70 & Out
by Jim Kozak
Editor-In-Chief
It is a time
of endings! This 70th issue ends the six-year run of In
Focus magazine and,
by the time you read this, I personally will have completed
my 18-year stint as NATO’s communications director.
Working for
a great trade association like NATO was a highly rewarding
way to earn a living. I value greatly the friendships
I’ve forged among the association’s staff and
membership over the years, and with the many fine people
outside the association I’ve met through NATO. Here
are five more reasons I’ll miss this job.
1) NATO allowed
me to serve as one of two NATO representatives (the other
being the famed and personable filmmaker/exhibitor
Ted Pedas) to something called the National Film Preservation
Board (NFPB), alongside 44 filmmakers and scholars like
Phil Alden Robinson, Martin Scorsese, Curtis Hanson,
Fay Kanin
and Leonard Maltin. This board is charged with advising
the U.S. Librarian of Congress as to which 25 films should
be
added each year to the government’s National Film
Registry and earmarked for preservation. Weighing, via
discussion
and debate, the merits of the most entertaining and significant
cinema of all time is tremendous fun. I will miss sitting
on the NFPB.
2) As
NATO’s
communications director, I was invited to participate in
thousands of interviews with hundreds of
journalists all over the world. Occasionally these
interviews would appear in newspapers and other periodicals
read by
my parents, grandparents, siblings, nieces, uncles
and/or cousins. So there are elements of my family who
are convinced
I made something of myself. Which I like.
3) As press
director of ShoWest, NATO’s annual convention,
I got to meet and speak to a staggering array of
filmmakers I hugely admire, most memorably Steven Spielberg,
James Cameron,
Robert Zemeckis, Lawrence Kasdan, Tim Burton, George
Lucas, Steve Zaillian, Barry Levinson, John Hughes, Jerry
Zucker,
Ron Bass, Alan Ball, and Albert Brooks. (I also
got to meet Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, Julia
Roberts, Will
Smith and just about every other major movie star
on the planet.) So that was cool.
4) To help
celebrate the 100th anniversary of the cinema, I got to
write a speech for the president
of the United
States.
5) And of
course I got to oversee for six years a national entertainment
trade monthly that came
to
interview,
in my view, some of the most talented and influential
filmmakers
on the planet, among them Zemeckis, Kasdan,
J.J. Abrams, Wes Anderson, Judd Apatow, James L. Brooks,
Cameron
Crowe, Will Ferrell, Stephen Frears, Charlie
Kaufman, McG, Sam
Mendes,
Errol Morris, Jonathan Mostow, Frank Oz, Trey
Parker, Wolfgang Petersen, Sam Raimi, Harold
Ramis, Chris
Rock, Robert Rodriguez,
M. Night Shyamalan, Kevin Smith, Barry Sonnenfeld,
Ben Stiller, Quentin Tarantino, Joss Whedon,
Owen Wilson, and David Zucker.
So I have much for which to be thankful, and
many to thank.
I thank first and foremost my ex-bosses.
My great friend MaryAnn Anderson,
who hired me away from Boxoffice magazine
(yes, the same Boxoffice magazine that will replace In
Focus as NATO’s official monthly in February), gave
me a home on Lankershim Boulevard for 18 years. I thank
also longtime NATO president Bill Kartozian, an incredibly
smart guy who nonetheless allowed MaryAnn to keep me around,
always supported my steerage of NATO’s publication
efforts, and always forwarded those annual movie passes
(candidly one of the greatest perks of any job ever). And
I thank Bill’s successor, John Fithian, who has built
estimably on Bill and MaryAnn’s many accomplishments.
John is a good man and a big thinker who somehow knew that
an ad-supported NATO magazine would find success. I will
always be in his debt for the opportunity to contribute
to In Focus.
By the time you read this I will be a NATO
ex, and I am keen now to acknowledge some of my fellow exes.
(They happen
to
manifest another five reasons my job was a great way to earn
a living, lending this piece, among other things, some much-needed
symmetry.)
