She Likes to Watch

You know those lazy spring days that you spend parked between the TV and the refrigerator, wistfully wishing you actually had something to do?

Well, my friends, with the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival in full swing, you have no more excuses.

Each day offers half a dozen screenings, as well as workshops, receptions and filmmaker appearances.

Today, for instance, you could head to the Palm Theatre in San Luis Obispo for a screening of the groundbreaking “Street Scene.”

King Vidor revolutioned the movie industry by translating Elmer Rice’s single-set play onto film — using creative camera angles and swooping shots to capture the action.

Personally, I’m kicking myself that I can’t attend this afternoon’s screening of “Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story,” at Downtown Centre Cinemas.

As you may know, Castle is the modern-day P.T. Barnum who drew crowds to his schlocky B-movies by selling fake insurance policies, providing faux doctors for the nervous, and wiring theater seats to “buzz” their inhabitants. While the current fad for “torture porn” wastes no time in revealing buckets of gore, Castle’s movies gave moviegoers the delicious thrill of anticipation.

It’s followed by “This Is My Cheesesteak,” one filmmaker’s delicious quest to find the ultimate Philly cheesesteak sandwich. My mouth is watering.

Since I’m a working stiff like the rest of you, however, I’ll have to be satisfied with “Dr. Zhivago” — that beautiful, sweepingly romantic tale of love and loss during the Russian Revolution.

That Omar Shariff is pretty darn dreamy.

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Here’s the nitty-gritty:

“Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story” and “This Is My Cheesesteak”
4 p.m., today
Downtown Centre Cinemas, 888 Marsh St., San Luis Obispo

“No I in Security” and “The Union”
7 p.m.
Downtown Centre Cinemas

“Street Scene”
7:30 p.m., following 6 p.m. reception at SLOIFF headquarters, 861 Palm St., SLO
Palm Theatre, 817 Palm St., SLO

“Dr. Zhivago”
7:30 p.m.
Fremont theater, 1025 Monterey St., San Luis Obispo

Check out the film festival Web site for ticket prices and more details.

– Sarah L.

On the phone, James Cromwell sounds like your favorite smart uncle.
The Oscar-nominated actor is warm and self-effacing, with just the slightest touch of gravel.
He chuckles. He raises his voice to discuss a lifetime of activism — animal rights, the anti-war movement, the Black Panthers — then moves to another room when his wife tells him he’s being too loud.
Cromwell appears Saturday at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival when he accepts this year’s King Vidor Career Achievement Award for acting.
The ceremony is at 6 p.m. at the Fremont Theatre, 1025 Monterey St. in San Luis Obispo; tickets are $25 or $20 for students and film festival members. Call 546-3456 or visit www.slofilmfest.org for more information.
Before you go, we bring you some insights that didn’t make the print edition.

As the son of a Hollywood director and two theater pros, was it always expected that you would become an actor?
I was actually going to be a mechanical engineer (at Middlebury College in Vermont). That sounds a lot fancier than it really was: I wanted to design sports cars.
My father came to the Sunday morning after a Saturday night fraternity party at my fraternity house — I think this was what prompted him. It was probably my wonderful stepmother who said, “You know, we should really take Jamie to Sweden.”
So he was making a picture in Sweden and once I saw him working, in my quasi-adult state — I was not an adult but I had pretensions to maturity — I thought, “That looks like a lot of fun. Let’s do that.”

At 6-foot-5, you tower over a lot of actors. Has your height ever been an issue professionally?
It’s been an issue for two groups … Somebody at Fox said, “Y’know, I gotta tell you, it’s going to be a problem because I can tell you more than five big stars who refuse to work with anybody over 6 feet.” So I thought, “Oh well, I guess I won’t be doing films.”
And then Blake Edwards (on the set of “10”). I came in with a wonderful casting director who really liked me and Blake said to the casting director, “What am I supposed to do with that?”
And the casting director said, “Oh, I thought for the cop.” He said, “How tall is Dudley? How tall is he?” He was trying to figure how he was going to get Dudley (Moore) and me in the same shot without tilting the camera.

You’re definitely taller than most people we see in the movies.
When you’re 45 feet in the theaters, you realize that even if you’re small of stature, one way to appear big is to be the lead in a motion picture. That’s as big as you can get. So it attracts people who have issues and who have compensatory behaviors of the Napoleon variety.
The problem is — and it happens on stage as well — it tends to make the person who’s tallest the normal one and everybody else short. So when I appear on stage with a normal-sized actor, I look normal and everybody else looks like they’re Lilliputians.

Besides your Oscar-nominated role as the farmer in “Babe,” you’ve played a number of authority figures: presidents, police officers, military men.
Do you ever worry about being typecast?
When you said typecasting, it (used to mean) that you were given the kind of roles which were one-dimensional and they really only cast you because of the look. They didn’t have to go through any exposition.
I think the creativity as far as casting directors has shifted from their ability to appreciate an actor’s range to being able to very specifically match an individual actor with the qualities a director describes that he wants for a role.
We get established in the audience’s mind as having a particular quality. It is that quality that the casting director sells to the director: You will be getting this kind of performance from this actor. It’s a given.

Do you ever get tired of taking supporting roles?
When you’re a supporting actor, you know what your role is. Your role is to support them and to assist them in the scene so they can keep the level of their performance where they want it to be rather than having to compensate for your inadequacy.
I’m not a believer in, “Listen. As long as the camera’s on me, it’s my film and I’m going to do any damn thing.” … What happens is the story is not told.

You call yourself “a strong opponent of the Academy Awards system.” Why?
The fact that it is a choice between five superlative performances in which one person will win and four people will lose is obscene in my mind.
My solution is that the five nominees gather together in a room. No one is allowed to vote for themselves. And they discuss each of the films and they vote one of them as being the performance that they admired.
To compare what Kate Winslet did in “Little Children” to what Helen (Mirren) did in “The Queen” is an absurd thing to do.
– Sarah L.