Documentary on the city’s most famous band opens this year’s Tacoma Film Festival
A new documentary about a legendary Tacoma rock band kicks off the 17th annual Tacoma Film Festival on Thursday Oct. 6.
“Walk, Don’t Run: The Ventures Story,” is nearly finished — it’s official release date is 2023. Filmmakers and restaurateurs Justin and Rob Peterson of Peterson Bros. 1111 began the project in 2008, collecting interviews and archival footage.
The Ventures were the best-selling instrumental rock group in history thanks to hits like “Perfidia” and “Wipe Out”. An updated version of their iconic “Hawaii Five-0” theme song for the 1960s television series is used today for the long-running current remake of the CBS show.
Film Festival
Most of the festival events will be held at The Grand Cinema, where nearly 200 independent films from around the world will be shown. Those include eight feature-length films and 55 shorts from the Pacific Northwest. Other venues include The Blue Mouse.
While “Walk, Don’t Run” kicks off the festival on Thursday, the main program begins Friday and closes Thursday, Oct. 13 with “Jankuland”. Writer-director Zia Mohajerjasbi tells the tale of an Eritrean-American boy of 15 living in Seattle whose task to deliver a suitcase across town becomes an odyssey of familial responsibility, identity and dislocation.
Family Shorts returns on Saturday, Oct. 6 at 10 a.m. at the Blue Mouse followed by Viva Kid Flicks featuring films in Spanish at 11:30 a.m.
‘Walk, Don’t Run’
A remake of Johnny Smith’s “Walk, Don’t Run” made The Ventures stars in 1960. They influenced generations of artists including Brad Paisley, Guitar Wolf and Billy Bob Thornton, who are among the performers interviewed in the film.
The Peterson twins collaborated on the film with Ventures co-founder Don Wilson, who died earlier this year. Overwhelmed with archival footage, research and interviews, they brought Tacoma filmmaker Isaac Olsen to the project in 2018. Olsen has produced other documentaries on local music legends, including “Strictly Sacred: The Story of Girl Trouble” and “Semi-Iconic: The Ballad of Dick Rossetti”.
The Ventures remain hugely popular in Japan, and a lot of documentation of the bands over the years originated there, Olsen said. The only previous documentary of the band is a film made in the Netherlands.
“This is kind of a continent-to-continent kind of project,” Olsen said Tuesday. “And it’s all because the main focus of media attention is elsewhere than here in this country.”
The Peterson twins’ early work on the project paved the way for an intimate look at the band, Olsen said.
“They just built great relationships with everybody in the band, especially Don (Wilson),” Olsen said. “They would go to his house, his wife would make them tuna fish sandwiches. They just got really close with the Wilson family.”
The film Tacoma audiences will see is a finished project — or at least it resembles one, Olsen said. New footage is still being found, even as late as last week, he said. He will continue to edit and refine the film until it’s officially released in 2023.
If you go
What: Tacoma Film Festival
When: Oct. 6-13.
Where: The Grand Cinema, 606 Fawcett Ave., Tacoma and other venues.
Tickets: $12 general, $9.50 matinee, $150 festival pass, free for students. $25 opening night event.
Information: 253-593-4474, info@tacomafilmfestival.com, tacomafilmfestival.com
