Starstruck – How I Magically Transformed Chicago into Hollywood for More Than Fifty Years

By Michael Kutza

Paperback, 230 pages

Long before there was SUNDANCE, TRIBECA, and TORONTO, there was CHICAGO and a young kid from Chicago’s West Side named Michael Kutza.

He decided that his city needed to see what it was missing around the world in international cinema and the glamor of Hollywood. So, the founded the Chicago International Film Festival in 1964, with the help of silent screen star Colleen Moore and legendary film director King Vidor.

What followed was a roller-coaster ride that lasted for better than half a century, with Kutza presiding over a gathering that throughout the decades hosted a veritable Who’s Who of the film world – from Harold Lloyd to Clint Eastwood, Bette Davis to Viola Davis, Steven Spielberg to Spike Lee, Guillermo del Toro to Jodie Foster, Lauren Bacall to Al Pacino. At the same time, the festival introduced a plethora of new talent that would go on to revolutionize the movie business, from Martin Scorsese on.

Starstruck: How I Magically Transformed Chicago into Hollywood for More Than Fifty Years is Kutza’s rollicking, provocative, racy, colorful, irreverent show business memoir culled from his decades rubbing elbows with the giants of film at both the Chicago Festival and numerous other festivals around the globe.

It includes many of the lowlights as well as the highlights of a life lived just off-screen. Michael Kutza is a graphic designer, filmmaker, film critic and podcast co-host who founded the Chicago International Film Festival in the mid-1960s. He ran the festival and served as its artistic director until stepping down in 2018. Kutza remains CEO Emeritus of Cinema/Chicago and the Chicago International Film Festival.