The Williamstown Film Festival (WFF) and MASS MoCA will team up for their 20th collaboration with “Revisiting Billy Wilder,” a free-wheeling conversation between Emmy-winning stage and screen actor Alec Baldwin and Turner Classic movies host/anchor Robert Osborne about the legendary filmmaker moderated by WFF’s executive director Steve Lawson on Saturday, October 16th. The event is preceded by a benefit dinner for WFF.
A favorite of both Baldwin and Osborne, Billy Wilder enjoyed an incredibly prolific career. After his American directing debut with The Major and the Minor in 1942, he went on to make some of the most memorable movies of the next three decades, ranging from striking dramas like Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, and The Lost Weekend to such iconic comedies as Sabrina, The Seven-Year Itch, The Apartment, and Some Like It Hot. Clips of scenes from Wilder’s films will be shown to spark the discussion and questions from the audience.
Alex Baldwin (l) and Robert Osborne will appear at the Williamstown Film Festival.
Alec Baldwin currently stars opposite Tina Fey in 30 Rock, on which he has won two Emmy Awards as best actor in a comedy. His film credits include The Departed, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Hunt for Red October, and The Cooler (Oscar nomination). El Dorado Pictures, his production company, co-produced the TNT series Nuremberg and the David Mamet-authored film State and Main. He received a Tony nomination for playing Stanley Kowalski opposite Jessica Lange on Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire. Baldwin first appeared locally at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1987 when he played Sherlock Holmes in Steve Lawson’s adaptation of A Study in Scarlet, the inaugural production of the Free Theater.
Robert Osborne, who co-hosts the Turner Classic movies series The Essentials with Baldwin, is prime time host and anchor of the TCM cable television network. Author of a series of books on the Academy Awards, including 80 Years at the Oscars, he is also a longtime columnist and film and Broadway critic for The Hollywood Reporter. Past president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Osborne has hosted acclaimed interview specials with Robert Mitchum, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Mickey Rooney, Charlton Heston, and Tony Curtis.
Celebrating its twelfth season, Williamstown Film Festival has gained a strong reputation as, in the words of one alumnus, “an absolute must-stop on the fall festival circuit.” The festival showcases the best in independent film and honors America’s cinematic past in the shape of classics; celebrates the present day through panels, seminars, and Q-and-A’s between audiences and the actors, writers, directors and producers of indie film; and explores the new technologies carrying the art of film into the 21st century.
MASS MoCA is also the venue for the Williamstown Film Festival presentation of House of Usher with live original score by Marco Benevento on Friday, October 22.
The Benefit dinner on October 16th will kick off with cocktails at 5:30pm followed by dinner at 6:00, with the Billy Wilder event at 8:00pm in MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center. General admission for the Wilder event alone is $20 ($10 students). Tickets for the benefit dinner – which includes reserved seating at the event – are $125. Tickets for the event may be purchased through MASS MoCA (massmoca.org; 413-662-2111) or through WFF (www.williamstownfilmfest.com; 413-458-9900). Tickets for the Benefit dinner are available only through WFF.
