By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Mike Plante Named Las Vegas Film Festival “Captain of Strategy”

Posted Thursday, September 21st, 2017 - Comments Off on Mike Plante Named Las Vegas Film Festival “Captain of Strategy”
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MIKE PLANTE JOINS
LAS VEGAS FILM FESTIVAL
AS CAPTAIN OF STRATEGY
Las Vegas Film Festival and CineVegas
to Partner on Presenting Films, Comedy,
Independent Video Games and More
2018 Festival to Return to Brenden Theatres and
Palms Casino Resort June 6 – 10
LAS VEGAS (September 21, 2017) – Seasoned film festival programming veteran Mike Plante returns to Las Vegas as Captain of Strategy for the Las Vegas Film Festival, which is partnering with CineVegas to present films, live comedy, independent video games and more. The 2018 Las Vegas Film Festival is scheduled to return to Brenden Theatres and the Palms Casino Resort June 6 – 10.
For nearly 25 years, Plante has worked as a programmer for film festivals, and continues to serve as Senior Programmer for Short Films at the Sundance Film Festival, where he has worked since 2001. No stranger to Las Vegas, Plante also served as the Director of Programming for the CineVegas Film Festival from 2002 to 2009.
Plante has assisted with programming films for the CineVegas Presents section at the Las Vegas Film Festival over the past three years. In this new role with LVFF, Plante will guide the city’s premier film festival into a new era, adding new sections including live comedy as well as independent video games.
“Even from my first programming job in 1993, the landscape of what a film festival looks like has been growing in terms of the types of artists to support, while being innovative in presentation,” said Plante.“CineVegas prided itself on taking risks and connecting unique films with audiences, and we had always tried to have the mania on the screen spill throughout the city. Before it went on hiatus in 2009, we had started exploring art installations, comedy and video games at the Festival.”
“We are proud of CineVegas’ past, but we are strictly focused on the future. While CineVegas pushed the limits of a festival experience years ago, the Las Vegas Film Festival has shown the creativity and vibrant audience that is currently in town. With the LVFF back at the Brenden Theatres and the Palms, the timing is perfect for us to combine efforts for this new vision. CineVegas just needed a little nap,” Plante continued.
Festival leadership will continue to include Milo Kostelecky (President), Robin Greenspun (CineVegas President) and West McDowell (Programming Director).
Submissions for the 2018 Festival will be accepted from October 1, 2017 through January 31, 2018 athttps://filmfreeway.com/festival/lvff.
About Las Vegas Film Festival
The Las Vegas Film Festival is a community of filmmakers and film-lovers drawn to the unique, curious and cultivating environment that is Las Vegas. The LVFF pushes the boundaries of cinema, annually presenting work by passionate, rebellious, and wild storytellers to an audience of local and national filmmakers, film lovers, journalists, and film industry representatives. For more information, please email info@lvff.com, visitwww.lvff.com and find the festival on Facebook.
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon