A bike ride. A self-guided afternoon on the old highway through Okanogan, stopping at wineries to say hello and have a tasting. Our friend Gary lived out there — he edited the regional paper, the Okanogan Gazette-Tribune — and over the years we had gotten to know the winemakers and brewmasters in the valley.
Somewhere between stops, the idea came. A film festival. Out here. We proposed it to the winemakers and brewmasters on the spot. They said yes before we finished explaining it. And so it began.
Two missions, one festival. For filmmakers: by filmmakers, for filmmakers. Entering film festivals is expensive, and after you submit you often have no idea whether your film was juried fairly — or at all. We wanted to fix that. Free to submit, fairly curated, and every filmmaker we selected was treated like they mattered. Because they did.
For audiences: Drink Globally, Watch Locally. We paired international short films with eastern Washington and BC Columbia wineries and craft breweries. World-class cinema. Local wine. A tasting room as a theater. The first weekend of August, every year, for a decade.
Every year, Geoff and I trekked to Queen Anne to attend the Seattle International Film Festival’s short film programs — eight to ten screenings over Memorial Day weekend, stopping at the Mecca between shows for a beer, talking through what we’d seen. SIFF sponsored Tumbleweed in support of our mission to bring economic growth and cultural arts to remote eastern Washington. The passes were part of that partnership.
After each SIFF run, we had a list. Then we contacted filmmakers directly — all over the world — and asked permission to screen their film at Tumbleweed. Nearly every single one said yes. Talking to those filmmakers, from Portugal, Spain, South Korea, the UK, all over — that was one of the great ongoing pleasures of running the festival.
One of our first hurdles was making a portable screen. Mission accomplished, thanks to friends — a framework of PVC pipes, zip ties, and a carefully selected screen material that stretched across it. Every year, along with a crew of friends who showed up because they believed in what we were building, helped us put on the shows. The first weekend in August, we loaded up our cars and hauled everything from Seattle over the mountain passes. The screen, the projector, the speakers, the cables, the cash box. All of it. The same friends came back year after year. You cannot pay people to do that. You can only earn it.
The screenings took place in wine-tasting rooms turned into theaters. Some events had live music. Uli from Pike Place Market’s Uli’s Famous Sausage showed up every year with brats and sides. We’d eat, drink, and then gather in the dark to watch films from around the world.
One year, the city of Osoyoos, BC, hosted our crew and filmmakers for a day of paddleboarding on Lake Osoyoos. We took filmmakers on wine tours through the valley. The mighty Okanogan flows downriver. The winemakers knew we were coming. Gary wrote two editorials a year — one before, one after. We got time on local radio. The festival had its own gravity.
We funded it by cold-calling every small business in those towns and asking for sponsorships. We wrote grants. We became a nonprofit. We found volunteers. We built tiered sponsorships with on-screen ad time and print placement. The audience could vote on their favorite films. We gave out awards. We made it real.
Filmmakers came. Not because there was a career incentive or an industry ladder to climb in eastern Washington wine country — but because Tumbleweed was the real thing and they felt it. And I still get a chill when I think about the festival!
It got too big for just two “coasties” to carry. We filed for 501(c)(3) status and passed it to locals who kept it going for a few years. But without the infrastructure we’d built — the filmmaker permissions, the funding relationships, the institutional knowledge — it faded. Some people in town were upset when we stopped. That stung.
Geoff and I never made a dollar from Tumbleweed. Neither did the friends who showed up every August and gave their weekends to it. We never boasted about what we were doing because we loved it and thought that should be obvious. We got beautiful resort hotel rooms in Osoyoos. We got to watch extraordinary films in extraordinary places with extraordinary people. We got a decade of August weekends that felt like they mattered.
Our four-page program featured a list of movies to be screened that evening.
Instead of disassembling the screen between venues, we just walked it over intact, and when we drove, we tied it down to Gary’s rig!
Every time we created promotional posters and drove up to the Okanogan Valley and hung them everywhere we could. Even in a town called Chesaw that has one bar and one church but hosts a huge annual rodeo one month before Tumbleweed. Our sponsors loved that detail to promotion. We left many behind for people to hang up throughout the preceeding weeks.
A Scottish pilot alone over the Atlantic in a storm
A potential true love story unfolds in 60 seconds.
