2001 AUTEUR CHAMPIONS

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OK LT. GOVERNOR CITATION | UNFORGETTABLE | SCHMIDT'S FILMMAKING | KREVOLIN'S SCREENWRITING | TRAILBLAZER SALUTES | N-D-NEWS
TRAILBLAZER SALUTES

WE SALUTE THE PEOPLE,WHO BLAZE A TRAIL FOR THE REST OF US TO FOLLOW. BY RECOGNIZING OTHERS, WE FEEL THAT IT STRENGTHENS US AND OUR EFFORTS.

YEAR 2000 HONOREES: Oklahoma Lt. Gov. Mary Fallin, Filmmakers-Robert Rodriquez,Ian Skorodin, Actor-Clu Gulager, Actor and Talent Agent-Orville Baldridge, Oklahoma Territory Film Council (www.okfilm.com), and Independent Filmmaker/Author Rick Schmidt.

SALUTE TO ACTORS

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SALUTE TO WES STUDI, ACTOR, DIRECTOR, ACTIVIST.

Played the lead in Geronimo
A few of the many roles:
Deep Rising
Dances With Wolves
Crazy Horse
Mystery Men
Lone Justice II
Broken Chain
Killing Jar
Lone Justice: Showdown at Plum Creek

Directorial Debut: "BonnieLooksAway Iron Art Wagon"
Wardance Film Group

Author: Children's books.
"The Adventures of Billy Bean"
"The Further Adventures of Billy Bean"
Written for the Cherokee Bilingual Cross-cultural Education Center

Stone Carver: Works in soapstone and other soft stones. Works can be seen in the Santa Fe Gallery.

Wes Studi (pronounced STEW-dee) was born December 17, 1947 (although there appears to be some uncertainty about the exact year) in Nofire Hollow, Oklahoma, between Tahlequah and Stilwell. The eldest of the four sons of Andy Studie and his wife, Maggie (Nofire), Wes' early years were spent in Northeastern Oklahoma.

Andy Studie, Wes' father, was a ranch hand who worked for a number of ranches over the years. The men on the ranches permitted a young Wes to participate in roping, riding, and herding. He once had....

A Horse Named Jughead

This full blooded Cherokee spoke only the Cherokee language prior to attending grade school. He went to high school at the Chilocco Indian School (a boarding school) in Chilocco, Oklahoma, which is very near the Kansas State line. In 1967 with high school behind him, Wes was drafted into the army. He served eighteen months in Vietnam with the 9th Division in the Delta area of South Vietnam.

Wes returned to the United States, knocked about for a couple of years, then entered Tulsa Junior College on the G.I. Bill. It was during this time that he joined the National Indian Youth Council. Studi and others left Oklahoma to travel to Washington, D.C. with the intention of taking part in the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties. However, they arrived too late save for touring the Bureau of Indian Affairs Building. Studi's early involvement in native politics also included a 1973 South Dakota arrest of several days' duration after he tried to drive a resupply truck into....
Wounded Knee II

An early first marriage behind him, Wes married the second time in 1974 to Rebecca Graves, a Cherokee. Wes worked as a reporter for the Tulsa Indian Times and Rebecca was a schoolteacher. They purchased a horse ranch near Tulsa and subsequently had two children, Daniel and Leah. It was in the aftermath of the breakup of this marriage that Wes turned to acting, the career that would prove to be his true calling.

He appeared in a number of stage productions as well as a series of shorts filmed throughout the summer of 1985 for Nebraska Public Television. After returning to the stage in Tulsa in 1983 he was offered the part of "Long Runner" in the feature length PBS motion picture "The Trial of Standing Bear".
California Here I Come!
Once again in Tulsa, Studi realized that he, like many other aspiring actors, wanted to make the big move to Los Angeles. Since he had been "bumped" from a flight on one of his 1985 Nebraska trips he used his free ticket to fly to the West Coast.


FOR PHOTOS, AND MORE INFORMATION

FOR AUTOGRAPHED POSTERS & MOVIE PHOTOS

SALUTE TO RICHARD E. NORMAN
NORMAN STUDIOS
PIONEER FILMMAKING IN OKLAHOMA

RICHARD EDWARD NORMAN (1891-1960) began his film production career around 1912. His early work comprised mainly of contracting local events to film. Traveling the middle west, Norman invited interested local parties to act in skits which he filmed, then showed them for a price at the local theater, church, or school. One such local comedy Norman produced was entitled SLEEPY SAM, the Sleuth. Later, he settled in Jacksonville, Florida, where he made feature length films for national distribution.

