By Ward Morehouse III

New York, NY – The recent Philip K. Dick International Film Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film was a resounding success. So said Festival Director Dan Abello in an interview with FilmFestivalToday.com and Broadwayafterdark.org. Philip K. Dick was a prolific American novelist, short story writer and philosopher who died in 1982 and was widely-revered as a master of science fiction literature. A number of his works were turned into popular films including “Total Recall” and “Blade Runner.”

“This year, in every sense, the Festival was bigger than last year’s,” Abella said “We had more films, we had more panels, we had more variety, more features, more documentaries.” This year’s Festival was held at the Tribeca Cinemas and The Producers Club. “The films I like to show are those that try to retain their humanity in a world that is becoming more technological. But the key for me is not to reject technology but find a way in which you can balance technology and humanity. And it’s time people went back to Philip K. Dick’s books which have very little to do with the films. The films are good but his books are more introspective in nature, more cerebral. They have everyday characters rather than the ‘Tom Cruise types.’”

Getting back to the Festival, Abella said that “I like to have a panel after showing a documentary or film. It makes it more interactive than just going to see a film. One thing I’d like to do in the next couple of years is to have more interactive experiences.”

“I actually started as a filmmaker,” he continued. “And I did a whole bunch of shorts and features. But I became aware of some of the frustrating aspects of the ‘festival circuit.’ We try and have a lot of variety. Some of the films are relatively high budget. Some are very low budget – so we have something special, different.”

Abella and his colleagues are planning to have a two-day Philip K. Dick Festival in Paris in April, he said. “We are actually going to be showing some of the same films. We may show Christian Carroll’s film, Suicide or Lulu and Me and a World Made for Two. We’re working with the Philip K. Dick Society in Paris on our festival.”

Suicide or Lulu…, was directed by Carroll, and features Carroll, Adeline Thery, Brian Shoop, Mathieu Lagarrigue, Katherine Boynton, Quentin Brussieux and Nicolas Fiolleau. Alexander M. Drecun was the film’s Director of Photography and it includes gorgeous black and white footage of Paris. Its New York Festival showing was followed by a discussion. This film is a black comedy and the story of a young man who has created two inventions: a camera, named Pandora’s Camera, that has the ability to duplicate and preserve reality, and a pair of glasses that can inject memories into the view’s mind.

“Dick himself felt French culture was more open to his ideas” Abella said. “So this if why I felt what better way to continue that tradition than having a festival in his honor in Paris. Last year we did a Festival in a city north of Paris.”

Other films at the New York Philip K. Dick Festival included the world premiere of Montauk Chronicles, directed by Christopher Garetano, a documentary film of three men who claim they were brainwashed and forced against their will to take part in secret experiments, and Painting the Way to the Moon, directed by Jacob Akira Okada.

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“Obviously, after four days, her muscles need to be stretched, and [her doctor] felt it would be more productive to keep her in the hospital until she could get some exercise and they could monitor her condition,” Hartford Hospital spokesman James Battaglio said.

The 94-year-old multiple Oscar winner was admitted to the hospital last Wednesday.

Battaglio said Hepburn’s condition is still good, and said keeping her is a “cautionary measure.”

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So said Louis Savy, SCI-FI-LONDON 2014 Festival Director, in an interview on the fourth night of the Festival at the Stratford Picturehouse. (The Stratford Picturehouse is located next to one of the oldest surviving legitimate theatre playhouses in London.)

SUICIDE OR LULU AND ME IN A WORLD MADE FOR TWO, written, directed, edited and produced by Christian Carroll, a work of great imagination, had just been screened. The Festival, which ran from April 24 – May 4, included many of science fiction’s favorite themes: “space opera,” “parallel worlds” time travel and robots.

“We’re not doing it for the money,”‘ Savy continued in the interview with Black Tie Magazine. “We’re in our 14th year. If it was about the money I would have stopped a long time ago. We don’t have a lot of funding. But we do it because we love the films. It’s about the films. We don’t have the money to fly people in. It’s an honor that people come.”

