about his experiences at Cannes' and I read the one from that year. I remember saying to my wife at the time, 'This guy writes really really well.' And it's absolutely true. He's an extraordinary writer. If I call him 'kind', it seems like it's the wrong way to put it; but, he's an enthusiast and a person who is very much a person of conviction....

"So it's an enormous privilege for me to be here. He means—and continues to be—a lot to me. He's mastered every form of this sort of thing: as a writer, as a newspaper man, as a television personality, now as a blogger, and I'm sure that—if in the future there is a new kind of media that is developed—he will master that as well."

Jason Reitman

"Terry, I have one word of advice for when you're in a movie theater and they are laughing at the thing that's not funny. It's something I do when my wife drags me to a horrible romantic comedy. You just have to laugh three times as loud and talk about what's happening on the screen: 'Oh my God! She doesn't know that he's already in the bathroom!' And just get bigger and bigger and bigger. You can own that film.

"It's hard to give context for the life of Roger Ebert when it is he who has given us all context. He is America's critic. He's one of the few people who comprises our cinematic voice of record. He is ... 'The Thumb.' It's almost hard to come up with what we're supposed to say. Roger's name alone stands for his great writing, his criticism, all his contributions that have lived so far beyond them. One would think one could say, 'Now the Mel Novikoff Award goes to Roger Ebert' and that would be it.

"A few times a year Roger will choose a film, sometimes a studio release, but more often a film on the fringe, something small that was made for all the right reasons; something that moves him, and he will blow wind into the tiny sails of this film and give it a life that otherwise would be unimaginable. I'm not the first person to talk about this. I realize everybody's actually talking about this. I have personally experienced it. I remember arriving at the Toronto Film Festival with this tiny movie about teenage pregnancy starring an unknown Canadian actress named Ellen Page that I really thought, 'This will be a festival movie and it will not be seen otherwise.' I remember when the movie ended and people began to clap, I saw Roger—he was actually seated a few seats away from me—and he nodded to me. It was an extraordinary thing! The next morning he had already started talking about the film. He shone a spotlight on it. He gave people a reason to pay attention to it and by the end of the week I got a call saying that Roger would actually like to sit down and talk to me about the film. I was terrified but knew it was going to be a thing I was going to cherish for the rest of my life, and it was. I have no doubt that Roger is one of the very few reasons why people know the name Juno.

"There is a joy for Roger even when he doesn't like a film. I'm sorry in advance for this but here is a quote from [a review of] a movie that will go nameless: 'I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it.'—Errol, you're right, he's a great writer!—'Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.' Here's the thing: even in this review, I know how much Roger loves movies. I know how much he thinks of them, how much he wants from them, what he expects from them, because these are the same things that I look to movies for. I can't quite put a finger on it but there's something about many film critics and the way they write that makes me think they actually hate movies.

"There's an enthusiasm in Roger's writing that can't be mistaken for anything else but joy. He's passionate and cannot be silenced. He's America's best friend who won't stop nagging you until you've seen this new film. Nowhere is this more evident than on Twitter. I know teenage girls that tweet less than Roger Ebert. You could put Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears, and the entire staff of Ain't It Cool News and /Film together and not tweet as much as Roger Ebert. He tweets about movies. He tweets about politics. He tweets jokes. Yesterday he retweeted the following Twitter user named Superstanos who wrote: 'I just spent 20 minutes writing WU TANG into a lab table. This is why I go to school y'all.' The Roger Ebert Twitter feed is one of the best publications we have running. I don't mean this sarcastically. It's awesome. It's political. It's daring. It's funny. It's self-effacing. It's everything that I love about his writing. It rails against Sarah Palin. It's even about the artfulness of video games.

"He has somehow found yet another medium and a way to share what he thinks is special. This is the passion I associate with this great man who I was introduced to watching At the Movies and who I was fortunate enough to meet when I was a 20-year-old short film maker at the Toronto Festival. I introduced myself. I had no idea that as a writer he would change my life. His instinct to write and share is one thing, but then he wants you to experience what he has experienced, to feel what he has felt. It's an instinct to give and he gives so much. And so there's really only one thing left to say: thank you. Roger, thank you for everything you have done for my career. And thank you for everything you have done for cinema. I cannot imagine a more deserved honor."

