Over the weekend, I participated in a conference called Flickering Landscapes, which was organized by Bruce Janz and Phil Peters of the University of Central Florida. The conference focused on the representation of Florida in film and television as well as the state’s extensive cinema history. Florida is unique in the way that its distinctive landscape has affected the state’s identity and image in popular culture. In addition, tourists, vacationers, and Hollywood image-makers have played a major role in shaping that identity—something native Floridians have learned to live with.
I thought I would share some of the history and ideas that I learned at the conference.
I recently wrote about Florida’s role in early cinema history after I discovered that director George Melford had been part of an effort to launch a film industry in St. Petersburg. (See October 26th post.) I expanded on this piece of Florida history for my part in the conference, and I discussed two other attempts to establish film production on the Gulf Coast. In the mid-1920s, a real estate investor built a beautiful film studio half way between Tampa and Sarasota. Dubbed Sun City, the production center was considered a movie colony, which was supposed to include housing for actors and crew members, a school, a church, a city hall, a power plant, and other facilities necessary to be self-sustaining. The secretary-treasurer of the Sun City Holding Company decided to plat out the streets, pave them, and name them after famous movie stars of the era. He sent maps of Sun City to every Hollywood movie star with a street named after them, hoping they would relocate to Sun City to make films at the new studio. Unfortunately, the land bust caused by rampant real estate speculation destroyed any chance for Sun City to become successful, and the studio never produced a feature film. The only vestiges of this film colony are the town’s streets, which are still named after stars of the 1920s. I am sure current residents have no clue.
STREET SIGNS BEARING THE NAMES OF SILENT-ERA STARS ARE ALL THAT IS LEFT OF THE SUN CITY MOVIE COLONY.
In 1920, stage actor Paul Gilmore bought a significant chunk of Anna Maria Island with plans to build a movie studio that he intended to call Paul Gilmore’s Oriental Film City. To bring attention to his plans, he teamed with a small production company, Character Picture Corp., to make Isle of Destiny. Exteriors for the film were shot on Anna Maria, while interiors were done in a makeshift studio on Bayshore Blvd. in Tampa. In Isle of Destiny, Gilmore starred as a self-made millionaire who is shipwrecked with a beautiful woman on a tropical island, where a horde of savage cannibals interfere with their budding romance. For over a year, Gilmore self-distributed Isle of Destiny: He traveled as far north as Wisconsin and as far west as Texas to exhibit the film and lecture on the natural beauty of Florida.
PAUL GILMORE (CENTER) IN ‘ISLE OF DESTINY’
At first I could not figure out why Gilmore wanted to call his studio an Oriental Film City. Finally, I ran across a 1921 newspaper article that explained it. Gilmore had just purchased a variety of Japanese furnishings and decorations in Savannah as part of his plans. He envisioned his property on Anna Maria Island to have three sections. One plot of land would be devoted to a Japanese style hotel with a staff “imported” from Japan. A number of bungalows would be built next to the hotel, which would be constructed like Japanese homes, complete with sliding-panel doors and exposed beams from which long-tailed birds would roost. Each bungalow would have a Japanese-style garden with a plaque containing a message on which the resident could meditate. The second section would consist of a Japanese-style village, which would house the studio he hoped to build. In this interview, Gilmore claimed that he wanted to make films based on Japanese stories and legends. The last section of his land would be devoted to growing fruits and vegetables. Given the association of Florida with theme attractions, Gilmore’s model for a film studio seemed along the lines of a theme park. Gilmore never got the financial support to construct his Oriental Film City, though he did manage to build a small theater to stage plays. The structure was called a floating theater because part of it stretched out over the water. I admire Gilmore’s imagination.
THE BEAR FROM ‘THE YEARLING’
I shared my conference session with historian Robert Snyder, who teaches a course called Florida on Film at the University of South Florida. Professor Snyder offered a detailed account of how Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Yearling was turned into a Hollywood film. Though MGM optioned Rawlings’s 1938 book soon after its publication, it took seven years to get it to the big screen. The film began shooting in Florida in 1941, with Spencer Tracy as Pa Baxter and Gene Eckman, an unknown boy from Atlanta, as young Jody. Shooting on location was not typical in the 1940s, but producer Sidney Franklin realized that Hollywood could never re-create the look and feel of central Florida. Despite Tracy’s promise to Rawlings that he would do her book justice, the cast and crew returned to Hollywood after three weeks. Part of the problem may have been Tracy, who hated the heat and climate of Florida, as well as the fact that there were no nearby bars in the wilds of central Florida. Before the film was completed in 1946, the production went through three directors and a completely new cast. Clarence Brown ended up as director, with Gregory Peck as Pa Baxter and Claude Jarmon, Jr., as Jody.
