Bizarre day as Phuket Film Festival is cancelled
Gus van Sant, director of movies such as 'To Die For', 'Good Will Hunting' and 'Milk' was among the Hollywood figures due to come to the festival.
Spare a thought for Scott Rosenberg, organiser of the Phuket Film Festival, which was due to run from June 4 to 11, but which now lies in ruins.
Worried that the fun atmosphere of the festival would be wrecked by the dour presence in Phuket of thousands of troops – and maybe even tanks – assigned to protect the June 13-14 Asean summit talks, Rosenberg says he spent “many sleepless nights” trying to decide whether to cancel the festival.
“My biggest concern,” he told Phuket Observer, “was the big names from Hollywood [who were due to attend]. For example, [director, screenwriter and producer] Darnell Martin was going to come with her 8-year-old son, but when she heard about all the security preparations, he said ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ She’s still interested in coming – just not now.”
Then there were the money people. Much of the funding was due to come from overseas, but with the Hollywood names exiting stage left, the money would probably exit with them. At 5pm last night (May 12) Rosenberg decided to call off the festival.
He composed an announcement. It began, “Organizers of the Phuket Film Festival shut down the Festival just two weeks from its June 4 – 11 run date. We sincerely apologize to our partners, our participating film makers and those on Phuket who were helping to make this international event happen … But with creation of an armed state on Phuket for protection of the Asean meeting which will take place days after the Festival is to end, we found that the ‘sanook’ (fun) we had promised … was gone from the Festival.”
Rosenberg pressed the “send” button, dispatching the email to 1,000 partners, attendees, friends and journalists
But then, 15 minutes after he sent the email, Rosenberg was horrified to receive reports that the Asean summit had been postponed – to October. The whole problem of soldiers on the streets, ruining the sanook atmosphere, had evaporated.
Rosenberg told the Phuket Observer, “I’ve gone through extreme mental and physical anguish,” he said, “and almost a million baht from my company.”
Now that the Asean talks had been postponed, had he considered sending out another 1,000 emails? Something along the lines of, “Errr, pretend you never got that email an hour ago. The festival is on again!”?
He decided he just couldn’t do that. “Some people said, ‘Why don’t you retract the first email?’ But if I do that, everyone’s going to think we’re really flaky. Besides, I’ve gone from fifth gear down to first and I don’t have the energy to gear up again. And I don’t have the support. Do you know that the TAT [Tourism Authority of Thailand] contributed just half a million baht? They gave 14 million for the World Comedy Film Festival in Bangkok.”
Rosenberg rejected suggestions that Asean security had provided a convenient excuse for canceling the festival, already stumbling from lack of financing. “Even though I can say that film festivals always have issues with money and yes, 100 percent of the funds of Phuket Film Festival had not been secured,” this was not the reason for his decision, he said.
“The government had, for over a week, day after day, been announcing the ‘draconian’ – that’s the word the Thai press were using, not mine – security measure that were going to be put in place for the meeting. That is the reason the Festival was shut down.”
Will he try again? He’s not even thinking about that. “Right now I just want to curl up in a corner and not answer the phone or emails,” he said.
[...] Update: Phuket Film Festival cancelled this year. [...]
“But if I do that, everyone’s going to think we’re really flaky.”
Too late…
Ouch.
[...] This, Rosenberg said, scared off some of the big names – and with them the money, so he decided to cancel the festival. Minutes after he sent out the cancellation notice, the summit was postponed to October. Rosenberg says his company lost a million baht as a result and denied that the real reason for the cancellation was ongoing financial woes. (See earlier story here.) [...]