Little Movie, Big Splash?
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For Genett and Agosto, both in their late 30s, success has been a long time coming. Agosto came to Chicago from New Jersey and got his degree in filmmaking from Columbia College; since then he’s taught screenwriting at the school and slugged it out as a director of industrial films and low-budget music videos. Genett, a native of Wisconsin, has worked as a carpenter and done part-time production design. The two began collaborating when Genett asked Agosto for help with a script he’d been writing; they spent years saving enough money to make Big Canyon and months polishing their nine-page script.
After being screened at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival in April, Big Canyon was picked up by Atom Films Inc., a new Seattle company that specializes in distributing short films. Financed by Hollywood backers with deep pockets, Atom shows complete films on its Web site (www.atomfilms.com) and sells shorts to airlines to be screened with in-flight features; recently it packaged Big Canyon with a selection of other shorts to be sold on DVD. Genett and Agosto have found Atom to be much slicker than what he calls the “ma-and-pa operations” that typically distribute shorts; the company has helped them promote Big Canyon and come up with press materials. Genett hopes this is just the beginning. “We’re working on several scripts right now and have meetings set up on the west coast already.”
“Dynamic,” “adorable,” and “very quick on her feet” were words one student used to describe Oprah Winfrey, who on September 28 began teaching the course “The Dynamics of Leadership” to some 110 graduate students at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. The class, which Winfrey is teaching with Stedman Graham, was of greater interest to women than men: about two-thirds of its enrollment is female, though Kellogg’s student body is two-thirds male. Kellogg dean Don Jacobs showed up to introduce Winfrey, and during a class break the profs and their students were treated to a lavish buffet of hors d’oeuvres. Rumors that the teacher received 110 apples could not be confirmed at press time.
