WHEN actor-writer-director Jon Favreau was in preproduction on his 2003 hit comedy "Elf," he studied Buster Keaton's 1928 classic silent "Steamboat Bill, Jr." -- not just to get a sense of Keaton's death-defying comedy prowess but also because both films deal with a strained father-son relationship.
So when the American Film Institute and the Skirball Cultural Center approached Favreau to participate in Cinema's Legacy, a monthly screening series that offers directors a chance to screen a film that was influential in their career, he chose "Steamboat." And this afternoon, he'll screen the film at the Skirball and take questions from the audience.
"I think for this venue this is an appropriate film," Favreau explains. "I had never been a silent-movie fan growing up, but when I first came to town I used to go to the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax. It had such a time-machine feeling, but the really amazing part was how well those films stand up with live music and a live audience in the way it was originally presented. It's not a medium that lends itself well to watching on a box set at home -- it doesn't have the right energy. But when it's a communal hybrid between theater and film, it makes for a very insightful experience."
And an unusual one to show in the Skirball series.
"Everybody wants to go and show a Spielberg movie or a Kurosawa film," says Favreau. "I wanted to go there and show something a little bit different. I really want to convince [the audience] that this is a viable genre to preserve and keep going back to."
The AFI and the Skirball launched Cinema's Legacy four years ago. The first season featured six filmmakers, including Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who presented John Huston's "The Man Who Would Be King," and David O. Russell, who screened Francois Truffaut's landmark "The 400 Blows."
Since then, it's attracted such diverse directors as Wim Wenders, who chose Jean Renoir's "Rules of the Game"; Wes Craven, who screened Roman Polanski's "Repulsion"; Harry Shearer, who chose Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be"; and John Landis, who selected "The Wizard of Oz."
The film series began, says Nancy Collet, AFI's director of programming for festivals, because the Skirball wanted to develop a larger audience and more screening programming.
"We were just going to try it out, and it was such a great hit we decided to do one a month, and now we have 15 dates. Every once in a while someone will pitch an idea [for a director], but in general we come up with the ideas and pursue them."
