Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Riki Kucheck from the Newport Beach Film Festival. Their conversation touches the selection process and how COVID had an unexpected positive impact on the festival.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you introduce yourself and tell me about your role in your organization?
Riki Kuchek (RK): I’m Riki Kucheck, and I am the festival director for the Newport Beach Film Festival. I wear many hats. I’ve been with them almost from the beginning. We started out small, just a few of us, and we’ve really grown. This is our 23rd year, 24th year? I handle all the submissions. I have a degree in computer science, so initially, I’d written some of the software with another colleague. I do the print traffic. Primarily now, though, I do the programming for big films. I used to co-direct shorts programming. Now I focus on the major films; which are on Friday and Saturday, then you have the opening and closing films, then international spotlights throughout the week. I work with a lot of distributors, international distributors. And then, I work with all the studios, and then Netflix, Apple, all the US distributors.
My focus now and most of the screenings that I do now are primarily bigger films. I no longer look at submitted films. We have a team that does that. I have two co-directors, right now, for features and a director for shorts. Pretty much I rely on those guys to figure out what they want for submitted films. Probably 80% of our films are submitted, and then 20% of our films are ones that I – I don’t want to say curate, I have a small team that works with me because there’s just too many films to review. I just got back from Cannes, and I literally had 170 links, films to watch. And they give you very short amount of time and limited views.
My team consists of senior programmers and the co-directors. I tell them, “Everyone gets input, but when it gets down to the bottom line, mommy gets to make the decision.” But I’ll go with the team most of the time I mean, we’ve had times where I’m like, “It’s not a film I would have picked, but, hey, that’s what it’s all about with a festival anyway.” You have a diverse group, and if everyone else is telling me it’s really good, they liked it, there was something there that clicked . Very rarely do I select just on my own. It’ll happen once in a while, only because I may be the only one that got the link or was able to see it. So, then I’ll make a call. I prefer to have at least one of my other senior programmers watch or at least my co-directors, just to get an idea from their input and what they think.
Interestingly, I have one right now two of my seniors loved, and I kind of went – it didn’t do it for me. I don’t know what I was missing in the film. But we’ll sit down and go over them all. So, it’s not like I just go, “No, no, no.” It’s a small group and we’ll go through all the films in consideration for spotlights because I’m the one who’s negotiating with distributors for premiere status, fees, that type of thing.
Now, if you just submit a film, it depends if it’s a feature or short. We have a team for shorts. We have a large team for features. And then I have about 100 reviewers that are public reviewers, people in the public that have requested that they want to volunteer as reviewers. And so, basically, the way we’ve set up the system is anything that gets submitted must be viewed by two reviewers and two programmers. So, you have at least four scores, usually more. Then the programming team will meet, not the first few months, but now, they’re starting to meet every few weeks. And they go through all the films that have four or more scores, and then they discuss. I mean, obviously, if everyone hated it, it’s gone. If everybody loved it, it’s in. But you get a lot of them that are in between, so they discuss all the films to decide.
This is the hard part for filmmakers, because if you submitted to us back in January and now it’s June, sometimes they’ll take their link off. But what will happen is, they’ll get into discussion, and they’ll go, “I don’t know.” And so it’ll get assigned to another programmer, and they’ll be the tie break. So, if they’ve taken the link down, now, I got to go call them and say, “I know it’s been six months.” But usually, when I’m doing that, it’s because they’ve the programming teams asked me, they’ve told me that it’s not there and please get it. We need to watch it again to decide. Shorts are really brutal because what they do is they go through, and they love a whole bunch of them, but they only can play a couple of hundred. You get something like over 2,000 submissions, and out of that, we’re going to maybe play 280, or 250. It’s pretty brutal. They’ll go through, and then I’ll look at it and they’ll have something like five, six hundred accepted films. Well, except we can’t play that many. Those are all the films they liked. And so, they then have to go through again and sit down and say, “Okay, we like these films,” but they start to put programs together, see which ones fit. They’ll fight for some. Some of the programmers will go, “No, no, I really love that film. I got to have it.” So, that becomes hard, especially when you’re declining good films.
