Marco Film Festival leaves a few lasting impressions

The festival honored actor Patricia Neal with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Neal is known for her stage work and for her roles in classic movies such as "Hud," "The Fountainhead," "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "The Subject Was Roses," among many others.

The festival also honored actor Mary McDonnell with the Crystal Palm Award for her body of work which includes "Dances With Wolves, "Passion Fish," "Grand Canyon," "Matewan," "Donnie Darko" and "Sneakers."

Here are some scenes from events at the festival:

Buzz about Broadway

One of the movies that had a lot of buzz about it was Rick McKay's "Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There." Everywhere you went, people were either talking about it because they'd seen it and loved it, or asking if you'd seen it, because they'd heard about it and wanted to know more.

The first showings were sold out, and at the last screening, 25 people had to be turned away at the door.

The film received an audience award for Favorite Documentary as well as a Judges' Award for Best Documentary. It also was awarded the Pelican Award by the judges.

"Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There" interviews various actors, such as Carol Burnett, Chita Rivera, Bea Arthur, all talking about Broadway during its heyday, and also shows rare footage and clips of performances by Gwen Verdon, John Raitt and others.

After the first showing, the audience went to Konrad's Restaurant to hear the director/writer/producer Rick McKay and Patricia Neal speak. (Neal is one of the many Broadway actors featured in the film.)

At least 50 or 60 women of a certain age from the Red Hat Society attended, all attired in purple dresses and bright red wide-brimmed hats adorned with feathers and flowers. That, in itself, seemed like a scene from a movie.

Aspiring biographer

As do so many others who attended the festival, Stephen Shearer has a creative dream.

But though he loves movies, Shearer doesn't want to produce a film. He wants to make a book that's a biography and an homage to Neal.

He envisions it as a coffee table book "with lots of pictures," he said, a definitive book about Neal's life and work.

The title: "Patricia Neal: Portrait of an Actress."

Shearer's known the actress for 10 years.

"She's a lovely person," he said. "She's allowed me access to her archives and letters. Not often is a first-time author given the luxury of such access."

Shearer's done research papers for the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences in L.A., but has never written a book before.

When he conceived of doing the book, he spoke to friends of his who have been published, such as film critic Leonard Maltin.

He described his project and told them, "This is what I want to do, for Patricia."

They urged him to forge ahead and not wait.

Shearer has conducted over 100 interviews so far with people who worked with Neal, such as Paul Newman and Anne Bancroft.

"I've talked with tons of people," he says. "These people want to talk about Patricia and her body of work. It's been the easiest journey for an author. They love her personally and they loved working with her."

His was the last interview actor Robert Stack gave, as well as the last that director Fielder Cook gave. Cook directed Neal in "The Homecoming," the TV movie that was the forerunner for "The Waltons."

"I interviewed him on Tuesday," Shearer recalls. "He wanted to talk with her and called Patricia on Thursday. They talked for two and a half hours. On Friday, he passed away. It broke Pat's heart, she loved him so."

Shearer is still negotiating a publisher and doesn't yet have a date for when his book will be released.

"It's got to be done right," he says. "I'm astounded it hasn't been done before."

A lifetime of achievement

Neal attended her award ceremony wearing a purple pant suit and bright red shoes.

The ceremony, in which she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award, was held in one of Marco Movies' theaters after a screening of "Hud." She received an Academy Award for her role in that movie.

The audience gave her a standing ovation when she entered the theater.

She carried a single red rose, at one point handing it to someone to hold for her and quoting Gertrude Stein in that inimitable, deep voice that still rumbles with sensuality: "A rose is a rose is a rose."

Neal answered questions about leading men and fellow actresses. Her tone was no-nonsense and blunt. If she didn't like someone she'd performed with, she'd say so.

But she was also warm and charming.

Neal confessed she hadn't been wild about the idea of Glenda Jackson playing her in the movie of her life, but after she saw the movie, she changed her mind.

