Brooke Wentz Loves Movies and Music with a Strong Flavor
By Maria Belilovskaya

When she was a child, Brooke Wentz used to go to see movies every Friday with her parents. San Francisco-born, raven-haired and dynamic, with a sparkling smile, she likes to remember all those old neighborhood movie theaters which no longer exist. One of them, which was on Polk Street, was the theater in which she saw her first R-rated movie. Another one, on Silver Avenue, showed silent movies with live organ music. “That was my first impression of music in film,” she says.

“My parents took me to the theater all the time,” she recalls. “And this definitely means something when you live next door to a movie star, Sterling Hayden. He was well known in the 1950s, and later he was in The Godfather. He was our neighbor.”

Now, Brooke has a 20-year career in the music industry behind her. She is a founder and a head of the Rights Workshop, a company that specializes in licensing copyright issues and soundtrack supervision. She also founded Juno Records and has served as a musical supervisor on many film and television productions.

Wentz is also a successful music producer who has managed to bring into the spotlight some of the most exotic and powerful voices in the world. Her work on such albums as Global Divas, Africa: Never Stand Still and Globe Meditation was critically acclaimed. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and received her B.A. degree, magna cum laude, from Barnard College. Brooke loves what she does, and has a powerful example: her mother, a doctor, who at the age of 84 is still working.

She gives frequent seminars on music rights and copyright issues. One of her memorable public appearances was at 2004’s San Francisco International Film Festival, where she participated in the panel discussion on music and film as an expert on copyright issues. The panel took place after the screening of one of the Festival’s hits, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. “Copyright problems are getting more scrutinized,” she says now. She explained that years ago record labels were created to sell records, and the licensing fees were secondary income. “But when sales dropped, labels started to put more weight on this and it is becoming a big area of income,” she says.

Wentz travels a lot, mostly for musical purposes. She dreams of going to New Caledonia and remote parts of South America. “I love authenticity,” she admits. “When you listen to new music all the time, you want to hear more and more.” She stops for a moment, and then adds, “And I like flavor, you know.”

She supports a lot of art organizations in the Bay Area. She has been a Film Society Chairman’s Circle member since 2000, and the Festival is always a special event for her. “I think probably the most exciting thing about being at the Festival is that I can hear the director’s interpretation of the film, hear his speech before or afterwards,” she says.

“Not to mention the opportunity to see three or four films a day,” she smiles. She especially remembers the 2003 screening of Buster Keaton’s silent The General with live musical accompaniment that took place at the Castro Theatre. “I enjoy seeing movies with a live orchestra,” she says. Brooke took her seven-year-old daughter. “She liked it,” says the proud mom, who keeps a photo of her daughter on the desk in her Presidio office.

She loves seeing films that have an unusual quality, like the recent The Sea Inside. “I was crying all the way to the end!” she confessed. The Brazilian Central Station and Sexy Beast from England are also on her list of favorites. After all, it’s all about flavor.