A number of different people have asked me about the songs in The River Why. We worked with some great musicians. Austin Wintory and Dominic Miller did the score.
I’ve always wanted “The River Why” to be a part of Active Cinema. In this case, I hope our film inspires our audiences to take care of the rivers it so beautifully highlights.
I just received an email about Clean Water Act Protections from River Network and think it is important to share. I always figure if we don’t take action, who will? Ya can’t just sit around and wait for things to change. Here’s an opportunity to do something that could make a difference:
Support Restoring Clean Water Act Protections for Neglected Waters
This spring, the U.S. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers released the Draft Guidance on Identifying Waters Protected by the Clean Water Act. The draft guidance attempts to answer a very critical question — which streams, wetlands and other waters are protected under the Clean Water Act? The guidance attempts to clear up confusion and protection problems following two Supreme Court decisions which muddied the waters on the question of “jurisdiction” or which waters receive Clean Water Act protections from pollution, dredge and fill, and other harmful activities.
This is the first important step to enable the federal government to once again recognize what science and Mother Nature have known for a long time – the waters of the United States are connected. In their announcement, the Obama Administration recognized that all waters of the U.S. (including critical wetlands, small streams and streams that flow part of the year) must be protected if we are truly going to enforce the Clean Water Act.
This guidance is a very important first step but the American public and more specifically, the thousands of river and watershed groups from around the country who are working hard to protect and restore their home waters, must speak up forcefully in favor of a strong guidance document and strong rules to restore these essential protections.
WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW
Please take action today to speak out in support of the draft guidance. The guidance is out for public comment for 60 days, so it can still change for the better or for the worse! Please consider taking two actions:
1) Submit your own comments on the draft guidance.
2) If appropriate, ask the members of your organization to submit comments on the draft guidance – the more voices on this, the better!
The very best comments will include local information about how the issue of Clean Water Act coverage affects people, streams and wetlands in your watershed. More general talking points for your comments could include one or more of the following:
Congress clearly intended to protect these critical water resources when they passed the Clean Water Act nearly 40 years ago.
This action taken by the US. EPA and the Army Corps recognizes a simple fact – the waters of the U.S. are connected and therefore must be protected.
Wrongheaded interpretations of two confusing U.S. Supreme Court in the last decade, have led to the loss of protections for 20 million acres of wetlands and 60% of the stream miles in the United States, effectively gutting much of the intent of the Clean Water Act.
Wetlands act as nature’s kidneys, filtering pollutants and also acting as a natural sponge to soak up excess waters during big precipitation events. Wetland losses make flood events worse, damaging property, endangering lives and impacting myriad business enterprises from agriculture to the recreational tourism industry.
Protecting these wetlands and small stream corridors can help to reduce the impacts of floods like those that we are seeing along the Mississippi River (insert your own river/watershed if flooding is occurring in your area) this spring. Many communities have been able to reduce flooding by restoring wetlands and removing pavement along waterways and river banks. A single acre of wetland can store 1-1.5 million gallons of flood water.
According to a report recently issued by the National Wildlife Federation, “The Upper Mississippi River Basin states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, and Missouri have each lost 85-90 percent of their wetlands and countless headwater streams.” The report continues, “Just a 1 percent loss of a watershed’s wetlands can increase total flood volume by almost 7 percent.”
Comments are due July 1, 2011.
Submit your comments to ow-docket@epa.gov and place the Docket Number: Docket ID No. EPA–HQ– OW–2011–0409 in your subject line.
(Note: the email address in the Federal Register notice was wrong…this is the correct email! If you prefer to mail a hard copy, see the Federal Register notice at the first link below for the address and instructions.)
This was recently posted by Atissa Manshouri on the Mill Valley Patch. It will give you some background on how the film came to life. Thanks for the post, Atissa.
For Tom and Kristi Denton Cohen, the Mill Valley Film Festival is more than just a cherished hometown event. It’s where they first met in 1983 (she as a volunteer, he as a filmmaker), where they live and where they will finally screen their feature film The River Why, a labor of love that’s taken more than 20 years to reach the screen.
The film is based on David James Duncan’s novel of the same name, a cult favorite ranked 35th on the San Francisco Chronicle’s list of 100 best books about the American West. The story of young fly-fisherman Gus Orviston’s coming-of-age and his quest for self-knowledge on the banks of a remote Oregon river has developed a wide following in the years since the Sierra Club first published it in 1982.
Bringing the novel to the screen has been a passion project for the Cohens for over twenty years.
A director (Hungry I Reunion, 1981) and producer (Massive Retaliation, 1984), Tom Cohen optioned the novel and wrote his first version of a screen adaptation soon after it was published. By the time he and Kristi married in 1987, it was meaningful enough to them both to include lines from the script in their wedding vows.
But a bad economy in the late 80s and the surprise success of another fly-fishing film, A River Runs Through It, in 1992, derailed the project. Tom moved forward with his career as an attorney and Kristi with hers as a director and producer of documentary, corporate and nonprofit films.
In 2002, she directed and co-produced VerticalFrontier (MVFF 2002), a documentary about the history of rock climbing in Yosemite narrated by Tom Brokaw, winning several awards from outdoor and mountain film festivals. Her success with that film encouraged the couple to give The River Why one more shot.
With a revised script co-written by John Jay Osborn, Jr. (The Paper Chase) in hand, Kristi and Tom set about finding an experienced LA-based production company, a strategy she learned from attending a Sundance Independent Producers Conference.
