Each April, the Taos Talking Picture Festival honors a cinema artist who has continued to maintain his/her unique vision. This year the "Maverick Award" will go to actor-director-producer Campbell Scott, whom critic Rex Reed recently described as "bewilderingly underrated." During the past 12 months, Scott not only gave terrific performances in Roger Dodger and The Secret Lives of Dentists but also directed Off the Map, a film shot in Taos and scheduled as the festival’s opening night screening event.

Off the Map focuses on a very untraditional family – a depressed father (Sam Elliott), an earthy mother (Joan Allen), their precocious daughter, and a visiting tax collector. According to the festival program, "This funny and poetic movie, Scott’s third as a director, should reaffirm his position as an essential voice in American cinema. . . It’s an instant New Mexican classic, perhaps the first to capture the mystery and magic of the place."

To me, Scott seems an excellent choice for the coveted Maverick Award, which has been given in the past to such luminaries as Anjelica Huston, Elizabeth Taylor, and Susan Sarandon. I believe he should have received more attention in 1996 for co-directing (with friend Stanley Tucci) one of the best movies of that year, Big Night, a comedy starring the wonderful Tony Shalhoub as a temperamental Italian master chef. Scott has appeared in 31 movies since 1987 and was named one of the 12 most promising new actors of 1990 in Screen World, Volume 42. His Roger Dodger performance earned him the Cinemarati Award as Best Actor of 2002.  

Among my favorite Scott performances are his turn as Robert Benchley in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle and his poignant work opposite Julia Roberts in Dying Young. The son of acclaimed actors George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst, Scott obviously inherited a wealth of talent -- and he's capitalizing on it. I look forward to seeing him receive this well-deserved recognition in Taos.

Others to be honored at the 2003 Taos Talking Picture Festival, scheduled for April 10-13, include playwright-filmmaker Neil LaBute (Nurse Betty, Possession) and Chicano satirists La Raza Cosmica. LaBute will receive the Storyteller Award and La Raza Cosmica the Cineaste Award.

Among this year’s diverse festival film offerings (which include nine World or U.S. premieres), here are the ones I’m most eager to see:

Marooned in Iraq – A legendary Iranian Kurdish singer takes his two musician sons into Iraq to search for his estranged wife.

A Mighty Wind – Christopher Guest’s (Best in Show) latest mockumentary. This time he takes on folk singers of the 60s.

The Reckoning – A medieval thriller starring Willem Dafoe and Paul Bettany.

Colors of Courage – This story of World War II’s most decorated units is narrated by Gene Hackman.

The Hard Word -- An Australian caper comedy starring Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths.

Imitations of Life – Mike Hoolboom’s meditation on living in our heavily mediated society, a world where we live and breathe images.

Anne B. Real – Follows the hip-hop journey of a girl struggling to find her voice. (A female 8 Mile?)

No doubt about it, this year's program looks quite promising. For more information about the 2003 Taos Talking Picture Festival, go to www.ttpix.org.

(Read Betty Jo's report on last year's festival.)