THE 1914 ‘A FLORIDA ENCHANTMENT’ FLIRTS WITH IDEAS OF BISEXUALITY AND HOMOSEXUALITY.
In this story of a boy who raises a fawn as a pet, animals played crucial roles, including deer, raccoons, dogs, and a bear. The animal actors proved to be unpredictable; the deer grew too rapidly, and new ones had to be trained. And, the old bear could not run fast enough to suit Brown. Brown had the crew shoot BBs from a BB gun at the bear, which makes me think a lot less of Brown, but he still wasn’t satisfied. A man in a bear suit didn’t work either. Finally, a new bear was hired. When the film was finally released, it garnered seven Oscar nominations, winning for best cinematography and best art direction. The reviewer for Time magazine complained that the Technicolor rendered the blue sky and green brush fronds too “artful.” Obviously, this Time reviewer had never been to Florida.
Florida’s film history extended to its east coast, including Jacksonville and St. Augustine. Professor Thomas Graham, a historian from Flagler College, is writing a book on silent films produced in St. Augustine, and he shared his findings during a panel discussion. I was surprised to learn that 123 silent films were shot in St. Augustine, but only four or five survive. The surviving titles include the gender-bending A Florida Enchantment in which a young woman is turned into a man when she consumes some magic beans. The panel also featured Barbara Tepa Lupak, author of Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking, and Devan Stuart Lesley, co-chair and publicity director for Norman Studios. Richard Norman was a white man who established a studio for producing race films (black-cast, black-themed motion pictures) in the old Arlington neighborhood. The Norman Studios have been restored in recent years, and the accompanying Film Museum is devoted to“preserving and displaying artifacts, documents and histories associated with Florida’s role in the development of the film industry with particular emphasis on Northeast Florida.”
BLOWING UP PART OF FLORIDA AS A JOKE IN ‘CADDYSHACK’
A panel of graduate students offered the most provocative presentations, because their work was from the perspective of native Floridians. In analyzing the new Netflix series Bloodline, Michael McDowell brought up the rapid demise of Old Florida, with its old-fashioned, funky tourist attractions and unsophisticated charm, in the face of a sanitized, generic New Florida. Sara Raffel discussed the destruction of a historic black neighborhood in Orlando called Parramore, which included a famous R&B club on the Chitlin’ Circuit, to make way for urban renewal. The title of Nick DeArmas’s lecture—“I Live Where You Vacation”—offers a hint at the tension between native Floridians and the tourists who invade the state on a regular basis. Connecting this tension to Hollywood’s depiction of Florida, DeArmas claims that Floridians are often reduced to stereotypes such as the misfit or the geriatric; in other words, they are depicted as “the other” –meaning those who differ from the perceived norm. DeArmas suggests that vacationing itself by nonresidents becomes an act of “othering,” so they can rationalize their less-than-stellar behavior while in the state. In the climaxes of Hollywood comedies, characters who are vacationers or visitors tend to destroy part of Florida, then return to their homes without looking back. At the end of his lecture, DeArmas reversed the words of his title, turning it into a provocation—“You Vacation Where I Live.”
PETER FONDA IN VICTOR NUNEZ’S MOST WELL-KNOWN FILM ‘ULEE’S GOLD’
The panels and presentations were sandwiched between two stellar keynote addresses. Wil Shriner, Hollywood director and stand-up comic, concluded the festivities with a highly entertaining but informative account of the production of Hoot, his adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s novel. A story about three teens who square off against a developer to save the owls, Hoot was a Florida story set within the state’s stunning scenery. Shriner recalled that Hollywood execs, who had no understanding of the connection between the landscape and identity, asked that the film be shot in New Mexico. They also suggested that either Donald Trump or Bill Clinton be cast as the developer for reasons no one could figure out.
The conference opened with an insightful address by indie filmmaker and native son Victor Nunez, whose regionalist masterworks capture the real Florida for the big screen. From Gal Young’un to Ulee’s Gold to Coastlines, his work stands in stark contrast to the othering of Florida that is the hallmark of Hollywood. Taking us on a journey through his career, Nunez showed us the connection between real life and reel art. In a thoughtful conclusion, he noted how contemporary cinema has been reduced to an assault of images that are spectacle but not story. Humanist filmmaking that focuses on what it is like to live in the real world has been overshadowed by fantasy. We are “bailing to a virtual world,” noted Nunez, “and the bail out is not working.”
I spoke with codirector Bruce Janz near the end of the conference. He was pleased with how the event turned out, noting it offered a model to look at the connection between commercial film, culture, history, place, and identity. He mused that the entire weekend had been devoted to exploring the cinematic identity of Florida: “We all recognized that there is something about Florida film that is unique and yet it is so hard to identify what that is.”