Jamie Hook

Just last month, Jamie Hook took over as executive director of Minnesota Film Arts, which is responsible for the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival and the repertory movies shown at the Oak Street Cinema. In Seattle, where Hook spent much of his adult life, he was known as an unconventional and talented wild man (once, at a party, he was spotted slapping his own ass with a giant Mickey Mouse glove). He and his wife, Debbie Girdwood, started a nonprofit film production company called Wiggly World, which had a lot to do with reviving Seattle’s independent film scene. And then he was invited to move to Minneapolis, an offer he couldn’t refuse.

THE RAKE: Don’t you just hate Citizen Kane?

No, I don’t just hate it, but I do think that The Magnificent Ambersons is the superior film, botched ending and all. How can you not love that staircase in the Amberson mansion? Plus, the shot that concludes with George Minafer asserting that he wants to be a yachtsman when he grows up is one of the sacraments of the cinema. And I could watch Joseph Cotten disembowel my mother and it would make me smile.

Has Minneapolis been nice to you?

Minneapolis has been very nice. My landlord even reduced my rent, just to be “nice”—which of course made me paranoid. But now it’s fall and I am a bit concerned that, having arrived only recently, I won’t have time to build up those unvoiced, longstanding, passive-aggressive Lutheran animosities that stay burning in the belly through the deep Minnesotan winter. Otherwise, the city is as lovely as a well-made sandwich. I saw Mark Mallman perform his fifty-six-and-a-half-hour-long song the third day I was here, which truly inspired me.

How is this city different from Seattle?

Seattle is very dreamy, which is both an asset and a liability. Living in Seattle is like dating a Pisces: When things are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad, they are rotten. Minneapolis seems a bit more Cancerian. People hoard their goodness, and dole it out like candy when you most need it. The city is more realistic, pragmatic, and diverse, which is a refreshing change. I would add that it is not a more staid city, however. I have heard more public swearing in Minneapolis than anywhere else I have ever lived, which is a good thing. Certainly, the Twin Cities would really benefit from having more alcoholic public intellectuals. Seattle took a lot of its character from the alternately brilliant and pompous rantings of various public drunks.

What’s your goal at Minnesota Film Arts?

I would love Minnesota Film Arts to grow into the hub of a local filmmaking community that exists independent of the wider industry, at least in terms of artistic accountability and ambition. In so many smaller cities with hefty artistic egos—Seattle, the Twin Cities, Boston, Portland—there is an unfortunate provincial tendency to want to pander to the cultural taste-makers of New York or Los Angeles, without recognizing that the most influential cultural movements inevitably emerge from the artistic basement, so to speak. Music provides the clearest example of this pattern, both in Minneapolis and Seattle.
 
You just made a film, The Naked Proof. Tell us about it.

The Naked Proof is a screwball comedy about a philosopher whose life is undone by a mysterious pregnant woman who may or may not actually exist.  It has been called “a corker,” and Twin Citians will be happy to know that the venerable August Wilson makes his screen debut in the film as a German professor. Whenever we can’t afford to rent another film, you can expect it to show up on the Oak Street calendar.

Your films usually involve your friends as writers or actors. Do you plan to shoot something here in Minneapolis?

I am working hard at making friends so as not to stall my filmmaking career. That’s why you can find me at various sleazy bars most nights of the week. According to my plan, as soon as the universal lubricant has brought about the boost in friendship and popularity that it so recklessly promises, I will embark on a new film. Then, having exhausted and/or destroyed those hard-won friends through the filmmaking process, I will have to flee the Twin Cities to begin the whole silly cycle again in Fargo.