In 1916, Norman made "The Green Eyed Monster", an all white drama involving love and deceit in the railroad industry. He saw a new market in Black or race films being forged by such notable Black producers as Oscar Micheaux and the Lincoln Motion Picture Company.

He remade the film in 1919 with an all Black cast, adding new comedy scenes. However the comedic aspect of the new "Green Eyed Monster did not sit well with viewers. So Norman removed the new scenes using them to make a sequel to "The Green Eyed Monster called "Love Bug" (1919). The shorter, 5 reel, version of "Green Eyed Monster" was a hit with Black audiences, and spurred Norman to produce more films to cater to this new found audience. Black actors and actresses wrote to him after seeing "Green Eyed Monster" wanting to star in the next Norman production.

In 1921,Norman went to the all Black town of Boley, Oklahoma to make a feature film about Black Cowboys entitled "The Bull Dogger". The film was to focus on a famous Black cowhand on the Miller Bros. 101 Ranch named Bill Pickett. Although Norman found Pickett's bull-dogging performance exciting, Pickett was far from a handsome leading man, so Norman weaved a story around him starring New York actress Anita Bush.

Norman was able to shoot enough footage for "The Bull Dogger" to produce a complementary dramatic piece called "The Crimson Skull (1921). "The Crimson Skull" starred Bush and Lawrence Criner in a tale about an outlaw gang's attempt to stir up trouble in the peaceful town of Boley. It featured Steve "Peg" Reynolds, a one legged star who also appeared in "The Green Eyed Monster," and includes footage of Bill Pickett. Norman released the two pictures almost simultaneously to receptive Black viewers who had heard of, but never seen, true Black cowboys.

Norman's next feature film was "Regeneration" (1923) a story about lovers stranded on a desert island. Their happiness is destroyed when a dock worker and his gang come to the island searching for treasure. The film starred Stella Mayo of the Mayo family magicians, and M.C. Maxwell. Although Maxwell never starred in another Norman production, he and Norman corresponded regularly and Maxwell gave Norman many suggestions on story lines and actors. Maxwell tried to help Norman get his fifteen reel serial "Zircon", off the ground by referring some of the nation's best Black actors. However, even with these actors and intriguing episode ideas, Norman was never able to get enough capital to produce the serial. One episode of the serial, entitled "The Sky Demon," was an aviation adventure with a "colored" pilot. Although it was never made, Norman used the subject of "colored" aviators as the focus for his next film.

"The Flying Ace", released in 1926, starred Lawrence Criner and Kathryn Boyd, two established Black actors. Criner played a World War I fighter pilot who returns home a hero. Peg Reynolds was Criner's side kick and together they rescue Boyd and her father from railroad thieves. The film played off the headlines of colored aviators including Bessie Coleman who wanted Norman to make a picture about her stunt flying exploits. Unfortunately she was killed ina plane crash before Norman released "The Flying Ace." "Ace" boasted death defying feats in "the greatest airplane thriller ever filmed, but in reality, Norman shot all the airplane scenes with the plane on the ground. Even so, the film was a sensation and grossed close to $20,000 through Norman's distribution efforts.

Boyd and Criner were such a success that they starred in Norman's last colored production, "Black Gold". Set in Oklahoma, "Black Gold" is a story of oil, greed, love, and heroism.

Although Norman made most of his films in lean economic times, he was able to generate enough of a profit to stay in business when many of his colored associates could not. He never crossed over from silent pictures to talkies, which he thought saved him a good deal of money. His policy was not to pay his stars more than $75 a week and he usually completed production in less than one month's time. He distributed his films himself concentrating his effors mainly in the south, then selling the rights to other film exhibitors to distribute to various other regions. His films played from Texas to New York.

Norman kept in contact with both Black and white producers, often buying the rights to their pictures and showing them along with his own. He showed Oscar Micheaux films as well as Hollywood serials, and lesser features. In the forties, he began distributing Joe Louis fights and Black features starring Lena Horne and others.