And it’s hard to tell the filmmakers. They’ll go, “Oh, it didn’t mean your film wasn’t good.” They just have to cut. Because we only have so many theaters, we only have so many slots. So, the shorts team, they have a really tough job. Like I said, I used to co-direct shorts with Dennis, our current Director of Shorts Programming, we had this thing where we watched every single short and I believe Dennis still does that.
(UM): How do you differentiate your festival from other film festivals?
(RK): That’s tough because some are very specific in terms of their programming. They’ll be LGBTQ, or they’ll be solely French or all Italian or Pan-Asian, like in San Diego. We’re more generic as far as what we offer, aside from the international spotlights. We’re kind of unique because we’re so close to Hollywood and LA. So, we have that relationship. Variety does ten actors to watch with us, and we run our honors program in conjunction with them. That kind of gives us a little bit of an edge over your smaller festivals, I would say. You got to compare apples and oranges. You’ve got Cannes, Toronto, Venice. That’s up here, and we’re just below that.
We get a huge audience. We run for a full week. Like I said, we run about 300 and some odd films, so we’re not super small. But what we feel we do best is we try to treat the filmmakers really well, and we have a lot of events for them. Opening night is a really huge gala and we do a pretty large closing night event as well. Then we’ll have what we call our Sunset Series, which start in the late afternoons and go into the evenings, where they can meet and interact with other filmmakers and industry professionals. We do a filmmaker brunch the first Friday so they can get together and connect, because I know as a filmmaker, you want to connect with other filmmakers. You want to connect if there’s any distributors there. Anyone who’s industry or a filmmaker is invited to most events.
The honors event tends to be a little tighter because, like I said, that’s run with Variety, and we get some really big stars so it’s invite only. Last year, we had Ron Howard, Adam Sandler, Aubrey Plaza, Keke Palmer, and Eddie Redmayne. You just can’t invite everybody to those kinds of events for security reasons.
The other thing that I always found interesting was our shorts get a lot of the Hollywood stars and people because we’re so close and people always ask, “Well, how did you get so and so? Or what’s that person doing here?” And I’m like, “They did a short.” And I said, “For a lot of actors, that’s their way to get into directing is by doing a short,” because maybe they’re a little hesitant to give you a film or feature or something. But it shows you have that ability to put it together, edit it, do the whole thing. So, it’s a good intro for a lot of actors and people in Hollywood that are trying to shift from what they’re doing into directing.
(UM): And do you have any kind of definition of a good movie? What kind of films are you mostly looking for your festival? I know it’s a hard or maybe silly question, but I’m just curious.
(RK): What’s a good movie is always subjective because what I like may not be what you like.
(UM): But I think you have some ideas about your festival, the audience.
(RK): Yes, but I really feel for us, I like a good story. I feel it has to flow well, keep your interest. It’s well shot, well put-together. The acting is good, not hokey. I find that it has to be a little more generic. If it’s too auteur, I don’t think our audience would like it. You can find some, and I look at it and go, “It’s a great film”, and I hesitate sometimes because it might be a little too auteur for the audience to get it. So, if it’s too slow and it’s too artsy, it probably wouldn’t play well for us. And then you have some that probably fall a little bit in between. Like, I just saw a great film in Cannes, I don’t know if you got to see it, the Wender’s one, Perfect Days. The acting was amazing.
(UM): I was at Cannes, in fact.
(RK): Oh, did you see it?
(UM): Yes, I love it.
(RK): He was amazing. But see, now that’s a very quiet film. I would still play it. I’m not 100% sure how the audience would like it… Do you see what I’m saying?
(UM): Yeah, I know.
(RK): Me, it’s an excellent film. Oh my gosh, I just loved it. But again, that would be one where the acting is phenomenal. Everything’s put together. It’s phenomenal. I think the story is great.
