Ron Truppa is the founder and director of the Catalina Film Festival that runs for five days starting next Wednesday.
Ron Truppa is the founder and director of the Catalina Film Festival that runs for five days starting next Wednesday.
The festival, that is run as a non-profit and now in its third year, continues to grow in attendance and popularity, boosting the island’s economy at the start of the post-summer season. It also adds support to its main beneficiary, the Catalina Island Conservancy. With its star-studded red carpet opening day events, the festival also brings some Hollywood glamour, while celebrating Catalina’s more than 100-years as a location for filming movies.
This week, as he prepared for this year’s runoff the festival, Truppa answered some questions below from the Catalina Islander.
Q: This is the third Catalina Film Festival in three years. Can you explain the evolution of the attendance?
A: Attendance has doubled, and now tripled each progressive year. As the level of the celebrity status increases, so does the enthusiasm in the community and within the Hollywood industry. I think people are just starting to understand what we do and how we do it each year.
Breaking even is the goal with every startup business. If you can at least do that, you’re figuring out how to manage. With that said, our festival is growing so fast we still have to figure out how to keep up with the growing costs of the event.
Q: How do you manage that?
A: We rely heavily on donors, sponsors and year-round fundraising to make sure we can put on this event for a very short period of time… and as we all know, Catalina adds it’s own set of logistical costs to the event, as opposed to doing this event on the mainland. So the business model is constantly evolving as our costs increase. We still have a 100% volunteer staff (including myself) that I hope to at least pay seasonal stipends to some day.
Q: Last year’s Film Festival and having Stan Lee attend coincided with the release of The Avengers movie. Were you surprised that the Avengers was such a blockbuster and how did that help the Film Festival?
A: The Stan Lee frenzy was very exciting for building the strength of our Film Festival’s reach and credibility within the circuit. It was a coup to get Stan in our second year, but no, we were not surprised by the success of the film. We were all waiting for it to come out. But now, Catalina can brag that they had “Stan the Man” on the island for opening day of the biggest movie in history (to date).
Q: Was it more meaningful as well in 2012 that it was the 100th anniversary of Man’s Genesis, the first film shot on the island in 1912.
A: Yes, it was more meaningful due to the fact that you really respected the film history of Catalina. And, what a great way it is to celebrate it, with its own film festival.
Q: What will be some of the most exciting highlights of this year’s Film Festival?
A: The most Exciting highlights this year are the presence of some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Sharon Stone is a household name that is synonymous with Hollywood, and we’re excited to honor her with our fist Stanley Kramer Social Artist Award.
Jon Favreau is one of the biggest directors and producers in the industry right now, but along with his respected career as an actor and writer, it’s only appropriate to honor him with the first Charlie Chaplin ICON Award.
Patricia Arquette has been a huge talent for so many years; consistently putting out great work, so we are over-joyed she’s accepted our offer to give her our Career Tribute accolade. And, on top of that, she’s also helping us honor the late director Tony Scott by giving our Majestic Award to Tony’s widow, Donna, after the 20th Anniversary screening of Tony Scott’s True Romance, which she also stars in. This is stuff that most established film festivals dream of having at their festivals, so we’re pretty humbled and excited.
Q: What do you expect the attendance to be like this year?
A: We expect an overwhelming number of participants this year (our third annual festival) due to many of the above reasons as stated… the island’s accommodations have sold out, so the majority are coming in the form of day-trippers. We learned our lesson last year that the island only has so many accommodations, so we made sure we not only added two 11:45 p.m. Catalina Express boats for Friday and Saturday night, but we also chartered the Catalina Classic Cruises for two midnight party cruises back to Long Beach on those same days.
The future of this festival depends on yachts in the harbor, and invisible bridges to the mainland, bringing more people over to spend in Catalina shops, restaurants and going on attractions when not festing.
Q: Is the Film Festival also growing? Are there more screenings and/or activities or lectures or workshops?
A: The Film Festival continues to grow with numbers of filmmakers submitting, and the enthusiasm they submit with. We have more creative and professional industry friends that have interest in being a part of our festival, so we launched the Catalina Film Market for industry execs to have a vehicle to find and procure film at the festival. This way, you don’t just see it here, you may see it on screens worldwide too.
With that said, we actually have less films this year than last year. We don’t always have a quantity we like to reach more than a certain level of quality. And, I think that also separates our festival from others.
Q: You seem to have more and more well known or high profile film industry stars participating. Is that factual and does that mean Hollywood has been taking more notice of the Catalina Film Festival?
A: Yes, definitely. Our team is comprised of many Hollywood professionals that have been a part of the festival since year one. Higher profile stars are hard to lock down with schedules because of work and other obligations, so after three consistent years of our team inviting and begging them to come, they started to put us in their calendars. And let’s face it, Catalina is not a bad place to commit to.
Q: In addition to benefiting the Conservancy, how does the festival help boost the off-season tourist economy of Avalon?
A: Not only is part of our non-profit mission to have this festival on the shoulder months of the season, helping boost the economy where it’s most needed, but also with millions of dollars in free advertising and marketing with the success of the festival.
The city benefits directly from that (as our stars get all that press for us).
On top of all that, the majority of our audience are people that say it is their first time to the island. And then, we see them return for visits throughout the year. We also have our monthly Film Society Screenings, which show brand new independent films each month to the islanders, our winter Film Institute that fosters the growth of invited filmmakers, and our monthly radio show on KISL’s 88.7FM.