"I thought she did a super job," Neal said. "I thought it was a good film .... I thought it was beautifully done."

When film festival executive director Pat Berry told Neal that she thought that "the chemistry was phenomenal" in her scenes with Gary Cooper in "The Fountainhead," Neal, who'd had a sizzling love affair with him, dryly responded, "It was for me!"

She revealed how she was asleep in England when she received news she'd received the Academy Award for "Hud." She was pregnant and was unable to attend the ceremonies.

When the Q&A was opened up to the audience, a gentleman told her that she was "spiritually centered, so charming. I can't believe how astonishingly beautiful you are," he said.

After the ceremony, he gave me his business card, which identified him as Alberto Bailleres, a prospective mayor of Bonita Springs.

It just goes to show that sometimes even politicians do tell the truth.

In praise of others

McDonnell received the Crystal Palm Award for her work the following day, after a screening of "Passion Fish," for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.

She named "Dances With Wolves," for which she also received an Academy Award nomination, as the film that was the most fun and the most difficult to make.

McDonnell said that she worked in it in the "desert heat and the freezing cold," and that when it was over, returning to her own day-to-day life she "felt like an alien. We were so deeply embedded in that world ... with very little contact with the outside world," she said. "It was so removed from life that coming back was very hard."

She liked playing Stands With a Fist, "someone who had to find a bridge inside herself to memory. I'm fascinated by memory, and how we block it and how we keep it," she said.

She was asked if she expected to be nominated for an Oscar for her work in "Dances With Wolves."

"I knew it would be an important piece of work and I would never forget it," McDonnell said. "I did know that the movie was huge. I knew I'd been given a very special opportunity because the roles were right, and that sometimes translates."

She said she has been fortunate in her leading men -- she's played opposite actors such as Kevin Costner, Robert Redford, Kevin Kline.

"I haven't had a leading man that I didn't want to be around. Maybe I'm just a flirt," she joked.

When asked about directors she may have been unhappy working with, she graciously replied, "I wouldn't waste your time."

McDonnell had nothing but praise for John Sayles, who directed her in "Matewan" and "Passion Fish."

"John Sayles is just so big and smart," she says, "a brilliant writer.

"You're working with someone who is so clear he won't let you stray. I hadn't worked with anyone so economical and clear. It's a gift."

She also had great praise for Alfe Woodard, with whom she's acted in "Passion Fish" and "Grand Canyon," calling her "a remarkable, extraordinary woman."

The two are great friends and recently acted in "Lysistrata" together in L.A. as part of a worldwide protest against the then-pending war in Iraq.

"We really had a great time," McDonnell said. "It was the first time we were on stage together. Now we have a whole new idea of how to get in trouble together!"

McDonnell said she would like to work with Robert De Niro.

"There's something in his character as a human that I respond to as a human," she said. "I'd like to play his sister. I feel something kindred with him. And I'd love to perform with Meryl (Streep).

"I love actors so much that that list could be very long."

Newfound friends

McDonnell and Neal struck up a friendship at the festival, attending each others award movie and award ceremony.

At one event, the two were sitting together laughing, and when director/producer/writer Rick McKay approached them, they told him they were "just a couple of Irish girls having fun together."

And that gave McKay an idea: Why not cast the two in a movie?

He pitched them his idea, and they were quite receptive, eager to work on the screen together.

The movie, "Time Will Tell," will be a series of vignettes "dealing with youth and age and the conflict between them," McKay said.

He's casting Alec Baldwin and Maureen Stapleton in one vignette, and Fay Wray and Johnny Depp in another.

Neal and McDonnell will play a mother and daughter, both actresses. (Neal jokingly questioned: "Who will play the mother?")

McKay says they'll be "in loving conflict with each other. One's time is passing, the other's time is peaking."

It sounds like a good deal not only for the actress but also for audiences.

E-mail Nancy Stetson at nrstetson@naplesnews.com.