Tom Luddy Dies: Telluride Film Festival Co-Founder And Producer Was 79

Tom Luddy, co-founder of the Telluride Film Festival and producer of numerous films for Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, died February 13 in Berkeley, CA, after a long illness. He was 79.

The festival announced Luddy’s death this morning. The news comes two months after the death of another Telluride co-founder, Bill Pence.

“The world has lost a rare ingredient that we’ll all be searching for, for some time,” said Julie Huntsinger, executive director of the Telluride Film Festival. “I would sometimes find myself feeling sad for those who didn’t get to know Tom Luddy properly. He had a Sphinxlike quality that took a little time to get around, for some. But once you knew him, you were welcomed into a kingdom of art, history, intelligence, humor and joie de vivre that you knew you couldn’t be without. He made life richer. Magical.”

Luddy was highly influential in film circles for advancing the careers of numerous American and international directors. He played a key role in the adventurous programming at Telluride and remained the fest’s co-director until the end of 2022.

He helped launch the festival in 1974 with Pence and his wife Stella Pence, along with film historian James Card, who became the event’s co-director alongside Luddy. The inaugural festival at the Colorado burg’s Sheridan Opera House — and a local bar — featured tributes to Coppola, Gloria Swanson and Leni Riefenstahl and was a surprise sellout.

Then a quaint little mountain community best known to skiers, where you could buy a home for $15,000-$20,000, Telluride grew over the years to become a significant skiing destination just as the film festival morphed from its status as a buff favorite into a much-coveted launching pad for specialty films.

The festival’s full flowering was marked with the Telluride world premiere of Slumdog Millionaire in 2008, paving the way for the film’s ultimate triumph as a Best Picture Oscar winner. It was a feat soon repeated with the Telluride premieres of The King’s Speech, Argo and — simultaneous to Venice — Spotlight and Moonlight. The latter represented a proud moment for the fest, as director Barry Jenkins was a regular whose affiliation with Telluride was as an announcer and volunteer.

Every year for a couple of decades, Luddy invited certain foreign directors to accompany him just before Labor Day on a drive from Los Angeles to Telluride so the visitors could behold Monument Valley and other exceptional sights along the way. Joining him in 1979, along with her husband, was Larissa Shepitko, whose great film The Ascent had its premiere there shortly before her tragic death that winter.

Even as Hollywood became increasingly aware of Telluride and its status as a much-desired launching pad for prestige films, Luddy and his associates managed to largely maintain the festival’s personality as a special and highly selective destination where almost any film you see will be worth your time.

The sought-after world premieres take place side-by-side with the restorations, personal tributes and unknown discoveries from all over the world, with Luddy always keeping the balance intact. The best legacy would be for his successors to fundamentally maintain that equilibrium.

While always giving top priority to Telluride, Luddy also was director of the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley from 1972-79 and soon became close with Coppola as the director of special projects at the filmmaker’s new studio, Zoetrope. He was instrumental in the restoration and ultimate international presentations of Abel Gance’s Napoleon, as well as in organizing showings of Hans-Jurgen Syberberg’s 7½-hour Our Hitler: A Film from Germany.

Beginning in the 1980s, his dozen-plus producer credits include Paul Schrader’s Mishima (1985), Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987), Barfly (1987), Jean-Luc Godard’s King Lear (1987), Powaqqatsi (1988), Manifesto (1988), Wait Until Spring (1990), Wind (1992), Agnieszka Holland’s The Secret Garden (1993) and My Family (1995). His final producing credit came on Cachao: Uno Mas, the 2008 documentary about Afro-Cuban music legend Israel López Valdés aka Cachao.

Born on June 4, 1943, in New York City, Luddy, came west to study at UC Berkeley in the 1960s and became the program director of several student film societies. In 1964, he worked as the assistant to Ed Landberg at the Berkeley Cinema Guild, Repertory Cinema. 

Upon graduating, Luddy was hired at Brandon Films in New York as its director of national distribution from 1966-67, where he worked on the U.S. releases of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accatone and Alain Resnais’ The War Is Over (La Guerre Est Fini). He then moved to the Telegraph Repertory Cinema in Berkeley as its program director from 1967-69 while also assisting artistic director Albert Johnson at the San Francisco International Film Festival from 1967-73.

Luddy served as a member of the New York Film Festival’s selection committee for three years and was on the board of the San Francisco Film Festival for many years. He was appointed as an American Jury Member at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, under the chairmanship of Louis Malle, and served on the jury for the Moscow and Berlin film festivals in 1979 and 1987, respectively.

He also played Ted Hendley in the 1978 creepshow Invasion of the Body Snatchers, his lone acting credit.

Apart from his film work, Luddy also played a key role in helping his then-girlfriend, Alice Waters, launch the celebrated Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, CA.

Luddy is survived by his wife, Monique Montgomery; siblings Brian Luddy, James Luddy, David Luddy and Jeanne Van Duzer; nephews Stevens and Will Van Duzer; and nieces Deirdre Pino, Megan Archer and Caroline Van Duzer.

Details of a funeral service are pending. His family asks that donations in Luddy’s memory be made to Telluride Film Festival’s General Support Fund or the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Nugget Project.