Norman died in 1960. The accounts of his studio continue to attract scholars and lay people. His son, Richard Norman, Jr., graciously donated the Norman Studio record and materials to the Black Film Center/Archive in 1985 for further research of this phenomenal enterprise.

Jill Moniz, BFC/A Archival Project Assistant
For a complete list of the films in the AFI Norman Collection, preserved by the Library of Congress, some of which Norman made, most of which he distributed, write or call Motion Picture Division, Library of Congress
Madison Building, Washington, DC
(202( 707-8572; FAX (202) 707-2371

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SALUTE TO ALLENA BRACKIN-INDIE FILM ACTRESS/VOICE TALENT MEMBER OF THE SCREEN ACTORS GUILD

FILM

Public Enemy Number One
In the Line of Duty: Ambush at Waco
Bio-Kill
It Must Have Been the Coffee
Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill
The Change
Lethal Justice
Cole Justice
UHF

SALUTE TO
DAVE WALKER & MAUREEN HERZOG
EDITORS/PUBLISHERS OF INDIE SLATE MAGAZINE

Dave & Maureen At Festival Locations Tour
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Dave Walker Bio

Dave Walker is a writer-producer-director whose career has been spent primarily in the communications business.

His first major entrepreneurial venture was the launch of Houston City, a city news magazine for one of the country's largest cities. Houston City was published for 10 years and eventually sold to Texas Monthly magazine. In the early 90's, he shifted his attention to film and video, and produced a golf show pilot for television which he sold to HSE/Prime Sports network (now Fox Sports).

He started Indie Slate Magazine so that he and others in the Texas and the Southwest entertainment industry would have a forum for networking and sharing ideas and experiences. Originally a 10-page newsletter in '96, it is now a magazine sold in the major bookstore chains in nine Southwest states.

Along the way, he helped friend David Stephens make his first feature, the 35mm Lebensborn, produced a 30-minute 16mm short film, The Contest, for a filmmaker seeking to use the film to raise money for a feature, and Associate Produced the 35mm feature, 5th Ward. He also co-produced the 35mm short, The Martini Shot, and the 16mm feature Thug Life.

Within the last two years, Walker and partner Maureen Herzog, co-editor and publisher of Indie Slate Magazine, have created INDIE-U, a series of classes for continuing education in moviemaking. Notable among the classes is the only hands-on 35mm film workshop outside of Hollywood, which, in 2000, took place in Dallas. In the workshop, sponsored in part by Kodak, MPS Studios, and Video Post & Transfer, a short film was completed in just 36 hours from start to finished, edited movie. The next hands-on workshops will be in Houston in May and June.

Through production company Fresh Squeezed Entertainment, Walker and Herzog have numerous projects in various stages of development.

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Maureen Herzog Bio

Maureen Herzog is a writer-publisher-producer who grew up with strong academic training in the methods of right-brain logic, but with a solid appreciation and love for the performing and creative arts springing from the left side of the brain. On her way to earning a BS in Behavioral Psychology, MBA in Executive Management and Practitioner Certification in NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP), she ventured into the performance world as a dancer, writer, musical actor and professional vocalist.

In 1997, after a successful career in human resource management which included over 15 years creating and managing career development, communications and compensation programs for Fortune 100 organizations she left the corporate world to collaborate with her partner, producer-publisher-entrepreneur Dave Walker, on a new venture.

The mission: take the 10-page newsletter Walker had created the year before as a means to make connections within Texas film/video production community to a larger audience. The result: Indie Slate Magazine. Over the last four years, Indie Slate has expanded to cover a nine-state area in the Southwest U.S. and is sold on over 200 newsstands in 20+ states.

More recently, Herzog and Walker have created Indie-U: Continuing Education in Moviemaking, a program through which they bring a variety of events and top-quality weekend classes and workshops to the Southwest, including Hollywood Film Institutes 2-Day Film School Crash Course, the 35mm Hands-On Shoot, a Hands-on Digital Workshop, and their latest class, the Indie Way Workshop conducted by successful L.A. based producer/writer/director Darin Scott.

In 2000, Herzog co-wrote and co-produced a 35mm short (The Martini Shot). She also served as Secretary for the Houston area chapter of Women in Film & Television and currently is Vice President. Through production company Fresh Squeezed Entertainment, she and Walker continue development of a full slate of other projects.

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