Meet Patrick Schweiss. Executive Director of the Sedona International Film Festival for the past 16 years. This year, the festival celebrated its 26th year with nine full days of extraordinary cinema with filmmakers, celebrity guests, and other passionate cinephiles. Each year, he brings top-rated films to Sedona – to challenge, inspire, and entertain moviegoers. His goal is to have the audience experience the world without ever leaving their theater seat.
Q: What does it take to put the festival together?
A: A miracle, Ha-Ha! I hate to copy the cliché that Hillary Clinton made famous, but “It takes a Village!” I get a lot of the credit because I’m the one on stage with the microphone. I love what I do, and I feed off of that energy from the audience. But, people don’t realize that there are magnificent people behind me who volunteer their time to put on this festival. It’s an enormous amount of work to do a nine-day festival showcasing over 160 films. It takes us three quarters of a year to watch 1200 films, while our all-volunteer screening committee weeds that number down to 160. They see many bad films before the audience sees the good ones that made it to the festival. We’re also planning the parties which our incredible sponsors in this community donate food in the VIP lounge. It’s a substantial financial commitment that takes place because the festival is very expensive. Even our hoteliers donate rooms for our filmmakers. Everyone on our team is so good at what they do – I don’t want to say that it’s on autopilot, but it almost is.
Q: During the festival, aside from getting up there and introducing either a filmmaker or a film, what other roles you play?
A: Host. It’s funny because my stressful time is all right before the festival. We are all handling our parts. I work a lot with our sponsors and donors, as well as produce the 200-page printed program, and help coordinate the filmmakers. Once the festival hits, I get to play Host. The hard part of my job is over, but the rest of the team’s work is just beginning.
Q: Once the festival is over, how do you feel?
A: Complete depression. My staff thinks I’m a little crazy, but they are experiencing depression as well. My Box-Office Manager, Lori, said that the reason I get depressed is like summer camp. When you go to camp, you have a whole week of activities that surround people and friends, and on the last day, as the bus pulls out, you realize it’s time to go home. It’s sad. We’ve been working hard for months before the festival and pulling our hair out when things go wrong. When the festival comes, everyone is having a great, great, time and that last day everyone goes home. The next day in the office, no one’s coming in for tickets, no one’s calling, and making matters worse, all the bills are due. It’s a weird mixture of emotions because you want to be proud of the show you put on, and you are, but you are really sad because no one’s around to celebrate with you. Throughout the year, we’re a three-person team – Lori-our Box Office Manager, Reba Stone, our Operations Director, and myself. During the festival, we have a crew of 300-400 people doing different things, and then all of a sudden, they go back to their real lives. Luckily for us, we have the Mary D. Fisher Theater; we can’t rest, we can’t stop.
Q: Does your family play a part in the festival?
A: Yes! I am very blessed. My daughter just graduated from Red Rock High, virtually because of the pandemic, and my son just got his Masters Degree from William & Mary. We popped the champagne to celebrate. My son, Kevin, was involved with the festival while he was going to high school. Everyone thought that he made the best popcorn. My daughter comes alive during the film festival. She’s a host to the filmmakers and attends all of our parties. She’s the ‘Belle of the Ball’! She also does a lot of our social media at festival time. She’s attending Southern Utah University and hopefully will work with Utah Shakespeare Festival. We’re very proud of both of our kids. Equally important is my family, who flies in from Minnesota to be part of the decorating team for the festival.
Q: How do you end up in Sedona?
A: I am from Minnesota, and I transferred to Arizona State in my sophomore year. My wife and I met on the Yearbook Staff at Arizona State. She has a journalism background because her family owns Red Rock News. She is a native, born and raised in Sedona. We officially moved here in 1992. I worked at Red Rock News for 12 years when this opportunity came up. At the time, the Cultural Park was the parent company of the Sedona Film Festival, and they just went bankrupt. The leaders of this group asked me to take over the film festival. I laughed at them in my office at the Red Rock News and said, “You’re crazy! I don’t know what an independent film is and I have no idea how to run a film festival. I appreciate that, and that’s a wonderful boost of confidence, but no!” I couldn’t stop thinking about it for two weeks. I was at the top of my game at Red Rock News. My brother-in-law, Bob, was the Publisher and I met with him even before I spoke to my wife about this. I said, “Bob, I have no idea why I want to do this, but I need these three things: A front-page story so that community knows the reason, I need you to cover the first two months of my salary because the organization has no money, and I need to feed my family, and the third thing is that I want an open-door policy – if this doesn’t work out, I can come back to my job here. He looked at me over the rim of his glasses and said, “Will two months salary be enough?” My mother-in-law called me that evening and said, “I want to congratulate you! What a wonderful choice they’ve made, and I’m sorry you’re leaving the family business. We’ve had you for 12 years, and it’s probably 11 years longer than we deserved you.”
From the interview with Jonelle Klein.