“SUICIDE OR LULU AND ME IN A WORLD MADE FOR TWO” was loosely inspired by the Argentinean sci-fi novella, “The Invention of Morel” by Adolfo Byo Casare, and is the story of a young man who created two inventions: a camera which can duplicate reality and a pair of glasses which release memories into the viewer’s mind. It was shot in a black and white “Nouvelle Vague” style with homage to silent movie icon Louise Brooks.

New York-based American actress Katherine Boynton plays “the voice” of Louise Brooks.

“I have a lot of respect for Christian,” Ms. Boynton told Black Tie. “I think he’s a young genius and will have a great career. His numerous talents can be seen in all aspects of this film, which include writing, directing, acting, editing, and even the music! Christian was great to work with, too. He’s what I call an ‘actor’s director’ — he understands how an actor works and knows how to communicate to get the desired result. It was a totally positive experience.”

In its history, SCI-FI-LONDON has also held a number of short film competitions, and in 2008 started the “SCI-FI-LONDON 48-hour Film Challenge” to encourage filmmakers to create sci-fi short films in a very short time span. In 2006, the festival became the official home of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the most prestigious award for science fiction in Great Britain.

First published in the Film Festival Today on May 20, 2014

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The mere thought of finding even partial funding for one’s film is enough to make many filmmakers swoon with delighted anticipation. So, to be sure, at a star-studded ceremony at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles today, when Carole Dean was presented The 2012 WIFTS (The Women’s International Film & Television Showcase) Lifetime Achievement Award there was a whole lot of swooning going on.

Dean, the President of From the Heart Productions and founder of the Roy W. Dean Film Grant, has helped filmmakers realize their dreams by helping them realize their funding for over 4 decades. In accepting the award at the theater, Dean said, “I am truly blessed, I get to work with donors for the grants, who are heart-felt people in our industry and give to the grants to support emerging and on-going works of heart and passion.”

To date, From the Heart Productions has had 38 grant winners and over $2,000,000 in donations for documentary filmmakers.

“I thank The WIFTS for this tremendous honor that has gone to so many exceptional women”, commented Carole Dean late last month after being chosen for the Lifetime Achievement Award. “My goal has always been to help others stand out and get the awards while I sit back and watch proudly. This is a strange, new, but wonderful experience for me.”

“Mom lives in Spirit and helps filmmakers on a daily basis,” said her daughter Carole Joyce, co-producer of the upcoming feature film Tranzloco (2013) — to be directed by Will De Los Santos — as well an award-winning documentary producer herself.

TheWIFTS honors women making a positive impact on society through film, TV and other professions. Previous winners include film producer Gale Ann Hurd, cosmetic industry CEO Elizabeth Grant, inner-city educator Millicent E. Hill, and movie publicist Jacqueline Brodie.

“I see all that Carole Dean has been doing and has done for the film industry all her life,” Elspeth Tavares, Publisher and Editor-in-chief of The Business of Film which is published 15 times a year on line and administers The WIFTS Awards. “While Carole is a role model for women in film; our award is not really about gender – it’s about unselfish giving to others.”

“From the Heart Productions is really helping to make filmmakers and not films,” Dean told Black Tie Magazine in an interview before the ceremony. And from her experience in the industry, a filmmaker’s faith  in his or her movie is often just as important obtaining funding. Other awards presented today included best screenwriter, best cinematographer, arts advocate and a music award. The red carpet arrivals began at 1 PM with the ceremony starting at 2 PM.

The From the Heart Production grants came at a turning point for the very survival of documentary filmmaking. Cable TV wasn’t presenting documentaries and networks such as Discovery, Bravo, National Geographic didn’t exit. The Roy W. Dean Grants encouraged documentary filmmakers and even helped produce a number of documentaries that couldn’t find funding.

