Prof Links VSU to Hollywood

Tinseltown’s Trojan

Meet Virginia State’s link to the stars: longtime Hollywood movie critic Duane ByrgeBy Peter GaluszkaCONTRIBUTING WRITER

Duane Byrge, well-known movie critic and journalism professor at Virginia State University, off campus near the historic train trestles at the Appomattox River. AshDaniel/Chesterfield ObserverDuane Byrge, a veteran film critic for the Hollywood Reporter and other Tinseltown journals, has a dream job that any serious movie buff would love.

For nine months of the year, he teaches four classes a week on film and journalism at Virginia State University. In between, he’s writing up to 50 reviews a year from such notable film festivals as Sundance, Toronto, Chicago, Virginia and Cannes.

“It works out really well for me,” the white-haired assistant professor of mass communications says. “I’m on the VSU campus one day, and the next I’m strolling on a street on the French Rivieraat Cannes. I love my dual lives.”

A personal friend of such screen luminaries as Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford, Byrge spent years in the Los Angeles area writing for the Reporter and other specialized cinema-related media outlets.

The former farm boy from Wisconsin earned his doctorate in communications with a concentration in cinema from the University of Southern California and an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He’s been teaching at Virginia State since 2004 and still pounds out reviews and articles that are published in the Hollywood Reporter and are syndicated through Reuters and Nielson Communications.

“Few in the entertainment community find a way to become an expert in the art form without infusing ego into the equation,” says Bob Gazzale, president and chief executive of the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. “Duane has mastered the ability to move through this community with the singular goal to share what he learns with others, and that is a gift to all of us who appreciate the arts in America,” he says.

Byrge first found his way to Virginia in 1991 serving on a panel at the Virginia Film Festival inCharlottesville. He had been encouraged to attend after he met Mark Johnson, a University of Virginiagraduate who had produced the movie “Rain Man.” Byrge had reviewed the movie, which starred Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise.

While in Virginia, he met Rita D. McClenny, the former head of the Virginia Film Office who is now president and chief executive of the Virginia Tourism Office. McClenny, who is credited with helping convince director Steven Spielberg to film “Lincoln” in the Richmond area, got Byrge to think about teaching at Virginia State.

“Duane is an amazing teacher and professor, and he’s truly networked and plugged in to the Hollywoodcommunity,” McClenny says. “He’s been a great help for the Virginia Film Festival.”

Byrge says that his Virginia State students are serious, no-nonsense types who want to make it in the creative media field. “Virginia State’s a very good fit for me because I was the first person in my family to go to college,” he says. “My students all want to be in the real world – in the music business or directing short films or being a set designer.”

Some of his proudest moments come when former students get in touch with him. “One called me and said, ‘Hey Dr. Byrge, I wanted to tell you that I’m working on the Dr. Oz show.’” Another followed his lead and went to USC for graduate school, ended up in New York and now works for a Fox News television station in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as a broadcast journalist.

Besides journalism, Byrge teaches courses such as film genre and directing. He has plenty of source material. In addition to movie reviews, he’s published books with the American Film Institute, including “Private Screenings” for Turner Publishing, which involved talking with movie stars from the 1980s. Another book, “Interviews with Top Hollywood Movie Producers,” will come out later this year. It includes interviews with such noted producers as Alan Ladd and Paula Wagner.

One of Byrge’s favorite personalities is actor, director and producer Clint Eastwood, whom he’s interviewed many times. In person, Byrge says, Eastwood is an entirely different person than what he projects on screen. When he was starting out as a Hollywood journalist, he once called Eastwood up not knowing the procedure was to go through his publicist. “Clint said, ‘Sure.’ He is a regular, gracious guy. He and I connect because we both have an odd sense of humor. He’s always smiling. He’s not Dirty Harry. He’s a gentle person.”

So is John Travolta, Byrge says. When Byrge phoned him for a book interview, the “Pulp Fiction” star called back and said, “Duane, This is John Travolta. I am sorry I missed you, and I am in Maine now and you can reach me here.”

His many other personal contacts include deceased stars such as Lucille

Ball, Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart.

Byrge has also been able to watch new ones emerge. At one Sundance festival, he watched a movie called “Reservoir Dogs” from a then-video clerk named Quentin Tarantino. He also spotted fresh talent in a film about the hip-hop music business called “Hustle & Flow,” featuring Terrence Howard, who is now star of the hit TV drama “Empire.” “My students were ecstatic since they had seen a review of the film that I had done blown up as a backdrop for a television show,” he says.

Closer to home, Byrge has spotted such young talent as Chesterfield’s Vince Gilligan, whose producing and writing work include such acclaimed television series as “The X-Files,” “Breaking Bad” and the current hit “Better Call Saul.”

Byrge first ran into Gilligan in 1991 in Charlottesville during the Virginia Film Festival. “He was this young, very nice guy. We talked and really got along. He kept calling me ‘Mr. Byrge.’”

Some trends in today’s movie business disturb Byrge, however. He complains that too many mainstream movies have been “targeted for 13-year-old, teenaged boys. They were doing remakes and sequels, and I was getting disgusted because they couldn’t even connect the dots.”

He says he prefers movies about people and not special effects, so he trends toward independent movies and foreign films. Old-line movie companies seem to want to go only with sure box-office winners and can be “cowardly.”

Byrge says he enjoys working in the separate worlds of Hollywood and academia. He has plenty of Virginia-related contacts, such as Johnson and McClenny. And he stays in touch with actor and film historian Robert Osborne, who helped Byrge early in his career and now hosts Turner Classic Movies.

“Duane knows more about motion pictures than anyone I’ve ever met with the possible exception of Robert Osborne,” says Gregory Hull, a good friend and professor emeritus of literature at Virginia State. “He’s a terrific guy.”

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