MARLBORO — Director Jay Craven is taking time out from his busy schedule teaching and filmmaking to remember his friend and collaborator, author Howard Frank Mosher, who died in January at 74. Craven directed five films based on Mosher's works.
On Sunday, Dec. 3, at 1 p.m. at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro, and at 6:30 p.m. at the Whittemore Theater at Marlboro College, Kingdom County Productions will present a Howard Frank Mosher tribute.
Each event will include 20 minutes of reflections by Craven about his 28-year collaboration with Mosher, followed by a 25th anniversary screening of Craven's first feature film, Where the Rivers Flow North, based on the novel by Mosher, and starring Rip Torn, Tantoo Cardinal, and Michael J. Fox. Tickets are $12 at the door (free for students and Marlboro College faculty and staff).
Craven has been touring Vermont presenting his tribute and the film to appreciative audiences.
“This proves my contention that independent films never saturate [their] audience,” Craven says. “The picture has made many friends on the road. It played Sundance and was a finalist for Critics Week at the 1993 Cannes International Film Festival. It remains one of the most remarkable adventures of my life.”
Praise from Gregory Peck
Set in 1927 in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, Where the Rivers Flow North is a story of an old logger, Noel Lord, and his Native American mate, Bangor, who face the extinction of their way of life when the local power company plans to build a giant hydro dam that will flood them off their land. Lord and Bangor face emotional and physical challenges as they struggle with the power company, Vermont's unforgiving terrain, and their own thorny relationship.
Craven still treasures the high praise he received for the film from an unexpected source.
“The late, great actor Gregory Peck was asked at a Houston, Texas, public event to name his favorite films of all time. He singled out Where the Rivers Flow North for its haunting evocation of a distinctive Vermont time and place and its 'remarkable' performances by Academy Award nominee Rip Torn and Native American actress, Tantoo Cardinal.
Like most of Mosher's stories, Craven says Where the Rivers Flow North “conjures larger-than-life characters and articulates a vivid sense of Vermont rooted in Howard's historical imagination of place - our place.”
Mosher was the author of 13 books: 11 fiction and two non-fiction set in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Often called the voice of Vermont, his books were about rural life in the state. Likewise a Vermont-based artist, Jay Craven is an award-winning director, writer, and producer whose films based on Mosher's stories include High Water (1989); Where the Rivers Flow North (1993); A Stranger in the Kingdom (1997); Disappearances (2006), and Northern Borders (2012).
Craven met Mosher shortly after the director first moved to Vermont.
“I came to Vermont in 1974 and wanted to make movies where I was,” Craven says.
He found the perfect material in the works of Mosher.
“Mosher's work is affectionate, humorous and adventurous,” says Craven. “Howard was a great storyteller. He came to Vermont in 1964, so he was there at the last minute to capture the distinctive Vermont of the late 19th century. Some of his characters in his books were born as early as 1865.”
'It's not even past'
Craven contends that these films and the novels on which they are based are distinct in their representation of the historical nature of Vermont.
“It's interesting to see the way art and culture keep the past alive,” he says. “Faulkner famously said 'the past is never dead, it's not even past.' In that way, Mosher's work is transcendent. There are things about Vermont you'd never think about without his work. His writing was funny, it spoke to a sense of place, and recaptured the past of Vermont.
“Mosher did not shy away from the label of regional writer, but then you could claim the same about Faulkner and Updike. A specificity of place characterizes all his work.”
Craven believes that Mosher wrote about Vermont in terms of the frontier and outlaw culture in the margins.
“Actually, you could see Mosher's novels as Vermont Westerns,” proposes Craven, who was raised by a Texan grandmother who often took him to the movies. “My grandmother loved two kinds of movies: westerns and those based on Tennessee Williams plays. I grew up immersed in the world of gunslingers and distraught Southern women.”
His grandmother told Jay that she had a family secret that she would tell later in life, but she died without revealing it. When he later began researching his family history, Craven discovered his grandfather was a bank robber.
“In that way, my own history connects with the kind of material which Howard used for his novels and stories,” Craven says.
Mosher was involved with getting Craven's first two film projects off the ground.
Craven first bought the rights to Where the Rivers Flow North, but he wanted to test the waters with this material first by doing a short film based on a Mosher short story.
Initially, he intended to direct a different tale from the one he ended up using. Mosher told him to film his story High Water instead, since it was more difficult to carry off.
“And it was,” admits Craven. “So there I was, a young filmmaker with a small budget trying to figure out how in the world would I manage to film a 1937 Plymouth flying over a 500-foot brook.”
Craven had a great collaboration with Mosher. “But then he was famously a generous guy,” Craven says. “Many writers sent him their first manuscript for him to read and advise, which he always graciously did. The life of a writer can be self-absorbed and solitary, and Mosher changed that for many. He was appreciated widely.”
All proceeds from the Mosher tribute will be used to digitize and preserve all five films Craven made based on Mosher's work and to prepare study materials for school and community use.
“These movies represent a $10 million investment, and I want to see them continue to be understood and appreciated,” Craven says.
Commercial vs. cultural
Such effort is needed. Craven sees film as divided into two distinct types: commercial and cultural.
“The Europeans and Canadians understand this, and give special care to cultural films, but this is not true in America, where commercial cinema is so dominant,” Craven says.
This is Craven's last semester as a professor at Marlboro College, and for him the Mosher tribute is something of a swan song for Southern Vermont.
“I took a retirement incentive from the college as it refocuses and reorganizes,” he says, noting that the school has a new energy and greater racial diversity.
Yet Craven has mixed feelings about his retirement from there.
“I always found it nice to be on Marlboro's campus,” he says. “I love that place a lot.” Although he lives in the Northeast Kingdom, Craven considered Marlboro a home away from home. “I also have great affection for Brattleboro too,” he adds. “I have long touted Brattleboro as my favorite town in Vermont. It has a more vibrant downtown than anywhere else in the state, with colorful places like the Latchis and the food co-op. Of course, Burlington is lively too, but there it is mostly chain stores, whereas here the businesses remain local.”
Craven has made seven features while at Marlboro, some under the auspices of Movies from Marlboro, a program that allows students from Marlboro or any other college to gain both college credit and professional film credit during the biennial production of a feature film.
“Twenty-five film professionals and 20 students from dozens of colleges join together to make a film,” Craven says. “It's a program that's unique in the country.”
Always busy, Craven is now editing his newest film, Wetware, based on the novel by Craig Nova, which should be completed in early spring.
“Wetware will be the last movie of the Marlboro project,” `Craven says. “The film is a near-future film noir shot in Brattleboro, using sites like the Latchis and the old Estey Organ factory as locations. I am also developing another project based on a story by Jack London.”