First published in the Film Festival Today on December 31, 2012

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“She wanted very much to go home. The infection she had cleared up several days ago, and her doctor had kept her a few days longer so she could regain the strength she had before she was admitted,” hospital spokesman James Battaglio said yesterday.

The feisty, 94-year old four-time Oscar winner was rushed to the hospital by ambulance July 19 suffering from what Battaglio later said was a urinary-tract infection.

“God bless her. She’s one tough lady! They couldn’t hold her in the hospital longer than she wants to,” John Sexton, a family friend who lives near Hepburn, told The Post.

“Kate’s determined not to die in any hospital. And she won’t stay in one hour more than is necessary,” family friend Jones Harris, the son of actress Ruth Gordon and director Jed Harris, told The Post.

Just weeks before Hepburn went into the hospital, neighbors saw her taking a few halting steps on the beach in front of her home overlooking Long Island Sound. But Sexton says, “She doesn’t get out of the house very much any more.”

In 1996, Hepburn moved from her Manhattan townhouse to her family compound in the upscale Fenwick section of Old Saybrook.

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In a rare interview, the feisty Hollywood legend shot down rumors that she is bedridden.

“Tell everybody I am doing fine!” Hepburn told The Post as she sat in the comfortable living room of her rustic seaside home in Old Saybrook, Conn.

“I am OK.”

Dressed in a purple jumpsuit, the four-time Oscar winner rested on a large settee in front of a roaring fire and a picture window with a sweeping view of Long Island Sound.

The legendary star has spent all her time in this quaint home since moving out of her posh Midtown townhouse in the mid-1990s.

And while she occasionally invites an old friend or a neighbor over for afternoon tea, Hepburn’s reclusive lifestyle has fueled speculation she’s seriously ill.

But, although Parkinson’s disease has limited her mobility and her speech, Hepburn insists that all the chatter could not be further from the truth.

The actress confessed that she’s still a big eater — enjoying homemade meals prepared by her cook.

Her best friend, actor Max Showalter, recently told The Post his famed friend sits down to four square meals a day and “eats like a horse” — a fact Hepburn confirmed with a broad grin.

“Oh, yes, that’s true,” she admitted, as her cook, Maureen, stood by and nodded in agreement.

Hepburn’s mood turned dark as she asked about Showalter, who has been gravely ill with cancer at Essex Meadows Hospital in nearby Essex, Conn.

The actor, who played Marilyn Monroe’s lover in 1953’s “Niagara,” has been Hepburn’s closest confidant since the death of her longtime love, Spencer Tracy.

She nodded with approval when told that Showalter is hanging in there.

Neighbors say Hepburn — who delighted audiences in classics such as “The Philadelphia Story,” “Adam’s Rib” and “The African Queen” — still ventures outside when the weather permits.

“Miss Hepburn has good days and bad days, like most of us,” said friend and neighbor Henry Josten, first selectman of Old Saybrook.

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Remaining clueless about their baby’s sex right up until the birth wasn’t the only thing the proud parents chose to handle the old-fashioned way. Eager to shield her privacy, Crawford gave birth in the couple’s Brentwood home under the supervision of a midwife and a nurse—and the anxious, joyful gaze of her husband—joining a list of recent Hollywood home-birthers that includes Pamela Anderson Lee, actress Rya Kihlstedt (wife of Ally McBeal’s Gil Bellows) and Georgiana Thomas, wife of actor Richard Thomas. “For their situation it has been wonderful,” says Moluf, 52, who hotfooted it back to L.A. three days after Cindy called her and announced Presley’s arrival. “They haven’t had to take the baby out or worry about anyone following them. Just a nice, private birth, with the family and the people they wanted here.” Other high-profile parents share that motivation. “When you are giving birth,” says Leslie Stewart, a nurse and the owner of the Home Birth Service of Los Angeles, who delivered both Lee’s and Thomas’s babies, “you don’t want to be a celebrity.”

