Friends and film-makers including Errol Morris, Laurie Anderson and Adam Curtis on the brilliance of Telluride’s Tom Luddy, who has died aged 79
Tom was the ultimate match-maker, with an incomparable instinct for getting people together, as friends, lovers and collaborators. Wherever he landed on his travels, he hosted a dinner, an infallibly inspired mixer. I was lucky to be invited to several memorable evenings in London, Paris, New York, Cannes, Beirut and Berkeley.
Most people who came to Telluride felt that way because they were all linked in Tom’s mind as a community of true believers. He was such an endlessly curious, affable guy; a determined encourager of talent to the highest standards, with an incredible pre-digital command of information. Tom was always my biggest champion – as I know he was for so many, just for the sheer joy of making those connections happen. He was utterly selfless in that way. After Chez Panisse opened, Tom brought film-makers from all around the world to the restaurant and said: “This is my favourite restaurant! Tell all your friends.” Early patrons included Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Francis Ford Coppola.
He was one of the producers on my movie The Secret Garden, but his greatest production was the only and unique Telluride film festival. To me, the best festival in the world.Photograph: Belmont Village/Jessica Williams I bumped in to a number of my cinema heroes in coffee shops on the one main drag – Tom seemed always to be around to make an introduction – and I hungrily listened to their words of wisdom. “Watch life as well as movies,” said Edward Yang and audiences would come up and discuss the effect of films. It seemed to me that Tom and his partners, in that beautiful mountain village, had curated/created a kind of film-makers’ heaven.
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