Excerpt courtesy of The Spokesman Review, March 31, 2011
It’s not every day that you sit down to lunch with a couple of screenwriters, a 12-year-old piano prodigy and a special effects/makeup artist, but that’s what I did recently.
My friend, local author and attorney, Beth Bollinger, had invited me to the monthly meeting of kNIFVES.
“Will I have to throw them?” I asked.
“No,” she replied.
In fact, the name has nothing to do with cutlery. kNIFVES stands for Northwest Independent Film and Video Entertainment Society. The ‘k’ used to stand for Kootenai, but the organization quickly outgrew its North Idaho roots and now encompasses Eastern Washington, as well.
Producer, writer and director W.J. Lazerus founded the group in 2006. “I was line producer on a movie that was shot up here,” he said. “I discovered there were incredible, amazingly talented people here, but they all lived on different lakes in Idaho and never saw each other!”
So, he invited film industry folks to meet for lunch at a local restaurant.
Currently, the group boasts more than 100 members from all facets of the entertainment industry. “Arts and entertainment growth is huge – even in this economy,” said Lazerus.
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