That’s not to say Dad doesn’t think his baby is a star. At 9 p.m. Pacific time on the night of his son’s arrival, Gerber called his mother, Ellen Peckman, in Miami and repeated his happy mantra: “Mother, we have a boy! We have a boy!” Later both grandmas received digital photos of Presley by e-mail. (“In the picture he looked 2 months old!” notes Moluf. “He looks like his dad.”) “Rande was so excited,” says Peckman, who planned to join the new family in their bouquet-strewn L.A. home later. “I talked to Cindy for a few seconds, and she told me, ‘I’m feeling fine. And the baby’s beautiful.’ And I said, ‘Thank God! Mom and baby are wonderful.’ ”

Who would expect anything less from Crawford—the valedictorian turned supermodel turned business conglomerate? In the 15 years since she first stepped into a Chicago photographer’s studio, Crawford’s all-American voluptuousness has graced more than 400 magazine covers (and countless bedroom walls, including Prince William’s) and boosted sales of calendars, workout videos, movies and TV shows. Yet maternity has always ranked very high on her personal to-do list. “I’ve had the career-as-priority thing,” she told PEOPLE last year. “Now I am ready for a family and kids too.”

For Presley’s clucking grandparents, that moment couldn’t have arrived too soon—though Peckman admits she was among the first to ask what was up with the moniker. “I asked Rande if the baby’s name has something to do with Elvis, and Rande told me, ‘No, Ma, Presley was [Elvis's] last name. Presley is Presley’s first name.’ ” “It’s not like they’re Elvis freaks or anything,” adds Moluf. “The name popped up, and they kept going back to it.” One thing, at least, is clear: “Cindy,” says Peckman, “will be a wonderful mother.”

Still, mortal moms need not despair. Pregnancy, after all, is a great leveler. “I was throwing up pretty much every day for six weeks,” Crawford told Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America during one of the monthly installments of the video diary of her pregnancy that began airing on the show in March. “And it wasn’t just in the morning either. That’s a misnomer.” Queasy through much of her first trimester, Crawford shed five pounds and lived on cereal and baked potatoes. She gained the weight back—and then some—but relinquished her favorite sushi (raw fish can harbor bacteria that can be harmful to babies in utero) and instead caved in to a craving for 69-cent Taco Bell bean burritos.

“What’s more, the mom-to-be wasn’t overly thrilled with her blooming body. “It felt like a science project,” Crawford complained to W magazine, for which she stripped down to nothing but her Chanel necklace in June, going against her own edict not to pose nude during the pregnancy. (She changed her mind after photographer Michael Thompson pointed out that in clothes she looked, not pregnant, but “like she might have had too many beers the night before.” Says Moluf: “She’s not very timid about those things.”) “It’s a miracle, yes,” Crawford said of her growing girth. “But what can I say? I liked the way I looked in Playboy last year.”

So did multitudes. But despite her misgivings, Crawford didn’t exactly hide her pregnancy. Whether she was pillioning around Malibu on Gerber’s motorcycle or hanging out—but drinking no alcohol—at his hip L.A. watering hole the SkyBar (as she did until after midnight just a couple of days before the birth), Crawford never sacrificed her sexy style—or, for that matter, her favorite 3-inch Gucci heels. “She wanted to look modern, clean and hip,” says Vivian Turner, her fashion stylist. Turner stocked her model client’s closet with maternity gear from Manhattan designer Liz Lange and San Francisco-based Japanese Weekend Maternity wear (also favored by new moms Lisa Kudrow, Madonna and Ricki Lake), along with figure-hugging numbers from regular designer collections including Ghost, Diane Von Furstenberg and Melinda Eng. “She wasn’t one of those women who hide their bellies when they’re pregnant,” says Turner, noting that Crawford’s favorite dress was a black jersey number by Gucci.

