Festival Programming
My Approach
As I watch and evaluate submissions, in addition to observing how a particular film lands with me, or imagining how it will go over with an audience, I do my best to put myself in the headspace of the filmmaker. The most inspired work comes from a certain boldness and willingness to explore; there's a sense of freedom as well as commitment and integrity — even if it's a broad comedy — that sets certain films apart.
Mammoth Lakes
Film Festival
MLFF has been my opportunity to create a magical fairyland for gifted, groundbreaking artists. As programming director, my ethos is to screen unique, inspired filmmaking regardless of the filmmaker’s pedigree. The festival has grown rapidly since its inception in 2015, and has been included in MovieMaker’s “50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee” for the past eight consecutive years.
Slamdance
My short film It Dwells in Mirrors played at Slamdance in 1999 (the same year as Christopher Nolan’s Following!) Later that year they asked me to participate in programming the 2000 festival, and I took to it right away, watching 300 shorts in my first year. In 2002 I became captain of the shorts committee; I spent seven years in that role, during which time we programmed early work by Lena Dunham, Josh Safdie, Bennie Safdie, Jared Hess, Benh Zeitlin, David & Nathan Zellner, Jeremy Saulnier and many others who went on to high-profile careers. Since 2010 I’ve been programming Narrative Features, captaining the committee off and on since 2020.
Hot Tips for
Running a Q&A
We’ve all been to Q&As that start off with a nervous intern mumbling into the mike, “um, are there uh any questions?” — followed by a long, agonizing stretch of dead air, as the filmmaker squirms in discomfort. The first rule for Q&As is to think of some simple questions to kick things off with — the simpler the better. The second rule is don’t try to make yourself sound intelligent; this often results in you sounding pretentious and the filmmaker feeling embarrassed for you for asking the pretentious question and for themselves for not knowing how to answer it. The goal is just to get the filmmaker talking. I try to imagine what I would ask the filmmaker if I was a 9-year-old. It puts the audience at ease and it gets the ball rolling. You want to get the audience asking questions as soon as possible, so even if it’s a quiet crowd you keep giving them opportunities to jump in… without letting the momentum drop.