1) The great Mike Russell conducted the majority
of In Focus’ filmmaker
interviews. I note that of the 40 most-visited articles on
infocusmag.com this past November, 17 were features authored
by Mike over the last five years. Mike did so well in the
pages of In Focus that he is now deep into a major journalism
career, contributing to The Standard and the Wall Street
Journal, and serving as film critic to his hometown daily,
Portland’s Oregonian.
2) The great Alma Freeman was the lynchpin
of In Focus’ “middle
years.” She wrote one of the best stories anywhere
on the screen-count-driven independent-film renaissance.
She wrote a hugely influential piece (some would say the
definitive piece) on the fast-emerging first-run cinema-eatery
phenomenon. Alma went undercover on the streets of downtown
Los Angeles for a firsthand examination of the bootleg-DVD
trade. She followed that with a crucial and clarifying piece
on the overseas utilization of digital cinema. In her final
feature for us she interviewed Errol Morris and a slew of
other major voices in the field of non-fiction filmmaking;
it made for the best piece I’ve read anywhere on the
growing commercial viability of the theatrical documentary.
Adventurous Alma left In Focus in late 2004 to continue her
world travels, this time in Cambodia, Laos and other Far
East lands. She was in the ocean, scuba-diving off the Thai
coast, when the deadly tsunami devastated Southern Asia at
the end of 2004. But for the moment she’s safe in Atlanta,
filing stories for the website of Emory University’s
Office of International Affairs.
3) The great Ryan Stern succeeded Alma with
a fascinating feature on the fast-growing trend of alcohol
service inside
cinema auditoria. Ryan’s tenure with us was too short,
but she managed to squeeze out several other of my favorite
features, including a look at the importance of cinemas to
retail center operators, and an examination of how dramatically
onscreen advertising has reshaped exhibition economics. Ryan
left us in early 2005 to accept an editorial position at
the Los Angeles Times’ Distinction Magazine, and last
August was hired as an editor at Conde Nast’s Architectural
Digest.
4) The great Anne Gilbert succeeded Ryan and
continued the magazine’s laudable legacy of in-depth features with
(among other things) a tour of the “mobile cinema” industry;
an examination of cinemas that double as churches, classrooms
or other places of gathering; and a close look at the nation’s
rapid (and ongoing) screen-count expansion. Her final feature,
on concession automation, adorns this farewell issue; Anne’s
last day in the In Focus offices fell just 11 days before
the remaining In Focus staff learned of this magazine’s
demise. She left to pursue opportunities closer to her hometown
in the San Jose area and whoever gets Anne next will not
believe his or her luck; she is monstrously productive and
possessed of a very, very big brain.
5) The great (and versatile!) Mary dela Cruz
I will miss most of all. She was tremendous at keeping us
honest about
matters of style and possesses two of the best eyes for proofing
I’ve ever had the pleasure to utilize; she has saved
every one of us countless embarrassments. She single-handedly
created those eye-opening NATO “video window” reports,
now famous around the globe. She also served as our advertising
director, and proved spectacular in the job. Two years ago
In Focus’ already-climbing fiscal-year ad revenues
rocketed up 48 percent. The next year they crested even higher.
Our final October ShowEast edition was our highest-grossing
issue to date, and the mind swims when one contemplates how
well our next ShoWest issue would have done had we published
just one more edition. I, and NATO, owe Mary a massive debt
of gratitude for her 12 years of diverse and dedicated service.
The website infocusmag.com now directs Internet
browsers to boxoffice.com, but I am much comforted to know
that all
of our work for In Focus will continue to be archived at
natoonline.org.
Mary thanks our advertisers elsewhere in this
issue, so I will keep this paragraph short. We’ve been lucky to
garner many a steadfast customer, and I am sincerely grateful
to every one, but I want to single out the good folks at
Dolby, Christie, Harkness Hall, Kodak and Coca-Cola – all
of whom took a chance on our very first issue and stuck with
us through the six-year run.
It will be strange after 18 years to stop
pulling into the City National Building’s sprawling
parking structure in North Hollywood each weekday morning.
I have never had
the same address this long, and it is doubtful I ever will
again.
Thank you, NATO, for this opportunity. It
was a great run and great fun.
Jim Kozak
December 13, 2006
