Novelist Robbins Curates Films for Port Townsend

Novelist Tom Robbins has been signed as guest curator for the 2004 Port Townsend Film Festival, according to Peter Simpson, executive director, of the annual Olympic Peninsula celebration of film now in its fifth year.

The three-day festival will be held September 24-26. Robbins joins three other film notables, previously announced, including Jane Powell, musical star at MGM in the 1950s, Dick Moore who appeared in a number of "Our Gang" two-reelers in the 1930s, and Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies cable television network.
Robbins, former movie critic for the SEATTLE TIMES and author of seven novels, will launch a new festival series called "Formative Films: A Personal Perspective on Movies."
"Film director John Carpenter says "we go to movies to find out who we are" Simpson said in announcing the new program, "so we decided to take that notion and ask people who are not heavily connected to the film industry how movies have influenced their lives."
All movie lovers have favorite films, Simpson claims, movies that have touched them in some way, creating a response that has remained since first viewing. Such films, he says, may be commercial hits or so obscure or forgotten that only a few have seen or remember them
According to Simpson, "formative films," as the festival defines them, do not require critics to tell us whether they¹re good or bad," Simpson said. "Critics are irrelevant," he added.
"Formative films resonate regardless of what someone else says," Simpson noted, adding that it may be during an argument of the relative merits of a particular movie that people begin to recognize the greater meaning a film holds for them personally.
"It's not simply the details of a film¹s content or the skill with which the story is told that attracts us;" Simpson says, "it¹s the discovery that our own story is up there on the silver screen. It¹s the recognition that someone else knows our experience, however privately we may try to hold it. The impact of such movies becomes indelible."
In accepting the position as curator, author Robbins immediately identified two films that influenced him: Francois Truffaut¹s "Shoot the Piano Player" (1960), and "Tarzan Finds a Son" (1939), starring.
"It changed my life," Robbins said of the latter film that starred Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O¹Sullivan, and Johnny Sheffield. The last remaining 35mm print of the film was located in Kansas.
Robbins will introduce both films during the festival.
He is the author of seven novels: "Villa Incognito" (2003),
"Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas" (1994),
"Skinny Legs and All" (1990),
"Jitterbug Perfume" (1984),
"Still-Life with Woodpecker" (1980),
"Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" (1976),
"Another Roadside Attraction (1971)
His "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" was made into a 1993 movie that was so thoroughly trounced by the critics that Uma Thurman and Sean Young, received Razzie awards for the worst performances by actresses in leading and supporting roles. Robbins later said that the film was too literal a translation of his novel.