Philip Kaufman

"Rose and I left Chicago during the great blizzard of '66 with our little son Peter. We'd done a couple of low budget independent films in Chicago but the films gave no return to the investors, money dried up, and Rose said it was time to head back to San Francisco: always our city of succor. We'd become best friends with Nelson Algren and he came to the airport to see us off. He started to tell us it would be lonely in Chicago without us. Nelson, as you know, wrote The Man With the Golden Arm. At that very time, maybe at that same moment that we were hugging Algren on our way out of Chicago, a bright, tough young kid was just making his way into Chicago. I like to think he took our place. He became a friend of Algren's. And Studs Terkel. And the great Mike Royko. In time he would come to be known as the Kid With the Golden Thumb. Everything you've read by this kid Ebert over all these years should be taken in the context of his being in the tradition of these Chicago guys: tough, give 'em hell, not compromising, no bullshit, tell it like it is, compassionate writers. Like them, Ebert spoke from his heart, spoke against the big boys, championed the little man against small-minded bullies. He told us the truth according to Ebert and—like Mike Royko—he could say with all humility: 'I may be wrong ... but I doubt it.'

"Once, Roger called and woke me up at about six in the morning. Rose and I had made Henry & June and by now Peter was our producer. The Ratings Board had dropped the dreaded 'X' on the film, which meant essentially that it couldn't be distributed. They demanded that I make some cuts. 'Why should I?' I said, 'You guys don't give an "X" rating when a breast is mutilated or blown away; you only give one when a naked breast is caressed. Besides, I applied the same standards I did in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and you gave that an "R" rating.' They said, 'We should have given that film an "X" too.' At which point I might have used the word fuck. They told me I could not use 'the F word' with them and that cemented the 'X' rating.

"I was going to fly to Washington that very day with a big-time lawyer to take on the system and that's the morning Roger called me and woke me up. Roger had been fighting the same fight with the rating system for years and he called us to tell us that the Ratings Board had backed down and that—because we had challenged them and Roger had led the forces of change—they were finally coming up with a new rating: NC17. This was the first I had heard of it. Roger had the news before anyone else. Good news. We felt great at the time. We thought everything had changed. Now, in America we could see films that were—as Rose used to say—'not for children of all ages.' But pretty quickly the powers-that-be found a way to make the NC-17 become the new 'X' and today studios will no longer make or distribute a NC-17 film; but, that's another story. The point of this story is that no one has fought harder or longer or with more enthusiasm than Roger Ebert for justice and fairness and good movies. He's fought for intelligence in movies and, at the same time, he's fought for fun, for sex, beauty, humanity and did I mention sex? In San Francisco, Roger Ebert's our kind of guy.

"Roger and I have both been lucky to find great loves in our lives who stood by us through thick and thin, who had our backs, at the same time led us, who were our partners. I wouldn't be here today if not for Rose and Roger wouldn't be here if not for Chaz. Chaz and Roger, I wanted to tell you a little story about Rose. I was in graduate school at the University of Chicago. Rose and I went to see a film at the Hyde Park Theatre. One of us liked the film and the other one didn't. I've forgotten who felt what. I've even forgotten the name of the film. But I do remember that—in the heat of our passionate disagreement—Rose hauled off and punched me in the face. ...A couple of hours later after thinking things over in some of the local bars, I decided, 'Who needs this shit?' I staggered back to our one and a half room basement apartment on Blackstone ready to end our relationship. Rose had bolted the damn door. I was locked out on a cold, windy Chicago night. I walked around to the alley and found a window that was slightly open. This was the window to the tiny bedroom. As I crawled through the window onto the bed, Rose grabbed me and wrapped herself around me. Tears were all over her face. She whispered, 'Enough of this crap. Let's make our own films. Let's make our own films.'

"We stayed in that bed for days and talked through those days and every night that followed about everything; a lot about films. Our conversation went on for the next 50 years. We never stopped talking. [At this moment grief overwhelmed Kaufman and he found it difficult to speak. Ebert reached out his hand to him.] It's tough being here because Rose and I saw hundreds of movies in this theater. We saw many with Mel. We loved this theater. I thought I could get through this more easily; but, anyway, Rose—as anyone who knew her can attest—never stopped telling me or anyone exactly what she thought. She was fearless and brave as hell, like Roger. As I said, I wouldn't have the honor of being up here on stage with Roger and Chaz if not for Rose.

"I just wanted to say, Roger: thanks for always keeping the bedroom window slightly open. Thanks for encouraging me and these wonderful directors up here and thousands of aspiring filmmakers all over the world to make our own films. Now, as one Chicagoan who has found his home here in San Francisco to another Chicagoan who will always have a second home here, I'd like to present you with a couple of things."

At this juncture Kaufman read aloud Mayor Gavin Newsom's proclamation of May 1, 2010 as Roger Ebert Day in San Francisco and handed Ebert the Mel Novikoff Award.

Cross-published on Twitch. Introductory photograph of Ebert and friends in front of the Castro Theatre marquee courtesy of Pamela Gentile and the San Francisco Film Society.