San Francisco Film Society Oral History Project Interview with ...

CLAUDE JARMAN: I regret that we had that falling out with Albert. That was unfortunate that we
couldn’t get along, because I know the Festival meant an awful lot to him. I regret that he didn’t come
around to seeing things that we felt were necessary and that were important to the survival of the
Festival. I had to make some hard decisions financially that I probably would have preferred not to have
had to make, being frugal in certain aspects, and say, “Hey, we can’t afford it.” There was a lot of
criticism that the Festival was too commercial, that we didn’t show enough experimental films, but we
could never survive by doing that. It just wasn’t going to happen. The city could not support it. So I
think we put together an event where every evening was an event, and not just spread out all over the
city. I do see that the Festival now has got a tremendous amount of wide-ranging support, which I think
is great. More power to them; I wish we had been able to do that. We tried to not be more ambitious than
we could handle.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: How do you think the Festival has changed for the better or for the worse
since your day?
CLAUDE JARMAN: I really don’t know because I don’t attend it that much. I know they’re having the
same problems they’ve always had— The problem of getting good films. I usually go to the Peter
Owens Awards because Peter was personally a very close friend of mine. But I don’t know. They seem
to be thriving. I guess maybe because I just have so many other irons in the fire that it’s really hard for
me to say what goes on because I don’t have the opportunity to attend that many events. No way would I
knock what they’re doing. I think they’re doing what they see as best. They’ve got a good board of
directors. But it doesn’t have—particularly on the tribute side—it doesn’t have the depth that we had.
You look back and we had four, five, six people every year, and they were stars, and they were proven
stars in their own right. And that’s just hard to do right now, I believe.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: Well the nature of the business has changed, too.
CLAUDE JARMAN: Exactly. So they’ve changed with it, as probably they’ve had to.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: And of course there was only one Albert Johnson.
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