Nor did Crawford allow a bulging belly to get in the way of her career. Currently on her books are lucrative spokesmodel deals with Ellen Tracy, Revlon and Omega watches, as well as a three-year contract for specials and guest spots on ABC. As for her already wholesome image, impending motherhood only enhanced it. Five months pregnant at the fall fashion shows, Crawford hit the catwalk for Tracy in a series of clothes specially fitted for her fuller figure. “That was a little daunting,” she later confessed to her video diary, “because even in normal life I’m not the skinniest model.” Not that it matters when you’re Cindy Crawford. “When she came out on the runway,” says the label’s design director Linda Allard, “there was overwhelming welcoming applause. People just respond to Cindy.”

Expecting or not, maintaining a catwalk-worthy figure doesn’t come without effort, even for Crawford. Still, her prime concern was “the livelihood and well-being of the baby,” says her friend, makeup artist Carol Shaw. “That’s more important than staying 118 pounds.” With that in mind, Crawford stuck to her usual low-fat diet of chicken, pasta and salad (give or take the occasional burrito). At her favorite L.A. gym, she kept up her routine of 20 minutes on the treadmill and an hour of light weight training, lunges and squats. But to protect the baby, Crawford’s L.A.-based trainer, Valerie Waters, 35, instructed her to walk rather than run and eliminated abdominal exercises by month five of the pregnancy.

Crawford also replaced one or two of her four weekly workouts with maternity yoga classes taught by yogi-to-the-stars Gurmukh. She shared mat space with actress Reese Witherspoon (due to give birth in the fall) but also reveled in the camaraderie of her nonceleb classmates. “Everybody in the class loved her,” one fellow student says of Crawford, who exchanged tips with the others over tea and cookies after class. “She’s approachable and very genuine.”

Regaining her figure postpartum will probably be no sweat for the new mom, who “has an incredible head start with her genes and figure and drive,” says Crawford’s longtime friend and trainer Radu, who sees to her fitness needs when she’s on the East Coast. Adds Waters: “Does she want her body back the way it was before? Absolutely! But we’re going to take a wait-and-see attitude. This is her first baby, so let’s see how she feels on sleep deprivation and learning to deal with a newborn.”

By all bets she will handle that just fine. After all, motherhood is something that Crawford has been looking forward to for years. “More than anything, I want a family,” she told PEOPLE in 1992. “I love kids and sort of feel like that’s the thing I am going to be best at, being a mother.” Her then-husband Richard Gere didn’t share her yearnings. “I would rather be able to think of all creatures as my children,” he said. They divorced two years later. (Gere is now expecting a baby with actress Carey Lowell.)

Alone at 29 in 1995, Crawford bemoaned her childless state to Playboy: “I thought I’d be in a different place. I thought I’d have kids by now.” Yet even today she maintains that the children issue didn’t cause her very public split from Gere. “In the end,” she told US in May, “we just wanted conflicting things out of life.”

That wasn’t the case with Gerber. When they first met—before Crawford wed Gere—Gerber, a former model himself, “was not thinking of marriage at all,” says Peckman. “He was having a good time, carving out his career.” Then Cupid intervened. “When Cindy and I really got to know each other better and started dating,” Gerber said on his wife’s GMA video diary in June, “I thought what an unbelievable mother she would be.”

After the couple’s May 1998 wedding on a Bahamas beach, parenthood was just a matter of time. Crawford’s father left the family when she was 16, and her younger brother died of leukemia when she was 10. She has always considered her mother, who married John Moluf, 41, in 1989, and her two sisters role-model parents. “The wonderful relationship she has with her own mother will flow into the relationship she has with her own child,” says pal Carol Shaw. Moluf, too, is confident of her daughter’s parenting skills. “She’s patient, and she likes to play with kids,” she says, “to pretend with them, fix cookies with them.”

There have been plenty of kids to practice with. Both Crawford and Gerber have baby half-siblings (Cindy’s father, Dan Crawford, 52, and his girlfriend Anne, 31, have a 20-month-old son, and Rande’s dad, Jordan, 61, and his wife, Tracey, 34, have a 9-month-old daughter). And both have done their share of diaper duty with their combined nephews and nieces. “Rande has spent a lot of time around my kids,” says his brother Scott, 38, the father of two. “But he’ll have to see for himself. Once you have your own, there’s no feeling like it.”

