Instantly transforming into his Ultra-Ingratiating Festival Director mode, Todd beamed a Cinemascope smile and proudly told the guy, "They're here for WorldFest." Noting the blank look on the man's face, Todd added: "The film festival." Still no response. And so, somehow sustaining his smile even as he gritted his teeth, Todd further elaborated: "The Houston International Film Festival."
Finally, a response: "Oh, really?" Pause. "I didn't know Houston had a film festival." Another pause. "How long have you been doing this?"
Todd couldn't help himself: "More than 20 years."
And he'll keep on doing it, until he gets it right.
"Maybe we're around at the wrong time of year," Todd theorizes during a freewheeling interview at his Galleria-area office. "We picked April in the first place because it's the rainy season here. And that's a good thing for us: Our box office almost doubles if it's dreary. Saints preserve us if we have gorgeous weather for the film festival. We always pray for at least a nice drizzle. Otherwise, instead of seeing movies, people are out at the beach or the bayou or the bay or whatever.
"But really, every year we think of changing our date. The trouble is, there are problems with just about any other time, because it seems like you're always competing [for films, filmmakers and media coverage] with some other event. You can't have a film festival in May, that's totally out, because there's a little thing in France called Cannes. And March is totally out because that is when you have the American Film Market in Los Angeles, and South by Southwest in Austin. February? That's Berlin. January? That's Sundance and Palm Springs.
"Summer's out because -- well, there's simply too many other things going on in the city. Though we have thought about the possibility of late summer. But if you wait until August, or early September, then you start running into Telluride, Montreal and Toronto. And after that, there's practically a film festival every week somewhere until the holiday season. So we're stuck with April, I guess, for better or worse."
To be sure, some people might say WorldFest/Houston already is a success story, if only because it has somehow managed to survive relocations, identity crises, economic downturns and, yes, what often seems to be widespread local indifference. Despite drastic expansions and contractions of its size and scope, the festival continues to be supported by a devoted audience.
Trouble is, that audience remains distressingly small. Ridiculously small, when you consider just how big Houston is. Small enough, if fact, that even Todd -- the man who has devoted nearly a quarter-century to keeping WorldFest/Houston alive, sometimes only through sheer force of will -- has wondered if maybe he might do better anywhere but here.
Eight years ago, Todd admits, he established a "sister festival" in Charleston, South Carolina, to test the waters. "And I have to tell you," he says, "we really were considering the options. At the very least, I thought we were going to move to Charleston and run WorldFest/Houston out there."
When Charleston proved to be something short of paradise, Todd moved his sister festival to Flagstaff, Arizona, for a couple of years. "They have a population there of about 60,000," he says, "and 20,000 of them are college students. And yet both years we had a greater attendance there than we ever do here in Houston. It's amazing. But it's also proof of the famous big duck, little pond theory. There, we got a lot of attention because there was little to compete with us. Here in Houston, we're not even a small duck. We're barely the feathers on the duck's heinie."
And yet, for all that, Todd has ended operations in Flagstaff -- it's too expensive to live there, he claims, and there's no place for him to go sailing -- to concentrate exclusively on making WorldFest/Houston all that it can be.
"Flagstaff is a wonderful community," Todd says, "but running a festival there was taking our focus away from Houston. I figured that the most valuable thing I have is my time. And I figured that to be able to spend more time on the Houston festival, and to be able to spend more time with my family, would be a lot more valuable than working my fingers to the bone for a place where I don't live."
