‘The highest reward I can imagine’
SFFilm honoring Gary Meyer with Mel Novikoff Award
When the longest student-led strike in the history of American higher education began in November 1968 at San Francisco State, Gary Meyer was quietly waging his own brand of revolution.
Meyer, a student at what was then San Francisco State College, was a film production major, a projectionist at the school’s media center and prominent in several campus film clubs. While striking students were fighting for diversity in the college’s admissions process and curriculum, Meyer extended that philosophy to movies, a unique art form capable of bringing a diverse array of cultures’ stories to anywhere in the world — except, for the moment, his school’s shut-down campus.
Needing a place to screen San Francisco State’s student film finals, Meyer turned to the owner of the Sunset District’s Surf Theatre, Mel Novikoff. By then a close friend, Novikoff not only agreed, he gave the entire box office receipts to the filmmakers.
“I met Mel, probably in ’65, when I was 16 years old and I would drive from Napa to San Francisco and Berkeley to see movies and concerts,” Meyer recalled at his Oakland home. “He was sitting in the cafe (at the Surf ) — he had put in a cafe before anybody else thought about that kind of an idea in a cinema — so I went over and said, ‘Mr. Novikoff, my name is Gary,’ and he says, ‘Oh, sit down,’ pulls the chair up and we just start talking and immediately became friends.”
The introduction served as a preview of things to come. After a long career in theatrical exhibition, festival curation and programming and now producing, Meyer becomes the 36th recipient of the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Mel Novikoff Award, and one of a tiny number to have actually worked with the San Francisco film pioneer, who died in 1987.
Meyer’s wife, Cathy — they recently celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary — also worked for Novikoff, godfather to their daughter Emily.
Meyer is scheduled to be presented with the award during a program at the 67th SFFilm Festival — which runs Wednesday-Sunday, April 24-28 — at noon Saturday, April 27. The program includes Meyer in conversation with
IndieWire editor at large Anne Thompson, followed by a screening of the 1960 Mexican supernatural classic “Macario” and former Bay Area filmmaker Jessica Yu’s 1993 short film “Sour Death Balls.”
“Being given this honor is the highest reward I can imagine,” Meyer said. “Rarely does a day go by when I don’t think of Mel. It might be a memory, an anecdote, a bit of wisdom … or just being grateful we were in each other’s lives.”
The Novikoff Award, copresented by the Mel Novikoff Family Foundation, is “given to an individual or institution that honors the history of cinema and celebrates theatrical exhibition as a means of connecting audiences with the art of film,” according to SFFilm. Meyer joins such past recipients as film critics Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael and former Chronicle staff writer Judy Stone; organizations such as Janus Films and the Criterion Collection, influential French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma and San Francisco Cinematheque; and local impresarios Tom Luddy and Anita Monga.
“We’re just so ecstatic to honor and celebrate someone who has been so formative in theatrical exhibition in theaters and at festivals worldwide,” SFFilm Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks said. “Gary really fights for the survival of exhibition spaces and independent theaters and providing platforms to filmmakers.”
Meyer’s relationship with SFFilm goes back to 1966, when he was credentialed as a writer for the Napa County Record while still in high school. By then, he was already running his own movie club, consisting of screening 8mm films in the hayloft of his parents’ barn.
He is best known as the co-founder of national chain Landmark Theatres. He was involved with the company, now owned by the Cohen Media Group, from 1976 to 1998. He also served as co-director, with Luddy, of the prestigious Telluride Film Festival from 2006 to 2015, and owned the Richmond District’s Balboa Theatre, which was set to close before he intervened, from 2001 to 2012.
With his years running several repertory cinemas and art houses, he has seen major shifts in trends and tastes. He’s hoping rep and art house cinemas can find a way to survive.
“I just think that showmanship is largely lacking,” Meyer said. “What do we have to do to bring people in? There’s lots of new young (indie filmmakers), but somehow the young audience is just not that tuned into the art houses as a rule.”
In his heyday, Meyer said he made it a point to hire young people from diverse backgrounds because “they’d bring us ideas.”
“We’d say to our employees, ‘You can have two free guests a night,’ just to get them in the theater and hope that they would like what they saw,” Meyer recalled.
Meyer is constantly evolving. While working for United Artists Theater Circuit in the ’70s, he helped arrange financing for John Cassavetes’ “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” and John Landis’ “Kentucky Fried Movie.” (Another script handed to Landis by Meyer led to “Animal House.”) But he had never actually made a movie — until now.
At age 76, Meyer is producing “The Art of Eating: The Life of M.F.K. Fisher,” Gregory Bezat’s documentary about the legendary Bay Area food critic. Meyer continues to run his online magazine, EatDrinkFilms.com.
Meyer also stays current, working with and attending film festivals around the world (a favorite is the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico).
Asked where he sees himself in 10 years, when he would be 86, Meyer didn’t hesitate.
“Hopefully producing a couple of movies, and going to very successful movie theaters that have figured out ways to turn themselves around,” Meyer said. “And continuing to go to different kinds of film festivals.”