She met Jun Tan, a producer with Ambush Entertainment, at a film industry gathering in San Francisco, and he connected her with LA-based Matthew Leutwyler, a Redwood High School graduate who just happened to have read and loved the novel while spending time in Australia. He came on board as the film’s director.
A stroke of good fortune followed. Academy Award winning actor William Hurt – a fly fisherman himself who lives in Oregon – agreed to a supporting role in the film.
“He’s been absolutely tremendous,” Denton Cohen said. “When people hear that he’s involved with the film, it gives a certain credibility right away.”
Finding a natural outdoorsman to play the role of lead character Gus Orvitson was vital, and the filmmakers recalled an Outside magazine profile of up-and-coming young actor Zach Gilford (Friday Night Lights), who led wilderness adventure trips and counted ice climbing among his hobbies.
“There’s a certain movement that you have in the wilderness that just can’t be faked… it comes through in the body language and the eyes,” Denton Cohen said of Gilford’s comfort in the film’s setting. “Zach had that.”
Production took place in July 2008 on Oregon’s Wilson River and Portland, with a cast that includes William Devane, Amber Heard, and Mill Valley native Kathleen Quinlan, and a crew made up of many Marin-based colleagues.
Denton Cohen felt a strong responsibility to shoot the film in the greenest way possible, not only because of the author’s commitment to the wilderness and the novel’s environmental and naturalist themes, but because she had also become painfully aware of the excessive waste produced on most film shoots.
The producers’ sometimes funny and often frustrating efforts are documented in the short film Greenlit, an enlightening companion piece to The River Why that reveals the many obstacles the filmmakers faced in shooting green.
Although shepherding the film from the page to the screen required over twenty years’ worth of blood, sweat and tears for this Mill Valley couple, Denton Cohen said the struggle has been well worth it.
“If this film makes people stop looking at their handheld devices… just stop and look at a river for a moment, I’ll be happy,” she said. “It’s certainly had its ups and downs, but it’s not just your typical Hollywood film. It takes people to a place they haven’t been before.”
The film had its world premiere at the Dallas International Film Festival in April, but for Denton Cohen and her husband, the hometown screenings here will be “a real celebration… It’s a really good feeling to be here.”
Some of you know, one of the ways we’re raising money to pay for the costs of production is through donations. We’ve currently raised about $700,000 and we want to get that up to at least $1 million. Once the costs of production are recouped, we will be “re-gifting” the amount raised through donations to non-profits that support rivers and fish. If the film does well, that amount will increase. It’s a way to not only pay attention to the issues, but to do something about them. I attribute the inspiration for this to 1% for the Planet….although for “The River Why” this will be closer to 25%….and possibly more.
We would welcome anyone who wants to get involved with this effort. When we reach “re-gift” time, you will have a say in where your portion goes.
The San Francisco Film Society is our fiscal sponsor. To donate, please go to:
There will always be many interpretations of great works of art and literature, the best (and simplest) example being “Romeo and Juliet” in tights and flowing gowns re-interpreted as “Westside Story” in jeans. But I especially like how Jam-Tex encourages the broadest appreciation of the experience.
FROM: Jam-Tex
Music, Culture, and History
The River Why
Last week I got to see the world premier of the film The River Why at the Dallas International Film Festival. The movie is based on the book The River Why by David James Duncan. Duncan is a famed environmental and philosophical fiction writer that weaves fantastic narratives about fishing, religion, and baseball. Duncan should be a staple of American literature. Not only is the River Why an amazing read, but so is the heart-wrenching The Brothers K, an excellent work set in the Vietnam War era.
For the most part, it is common knowledge that the book is always better than the movie. This is the case for The River Why, but that does not mean the filmmakers failed. Quite the contrary, the movie version of The River Why is really good. The film captured many of the philosophical underpinnings of the book. The book leaves the natural world to one’s imagination. Whereas the movie brings the wonderful nature of an Oregon river basin alive. My advice would be to read the book and see the movie.
Kristi: I agree. Read the book. See the movie. In whatever order you prefer.
Check out this video (featuring Zach Gilford, Kathleen Quinlan, director Matthew Leutwyler,and Screenwriter Tom Cohen) from the Red Carpet Premiere of The River Why at the Dallas International Film Festival.
Note: the cast and crew appear about 5 minutes in.
The "Best Cinematography, The Gerald Hirschfeld, ASC Award: Feature" Award
I’m pleased to announce The River Why won the “Best Cinematography, The Gerald Hirschfeld, ASC Award: Feature” Award last night at the Ashland Independent Film Festival! This is a wonderful honor and very meaningful since we filmed The River Why in Oregon, along the Wilson River in Portland, in 2008.
We’ll post more pictures and updates from the festival soon, but we had to share the great news.
To see the full list of Awardees, please visit the Ashland Independent Film Festival‘s web site.
Kathleen Quilan on set with WIlliam Hurt in "The River Why".
Kathleen Quinlan plays Zach Gilford’s mother in The River Why. Ms. Quinlan made her film debut in George Lucas’ 1973 nostalgic look at the early sixties, American Graffiti. She has appeared in over 50 films, but is best known for her roles as Deborah in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, and for her Golden Globe and Oscar nominated role as Marilyn Lovell in 1995′s Apollo 13.
RT @sthompsonauthor: I love 'The River Why' book. I have wanted to see the ind. film, but it wasn't playing near me so I just ordered...***11 hours ago