You just don’t know. It could be hit or miss on our end. I’m willing to take a risk with that. But we do tend to play some of the bigger films, I’ll call them the Hollywood films, on Friday and Saturday, because I know those are going to sell. The Banshees of Inisherin sold out, but that’s not your normal Hollywood film. I saw that one in advance and loved it. Some of the team were hesitant on it because it’s so dark. And I’m like, “Oh, heck, no.” This film is amazing. The acting was amazing. It’s great. And the audience loved it. And then we have different audiences. See, for us, that’s what makes it a little interesting for our festival. We don’t have a particular audience. We’ve got, what I call, the older rich white crowd, so to speak. They like certain things. But then we have a younger crowd, and they like certain things. And we’ve played some really edgy stuff, and it’s sold out.
It gives us a little more flexibility on what we do. I can bring in a variety of films, and there’s going to be an audience for that. We’re really big with action sports. We do a lot of surf films. We’ve got Volcom, Quicksilver, and Vans coming out. And actually, one of our opening night films a couple of years ago, right around COVID, was a documentary on Vans. They set up a huge skateboard platform and had the top skaters there performing. It was amazing.
We also do a culinary section, which seems to be very popular as is art and architecture. We do a family program and have a special section for Youth filmmakers (K-12). We try to do that on Saturday, Sundays, that’s geared more for the adolescents. And then, like I said, our international spotlights, people come specifically for that. In other words, if they’re German speaking, they’ll come for the German spotlight. I have friends that are Japanese, they always come for the Japanese spotlight. They want to see a film in their language, and they know it’s going to be a top film because as I said, we review a whole bunch, and we’ll pick one. Which makes it tough with my distributors, but I tell them right off the bat. I’ve got something like 40 French films. I’m going to pick one. It doesn’t mean they were bad, I’ve just got to decide on one. One Canadian, one Chinese, one Japanese, one Korean, Italian, German. That’s how we do it. Irish, we work with the Irish film board, so we do three. Same thing with the UK.
These are special events. For instance, last year for the Japanese film, Offbeat Cops, the team brought in a famous Japanese drum group that played for everyone before the film. They do stuff like that. They’ll have someone come in and play an instrument. They’re playing music as they come in. So those are bigger events. That’s one of the reasons those particular films have to be a little more solid, so to speak. In addition there will be a large party after where we celebrate the culture of that particular country.
(UM): And how friendly is your festival to controversy or controversial topics or controversial filmmakers? For example, suppose Woody Allen or Polanski submit their film to your festival. Would you consider them for the festival?
(RK): To be honest, I’m looking at the Johnny Depp one. I liked it. Jeanne du Barry, we liked it. It’s in consideration right now. I’d play it. I know they can go either way with them. But you know what? It’s a solid film. I think if it was something really bad that people are going to just like be hating it, I don’t know, we’d probably discuss as a team. But I think art is art, and you’ve got to look at the film and go from there. I wouldn’t ask for controversy, but we’d play it.
(UM): And do you have any kind of quota in your selection: geographical quota, race quota, gender quota?
(RK): I don’t believe in quotas. I tell everyone, “You look at the film, you decide on the film, and then it falls where it falls.” So, I don’t really care. I don’t even look at it. Half the time, I couldn’t tell you if it’s a female director or male. We just go for the film. I know a lot of filmmakers send me cover letters. I do not give them to my programmers at all. I don’t want anything to influence them. I tell them, “You watch the film in its entirety, and it should stand on its own.” It doesn’t matter who did it, doesn’t matter when it was done. You’re just looking at the film for the art, for how solid is that film, how well was it put together. That should be your only decision-making. That’s it.
(UM): In terms of supporting filmmakers, do you offer any kind of cash awards or any kind of screening deal?
(RK): Unfortunately, we’re non-profit, and you know how that goes. We rely on a lot of volunteers year to year. It’s not like we have a ton of money, nor do we work off a huge budget. It’s a pretty small budget. We’re not like Canada where they underwrite. It’d be nice, but the United States, doesn’t do that. California, doesn’t do that. So, we’re pretty much on our own. We give awards, but that’s about it. We do discounts with the hotels for the filmmakers coming in. Of course, their passes are free, but it’s about all we can do. Sometimes, if they’re coming far, we’ll give them a couple of nights free. We’ll try to do something like that, but that’s it. I have tried sometimes with the Irish Film Board or Australian consulate or the German film, to try and have them help underwrite to pay for the filmmakers to fly out. Sometimes that helps, but we don’t have the funding for it. We rely heavily on Sponsorships.
(UM): And in terms of an educational portion, do you have any educational program or events for kids in your festival?
(RK): We have a youth program, and that’s K-12, so that’s for filmmakers under 18. And then the other thing we do is we have what we call our collegiate showcases. So, there’s various universities around us in Southern California. We basically tell them, “You each get a 90-minute slot in this year’s program, tell us who the filmmakers are and their films.” We send them filmmaker passes, so they can come to the festival for free. They get to see it in a theater with people and on a real screen. They don’t have to submit, the college decides who their people will be, and then they just submit their information. Here’s an opportunity to be in a festival and see your film up on screen and be able to mingle like a filmmaker at a festival. They have all the access that any other filmmaker would have.
(UM): And in terms of online experience during COVID, did COVID in any way change the structure of your festival? Some festivals like Sundance now have an online portion, or Tribeca also has an online portion.
(RK): Yes, a big impact. We kept pushing our festival. We did one year online. It didn’t do well. And then, a couple of years ago, everything opened up in October, so we played in October. It was kind of in between waves. The theaters were open, we were able to have a live festival. Things got shut down again. But what happened was, we realized October was a really good time for us because we got all the “for your consideration” films. All the studios were sending me tons of stuff that they wanted to play because you’re going for the Academy run. One thing about Newport Beach is we have the largest amount of guild and academy members outside of Los Angeles and New York. When we were in April, we were always bumping into those blockbusters. We kept getting pushed because they kept moving the blockbusters earlier and earlier. So, we discussed it, and we agreed to move to October.
For 18, 19 years, we were an April festival, and we are now an October festival. This is our third year in October, and I’m delighted. From the programming standpoint, I have to tell you, it’s better. Cannes makes so much more sense because I can see everything that’s coming out. Studios, it’s much easier because we’re doing “for your consideration”. They’re getting all the pre-press, everything, in advance. Like I said, we’re so close to Hollywood. With everything that happens, we can get more people out. So, it did, and it impacted us in a positive way, I guess you could say, which is a weird thing to say.
As far as online, no, we don’t do anything online. It just doesn’t pay for us. It costs us more than what we make to do that, so we can’t afford to do that.
(UM): Okay. In terms of vision, because you are the founder of the festival, how is your vision for your festival in ten years from now? Do you have any kind of vision and where do you want to be, a utopian dream?
(RK): I’m not the founder, that’s Gregg Schwenk and Todd Quartararo. Well, our utopian dream is to be a big, huge festival that everyone comes to, and the logistics of that is tough for us. We rely on some local theaters, and there’s not a lot of them. Although, I know if you talk to the CEOs/ co-founders, Greg and Todd will go, “We want to be the Toronto of the south”. I mean, hey, we’re near Hollywood. We should get everything. We should have red carpets. We should be doing big films, tons of people, tons of press. Last year, we’re stepping up quite a bit because aside from Variety, Hollywood Reporter came out and they did two episodes of their Awards Chatter Podcast with Scott Feinberg, Entertainment Tonight did a segment on TV with us, our Honors program plays on PBS. So, I’m like, “Whoa, that’s stepping it up when you get television coverage and everything.” That I know is the dream. Our problem is theaters.
(UM): At the end of our conversation, I wonder if there is anything left that you want to add, something that you think might be interesting for our audience to know about your festival?
(RK): Like I said, we started small. It’s been an amazing journey, getting to where we’re at. I credit Todd and Gregg, our CEOs, for that. Todd does all the marketing, and he’s amazing. Gregg is the one who pulls all the connections and everything. He’s great. And then the programming team, I think we’ve been very lucky, we get a lot of really solid films, and I think that helps. If you’re showing really good stuff, people come out. They’re happy. They’re not disappointed. And everyone who comes says, all the filmmakers, they love it. They have a lot of fun. They always tell us, “This is the best festival. This is so much fun. You guys just do it so well.” We like to hear that because they go, “You treat us so well.” And I’m thinking, “Well, yeah, we should, right? You’re the filmmaker.”
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