FILM FESTIVAL FOUNDER MAKES CURTAIN CALL
MAKES HIS CURTAIN CALL
Leonard Schein left a secure job teaching psychology and later launched the Vancouver International Film Festival. Now he’s moving on after three decades in film.
Vancouver International Film Festival founder moving on to focus on philanthropic pursuits
There may be no person in Vancouver who has brought greater enlightenment to film audiences than Leonard Schein. Thirty- seven years ago, the 65- year- old cinephile left the safety of a career as a psychology college teacher to dive into the uncertain world of film.
Resisting the temptation of slick modern- day Hollywood blockbusters, the founder of the Vancouver International Film Festival and the owner and operator of several independent cinemas, like the Fifth Avenue, the Park and the now- defunct Ridge, brought a wildly eclectic but carefully chosen mix of cinematic treasures to local screens. Foreign films, the old classics, the works of geniuses like Hitchcock, Chaplin and Fellini came to life before audiences under his gifted hand.
On Sept. 26, the opening night of this year’s VIFF, the Los Angeles native took a well- deserved bow as he was inducted into the B. C. Entertainment Hall of Fame. With the ending of the festival comes Schein’s curtain call in the world of film. He is moving on to the second love of his life — philanthropy.
He shared some of his thoughts with The Sun on a most remarkable career: Q What got you interested in film?
A I grew up in Los Angeles so I had exposure to film there but it was mainly Hollywood films so I didn’t really appreciate films until I went to Stanford University. There they had film clubs that showed different films every night. It would be 25 cents so I would see all the masters. Then when I moved to Saskatchewan to do my graduate work, there were just a couple of movie theatres there and they just showed Hollywood films so I started a film club at the university. ( Schein moved from Los Angeles to Regina where he spent two years studying after being granted a full fellowship by the University of Saskatchewan.) Then when I moved to Vancouver, I started to miss film again. At the time, there were Famous Players and Odeon theatres. They just concentrated on Hollywood films so I thought the only way to see films I wanted to see was for me to open up my own movie theatre. I thought the Ridge Theatre would be a good place. It’s in Kitsilano near the university. So I called the Ridge Theatre owner and I asked him whether he would be interested in leasing or subleasing his theatre. He said he had just decided to retire. So I opened the Ridge on March 31, 1978. Q What is the connection between your love of film and your interest in psychology?
A A lot of independent films and foreign films are about relationships and about people feeling different things. I think it’s important for people to learn about other cultures. You can do that by seeing films from other countries. The more people widen their knowledge about the world and the human condition, the better they are able to understand themselves and their own relationships Q After teaching psychology for five years, what was it like to segue into the film business?
A It was very difficult because I had never taken a business class. I didn’t know how to run a movie projector. So the first year of operating the theatre, I worked 80 hours a week finding the right people to help, finding people who had experience in restaurants and other retail things. In those days, projection was a lot more difficult than today. Every 20 minutes you had to change from one projector to another without the audience knowing that you had changed reels. It eventually got much easier. When I first opened, The Vancouver Sun did an interview with the head of Famous Players for Western Canada. ( The Ridge used to be a Famous Players theatre.) When asked about the Ridge’s future as an independent cinema, he responded, ‘ I guarantee you they’ll be out of business in six months. There’s no way that this psychologist can run a movie theatre, especially showing silent movies and old black- andwhite movies and subtitled movies. People want to go and be entertained.’
The Ridge lasted 35 years. Q Besides founding VIFF and operating Festival Cinemas ( Fifth Avenue, the Park and the Ridge), what are your accomplishments in the world of cinema?
A I also operated the Varsity Theatre, the Vancouver East Cinema and the Starlight Theatre. Landlords there ended up demolishing those buildings. The Ridge now is also demolished. It is going to be a supermarket and condos. Q How do you feel about the disappearance of these little theatres?
A I think it is a loss to Vancouver. These neighbourhood theatres are where a lot of high school students get their first jobs. They don’t have to travel far especially at night. Communities can go to a local theatre. They don’t have to take transportation to go downtown or to a multiplex out in the suburbs. Local theatres usually do benefits and support the local sports clubs whether it be hockey or baseball because it’s part of their community. Q But you sold the Fifth Avenue Cinema to Cineplex. How do you square that with your views?
A I have been running movie theatres for 35 years. I’m 65 and the new digital projection equipment that all the theatres have to convert to is a lot more expensive to operate than the old film projectors. I just felt that I didn’t have the energy to continue competing with Cineplex. Q What did you set out to do when you took over these theatres?
A I wanted to show films that would not only entertain but that would make people think, where they would question things like their own thought process. We showed a lot of documentaries that I think are important. I also wanted to create a different atmosphere. We opened the first coffee shop in a movie theatre at the Ridge. We also sold alternative snacks at our concession stands. We had genetically modified- free popcorn. We sold more homebaked cookies. We wanted to have a more healthy choice. We kept our prices low at our concession stands. We would sell our large popcorn for what the other theatres would sell their small ones for. Although the concession stand is usually a big money maker for movie theatres, we didn’t think it was fair to charge too much. I wanted films that people would talk about afterwards, that would keep the conversation going. Q Did you make money? Was it lucrative?
