Andrew Karpen always seemed to be in motion. At festivals like Cannes or Toronto, I’d see him racing down the street, greeting filmmakers or fellow executives with a booming, “Hey, buddy!”
At parties, he’d come up behind me, grab my shoulders and give them a shake like a Little League coach trying to loosen up a player before a game. It was his way of getting me to cast off my congenital stiffness.
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And he’d enter the restaurant for one of our lunches like he’d been shot out of a cannon, peppering me with questions about my life before we even sat down and ribbing me for failing to see the latest film he was releasing. “I know you hate to leave your apartment, but would it kill you to see one of my movies?” he would joke.
Andrew was so full of irrepressible energy that his death on April 28 at the age of 59 of glioblastoma has left me and his many friends across the independent film world shaken. Colleagues and competitors turned out in force last week for Andrew’s funeral in Connecticut, to honor his legacy. As the co-head of Focus Features in the early aughts and then as the founder of Bleecker Street, Andrew helped bring culture-defining films like “Brokeback Mountain,” “Captain Fantastic” and “The Kids Are All Right” to screens.
But what made Andrew unique among the executives I’ve known in my two decades covering the entertainment business wasn’t his intelligence or impeccable taste. It was his decency. If he told you something, you took it to the bank, because Andrew didn’t lie. And unlike so many of his contemporaries in the business, Andrew had things in perspective; he loved movies, but he was more interested in talking about his wife, Pam, and the theater she ran near his hometown, or his kids, Joshua, Zack and Sloan, and their academic or professional accomplishments.
“They were such a vital part of his life,” remembers Daniel Battsek, president of Film at Lincoln Center. “Whenever we’d meet at Sundance, various members of his family would come in and out of the room, having just been on the slopes.”
Andrew had a lot of passions besides cinema. His greatest allegiance was to the New York Giants. There was a shrine to the team in his office, vying for space with autographed film posters. “His devotion to the Giants bordered on a full-blown religious fervor,” says Kent Sanderson, Bleecker Street’s president. “The only way you could get on Andrew’s bad side was to talk warmly about the Philadelphia Eagles.”
Everywhere he worked, Andrew cultivated a family atmosphere. He prided himself on identifying talent and then giving them opportunities to grow — Sanderson, for instance, started as Andrew’s assistant at Focus and now runs Bleecker Street — and he was rewarded with a low turnover, with executives such as Bleecker distribution guru Jack Foley and marketing heads Tyler DiNapoli and Myles Bender sticking with him for decades.
“He built his company out of love,” says David Linde, who worked with Andrew at Miramax and then Focus. “Love for the people who make independent movies, love for the people who market and distribute them and love for the audience.”
One thing Andrew was not good at was gossiping. That can be frustrating for a reporter who relies on people in Hollywood to dish on their competitors. But I came to realize that Andrew wasn’t just allergic to talking shit; he was rooting for his rivals.
“We relished his successes — of which there were many — mainly because he was the first person to call to enthusiastically congratulate us on ours,” says Michael Barker, co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics.
Andrew wanted to succeed, of course, but that never overrode his essential mensch-hood.
“He was a combination of a labrador puppy and a Hollywood mogul,” James Schamus, who ran Focus with Andrew, says. “When we describe talented business executives as competitive, we often mean it in sociopathic terms. But Andrew was competitive in a sane, normal way: He wanted to be the best he could be, but not at the cost of his humanity.”
I last saw Andrew at a reception Variety held for Bleecker Street’s 10th anniversary in October. He was in a wheelchair, and his speech was impaired. For a moment I was shocked by how different he seemed from the propulsive life of the party I knew so well. But when I went over to greet him, his eyes still danced with a boundless kindness that was unmistakably Andrew.
“Hey, buddy,” he said as I squeezed his hand. “I’ve missed you.”
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