The new parents have already tackled the big issues such as religion (like Mom, Presley will be raised Protestant but with exposure to his dad’s Jewish traditions) and money (Crawford and Gerber keep their personal wealth separate and contribute to a joint family account). And now that Presley has arrived, friends and family are helping the couple stock up on the latest in baby gear. Designer Liz Lange, for example, commemorated the birth with a yellow-and-white baby blanket from Basil in East Hampton, N.Y., and a set of antique nesting blocks and a blue outfit from Manhattan’s Nursery Lines. The newborn received a set of sterling silver barbells and a tiny Tiffany tennis racket from Radu. And Richard Miller, who outfitted Crawford’s homes with workout equipment, is crafting a model baby-exercise machine.

As for the day-to-day grind of parenting, Crawford will have “the same problems as everybody else,” says her friend and manager Michael Gruber, “whether it’s finding a nanny, what food to feed the baby, what milk.” To help her through the first few months, Crawford has hired live-in help and put her decorator Michael Smith in charge of renovating the nursery. “They don’t have a traditional, all fluffy nursery,” says Moluf. “They have a crib and a rocker and a change table and diapers—all the things she needs. But it’s not a theme park.” Moluf plans to stick around for at least five days, but she has already given her daughter plenty of advice. “I told her, ‘You’re going to make mistakes,’ ” she says, ” ‘and you have to give yourself that forgiveness.’ ”

That’s a tough call for a woman known for being a diehard perfectionist. But at this point in her life, it’s advice that Cindy Crawford, bolstered by all her career achievements, may finally be ready to accept. “I don’t want to work that hard,” she confessed last year. “I don’t want to take so much on that I can’t have a personal life. I have learned to balance.” Indeed, the real work may have just begun. “Cindy’s been doing laundry,” reports Moluf. “She’s up and around. I came in today and she was like, ‘What do you want me to fix you for lunch, Mom?’ She’s feeling really, really well.”

Published in People Magazine on July 19, 1999 by Anne-Marie O’Neill.

Contributors:Ward Morehouse III, Mary Green, Ken Baker, Michelle Caruso, Steven Cojocaru, Elizabeth Leonard, Vicki Sheff-Cahan.

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Although she will be 86 on Nov. 8, Hepburn, her steel-gray hair pinned loosely at the back of her head, shows few signs of slowing down.

A shaking disorder that was visible in past years appears to have disappeared. She still goes to her family home in Fenwick, Conn., for long weekends, entertains friends in her New York townhouse and remains an avid reader of books as well as the countless scripts that are always being sent her way.
Her 50th film, “This Can’t Be Love,” was broadcast as the “CBS Sunday Movie” last year and “Love Affair,” starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, was also released last year.

“I don’t know what movie I’m going to do next. But then I’ve never known. I just do something that interests me,” Hepburn said, sitting in the second-floor living room of her townhouse. “Sure, I’d do a play – if it interested me.”

Hepburn said she loves movies but does not “see as many as I should.” She wants to see “Apollo 13″ starring Tom Hanks, the Oscar-winning actor who many say has the best chance of eventually tying Hepburn’s record of winning four Oscars.

“I’m lazy I guess,” she said. “I love this house and going to Fenwick. And I’m always reading things people send me.”

Looking back at her long career, Hepburn said all of her Academy Award-winning performances, beginning with “Morning Glory” in 1933 and ending with “On Golden Pond” almost 50 years later, depended on having a good script.

“Doing well in a part is not so much a matter of talent,” she went on in the clear, crackling tones that are unmistakable to almost any film-goer over the age of 12. “It’s really luck – choosing the right material for you. I was lucky enough to get material that the critics liked.”

Hepburn said that while she misses “some of the glamour” show business had in the old days, she nevertheless finds that today’s crop of actors can often be as exciting as the studio icons of yesteryear. …

This article was first published for Reuters in the St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)

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