A Not in the beginning. When I left teaching, I was making $ 35,000 a year, and I had the summers, reading week and all the holidays off. The first year of the Ridge theatre, I was working 80 hours a week, seven days a week with no holidays and I made $ 12,000. But I really enjoyed making that $ 12,000 because I was showing all these good films that people hadn’t seen. In the beginning, I showed a lot of old Hollywood classics and silent films. That’s the reason I started the film festival as well. It was funny because when I first started the film festival, I applied to Telefilm Canada for funding. I remember getting a letter back from their head office in Montreal. They said Canada already has a film festival in Toronto and Montreal so why would you need one in Vancouver? In the first 32 years of the Vancouver film festival, over 3.5 million people have gone to it. Can you imagine 3.5 million people having to go to Toronto or Montreal over 32 years? They were obviously wrong. The real success of the film festival and the theatres we operated is we have in Vancouver an intelligent audience that really wants to see something other than Hollywood films. They really deserve credit more than anyone else because if they hadn’t voted with their pocket books, there would be no film festival today and there would have been no Festival Cinemas for 35 years. Q How difficult was it to get VIFF off the ground?
A It was very difficult because we had no government funding, no corporate funding. Basically, I subsidized the film festival out of my other theatres. I would take the money from the Ridge and Vancouver East Cinema to subsidize it. I remember when we first got $ 5,000 from the city. Michael Harcourt was mayor then. Then Telefilm matched that. That was a big start. It was 1985. Q Who are your favourite filmmakers and what films do you absolutely love?
A What sort of got me really interested in film was when I saw the European stuff like Fellini, Godard and Akira Kurosawa from Japan. When I started looking at some of the older American films, I loved Casablanca and Singing in the Rain and Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart and even John Ford films. I remember liking King of Hearts.
Then there was another Japanese film, Woman in the Dunes. You could talk about it for hours afterwards. Q What do you think of the state of filmmaking today? A You’ve got two separate currents. You’ve got Hollywood studios making $ 100- million- plus action, special effects films for young people. Then you have independently made films for an older audience. By older, I mean over 40. These independent films can make a lot of money because they cost a lot less to make. But there is a demand for Hollywood blockbusters with special effects because theatres make more money showing those films because younger people eat a lot more at the concession. People over 40 get the small sizes of things and they don’t buy all the junk food. Q What are your proudest accomplishments? A One of them would certainly be founding the Vancouver International Film Festival, to see its success now where you have over 140,000 people go every year. Also, when I was board chair of the Canadian Cancer Society, two things happened. The Cancer Society came out very strongly for Canada to ban the manufacture of asbestos because it’s killing hundreds of thousands of people in India and third- world countries. The second thing would be to promote cancer prevention. For anyone who has gone through cancer, whether they have had successful outcomes, if they had a choice, they would rather have not gone through the cancer in the first place. Yet only about two per cent of research money is spent on prevention. About 50 per cent of cancers are preventable. Working with the Canadian Cancer Society, the first prevention centre in North America is going to be built at the corner of Ash and 10th Avenue. All the research there will be done on prevention. Q Why is that cause so near and dear to you? A My mother died of cancer, my wife’s mother died of cancer, my sister has had a mastectomy and I’ve had skin cancer. We’ve made great strides dealing with heart attacks. Heart attacks used to be the No. 1 cause of death in North America. Now it’s cancer. Most research has been going into finding better drugs to treat it but we just haven’t done the research on prevention. If we can lower the rates of cancer the way we have done with heart attacks, we will have made great strides Q Why is philanthropy so important to you? A It started when I was young. I’m Jewish and my parents told me about the Holocaust. Growing up in the U. S., there was the whole civil rights movement about the treatment of blacks. I was brought up with the idea that we have to have a better world. We have to help people less fortunate than ourselves. I feel that I’ve got the experience and time and energy to be involved in charities. In 1978, that first year at the Ridge, we did benefits for local food banks and other groups in town. It’s something that I believe in strongly,
What else will you be doing? Q A My time is not only spent on cancer but also on environmental issues. I’m on the board of Ecojustice. I’m also into mental health issues. I’m on the board of the Coast Mental Health Foundation. Films are something that I mostly just enjoy now. Q What goes through your mind when you are sitting in the Fifth Avenue Cinema watching a film?
A I’m really happy that it’s there and it will be there for a while. It will be there until 2026 because of the lease. I’m a bit more worried about the Park because of all the development on Cambie because of the Canada Line. It might be a matter of time before the landlord decides to tear down half the block and put up condos. Q How much film do you watch now?
A During the film festival, I’ve been going every single day to see a film but normally without the film festival, I probably go once a week, sometimes twice. It depends what’s around. During the summer, there are not usually as many films that I am interested in seeing but from the fall through to the spring, a lot of the more interesting films get released. Q Apart from your work in film and in philanthropy, is there any other part of your life you can share? A I’ve got two children, ages 29 and 25. I am very proud of them. David teaches French and Spanish at King David high school in Vancouver and Allison is a biologist working for an environmental consulting firm on Vancouver Island. I’m still with my first wife, Barbara. We do a lot of things together like taking bicycle trips, going for walks and seeing movies. I play tennis two or three times a week which I enjoy. I feel very fortunate and very lucky in my life.