“Ken Burns does war, I do pears,” quipped Groody.
Groody, at the request of Kelseyville Pear Festival organizer Marilyn Holdenried, began a project this summer that follows not only the lifecycle of pears – from bloom through processing – but also documents the stories of the people and families whose lives are intertwined with pear farming locally.
A 12-minute portion of the documentary is set to debut in the Pear Pavilion at this Saturday’s Kelseyville Pear Festival, he said.
Groody said he’s been creating documentaries since the 1980s.
He’s is the former owner of nine local radio stations, including KXBX and Q106, which he owned from 1990 to 1999 before selling them to Bicoastal Media.
Before that, he worked for the NBC Radio Network in Washington, D.C., where he was a White House correspondent during the first four years of the Reagan administration.
After that, he did special projects, including documentaries on crime, the millennium and the Apollo moonwalk.
Over the last six years, Groody has been working mostly on documentaries for television. “We do one or two projects a year, usually things that interest us,” he said.
A recent projects with a local theme included a film on the Pomo Indians basket weavers, which he completed for the Lake County Museum.
In 2005 he did a project called “Dying to Live,” which documents the struggles of migrant farms workers traveling from Mexico and Latin America to the U.S. That show ran on public television during September 2006, which was Hispanic Heritage Month, said Groody.
“Writing and jouralism is sort of my first love‚” said Groody.
Then Holdenried asked him to consider pears.
“It’s been a wonderful project,” said Groody.
And it’s as much a story about people as pears, said Groody.
“There’s a rich Lake County history that’s a big part of this,” he said.
Work on the documentary began “in earnest” in July and August, Groody said. In July he started interviews; in September, he filmed in the pear sheds during packing, and has been hard at work to get a short version of his film ready for the festival.
“We've been in production for three months,” said Groody.
The pear documentary will be completed and refined once he’s followed the full pear cycle – Groody said he has yet to film the winter pears going through the winter, pruning and bloom.
Groody said the documentary starts out with the local pear industry’s history, which includes stories of local families who have grown the fruit for decades. The families’ stories are an extremely interesting aspect, he added.
At first, Groody said he didn’t know who the key pear farmers would be in the piece.
As he interviewed people and followed different stories, the documentary led him to three key people – grower Diane Henderson, who he said has turned out to be the star; Toni Scully, who owns Scully Packing with her husband, Phil; and Colleen Rentsch, a member of the Seely family in Upper Lake.
All three, he said, are strong, articulate women with an important impact on the local industry.
The second part of the film, said Groody, will focus on the uniqueness of the county as a pear growing region, and what makes it ideal for pears.
The film also will cover processing, the challenges the industry faces and the threat that it might be lost here.
Groody said the documentary on pears will be a promotional piece of Lake County’s pear industry. He also intends to share it with local schools and public television.
For more information about Groody and his work visit www.groodyriverfilms.com.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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