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

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MIGUEL PENDÁS: Margarita Landazuri interviewed him. JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: I don’t know who that is, but whoever told me said that George was just fantastic the way he remembered everything. MIGUEL PENDÁS: He had some great stories. JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: He has some great stories, yes. MIGUEL PENDÁS: He has an incredible mind for detail. JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: He does. SHEILA CADIGAN: But he sort of rode to the rescue, financially? JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: I think, to the Festival, yes. And then just after that, every time there was a crisis, he stepped up to the plate. SHEILA CADIGAN: What’s the Gund family name’s history? Is that Eastern Russian? Eastern European? JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: They’re German. MIGUEL PENDÁS: It was in these years that Albert Johnson came back to the Festival. Do you have any personal recollections of working with him directly? JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: I loved him. He just made you so excited about seeing these films. I think that’s kind of the purpose of the director: to excite you, to make you want to go to see these films that maybe you’ll never see again. SHEILA CADIGAN: He had a very large personality too. 19
JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: Huge! Huge! And he loved it so much that it was just infectious. You just wanted to be a part of it. And when all this financial stuff was happening, I remember going to friends of mine who were wealthy and asking them to contribute to the Festival. I remember bringing him these checks that I had collected, and the next thing I know he’s off to Cannes. I don’t know if the money ever got recorded in the financials of the Festival, but I think Albert had a grand old time in Europe. But that’s OK and maybe we shouldn’t put that in there. MIGUEL PENDÁS: Albert in his diary wrote about his problems with the Festival extensively, and one of them was that he was not being recompensed for the money that he was spending when he was asked to travel and to go to Festivals and see things. JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: I don’t know. I think somehow he was. If anybody would know it would be Peter Buchanan, because Peter was there at that time trying to sort out the financials. MIGUEL PENDÁS: Those were difficult years—’80 and ’81—and still they showed great films. But the financial position is what made people think they had to do something unusual because they didn’t think they could have another Festival. So then they got into this deal with Filmex. There was no Festival in ’82—Do you remember that? JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: Yes. Oh, wait! Eighty-one, the opening was Raggedy Man. And it was at the Palace of Fine Arts. I’ll never forget it. It was gloom and doom, this movie. And Sam was in it, Sam Shepard. They had decided that the party was going to be at the Palace of Fine Arts, right after the film. Well, the film ends, everybody’s sitting there, balloons are coming down into the theater. Okay! The party’s starting! And it was like, who wants to party? They’d just seen this movie, and it’s like devastating, and now they’re partying. I mean, it was like they couldn’t get it right yet. You know? I mean, Opening Night—the film and party. It never worked. Was that the year that Spike Lee was there? SHEILA CADIGAN: That was ’86. JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: OK that was later. George and I were backstage for that one too. And there was a blackout. Peter Scarlet and Spike Lee; it was his first film. Packed. And now 20
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Page 7 and 8: SHEILA CADIGAN: They’d started so
Page 9 and 10: JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: In China. SHEI
Page 11 and 12: and his wife, Tom Luddy and Monique
Page 13 and 14: SHEILA CADIGAN: It was very difficu
Page 15 and 16: owner and he told me he was going t
Page 17 and 18: JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: Okay, well, my
Page 19: SHEILA CADIGAN: Yes, that’s when
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Page 25 and 26: SHEILA CADIGAN: Laura Thielen is in
Page 27 and 28: JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: In the later ’
Page 29 and 30: JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: George Gund. M
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Page 33 and 34: everything. You know? Somebody does
Page 35 and 36: JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: I remember on Fi
Page 37 and 38: JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: Yes, Paula. She
Page 39 and 40: JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: Was George Cukor
Page 41 and 42: JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: Yeah, it was a
Page 43 and 44: JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: A lot of fun!
Page 45 and 46: SHEILA CADIGAN: It’s 22 years now
Page 47 and 48: SHEILA CADIGAN: Double Indemnity, w
Page 49 and 50: MIGUEL PENDÁS: Also. Yeah. JEANNET
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Page 57 and 58: SHEILA CADIGAN: Well, it would’ve
Page 59 and 60: JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: The Schmidts are
Page 61 and 62: JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: He, I’ve alway
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Page 67 and 68: with Dan, and I said, “Why don’
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SHEILA CADIGAN: That’s awesome. A
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JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: Joan Chen? Is th
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JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: So, ’96—who
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etter coverage for these films so t
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JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: So what’s yo
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of all administrative and he was re
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SHEILA CADIGAN: And it has these ch
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JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: We came every
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MIGUEL PENDÁS: No. It’s a church
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JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: Yeah. The Egypti
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JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: Early ’80s? JE
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JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: He must’ve c
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MIGUEL PENDÁS: That was the Nicola
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it would be really nice-cause you g
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JEANNETTE SHAHEEN: Yeah. JEANNETTE
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JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: There’s a lo
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JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: Do you remembe
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JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: How great was
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I knew him. She was going back to P
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JEANNETTE ETHEREDGE: Before your ti
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San Francisco Film Society Oral History Project Interview with ...

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