It’s a question many Los Angeles Film Festival watchers have been pondering this week. How the heck did Film Independent manage to convince Woody Allen to make an appearance at tonight’s opening night gala screening of To Rome With Love?

Based on the above Hollywood Reporter headline, a brief Q&A with artistic director David Ansen conducted by Gregg Kilday has the tantalizing answer. Not so fast. Hilariously (given the headline), here’s the non-answer provided by the critic-turned-programmer when asked about The Woodman’s rare west coast public appearance:

“I don’t know what his thought process was… I had told Tom Bernard and Michael Barker of Sony Pictures Classics that we’d really like to have Woody for opening night. And they came back a few days later and said, “We’re on.”

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Talk about your unexpected indie movie twist!  Just hours after we reported yesterday’s news of Laemmle Theatres’ plans to shut down the Sunset 5 by the end of November, LA Times reporter Nicole Sperling blogged word of a most welcome and logical rescuer: Robert Redford.

The Sundance Institute has offices in Beverly Hills and just hired a new media relations director (Sarah Eaton) to be stationed there. So it makes a lot of sense for the Sundance Cinemas end of things to give the Sunset 5 location a go as its new LA beachhead next spring, following some on-site renovations:

“Ever since the Arclight and the Grove opened, we lost some attendance,” said Greg Laemmle, president of Laemmle Theatres…

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