PORT TOWNSEND – A veteran film star, a poet with a sense of humor and a director who uses film as a means for social change highlighted the Port Townsend Film Festival on Friday and Saturday.
Its outdoor venues threatened by high winds and rain on Saturday – the outdoor movie was canceled because of the weather – the film festival will continue today.
Elliott Gould, 69, whose most recent work can be seen in his role of Reuben Tishkoff in Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Thirteen,” waxed philosophical during his visit as the eighth annual Port Townsend Film Festival’s special guest.
During his “West Coast Live” interview on Saturday morning with San Francisco radio personality Sedge Thomson, Gould recalled the anti-war message expressed in the 1970 film, M*A*S*H, in which he played Capt. John Francis Xavier “Trapper John” McIntyre.
Describing director Robert Altman as a “genius,” Gould said, “We’re making mistakes that empires made before us.
“There is no future in war. We have no future in it,” he said to an roaring applause.
On Friday, he urged Port Townsend High School theater students “not to be repressed by reality.”
He spoke to them about the importance of education, and told them to take the time to understand its value.
“Conforming is difficult, but there is a reason to be able to conform,” he said. “Students, everybody, must have the courage to fail, must have the courage to be honest.”
While Gould said he would not recommend a career in acting to anyone, he called acting an art that is a true form of communication.
He urged actors who fall on hard times to express art by teaching, “and life will find a way to get there.”
Gould said he found a sense of community during his visit with the high school youths in Port Townsend.
“That’s the most important thing,” he said.
Gould said he is in good health, but that he suffers from arthritis, which has slowed his stride.
“I don’t think old. I don’t feel old. But I have to admit that I am old,” he said Saturday while eating lunch at the Silverwater Cafe in downtown Port Townsend.
Asked how he hoped to be remembered, he replied, “I want to be remembered as one of us. What else is there?”
