Movies, Rhode Island and Feinberg: The journey is bashert

If someone made a movie about Steven Feinberg’s life, what would it look like? At 61, Feinberg is widely known as the executive director of the Rhode Island Film & Television Office, and his professional bio is drenched in accomplishments. He’s credited with shepherding nearly $1 billion worth of film projects into the state since 2003, from “Moonrise Kingdom” to “Hocus Pocus 2,” and each year brings a new wave of Hollywood investment.

Yet Feinberg’s life has unfolded in many chapters, each with its unique themes and narrative arc. Feinberg wears a beard and wide-brimmed cowboy hat, and he relates his tales in a chalky, gregarious voice. His father frequently used the Yiddish word bashert, which roughly translates as “fate,” and Feinberg’s biography is filled with moments of cinematic kismet. Here are some of the ways a screenwriter could adapt Feinberg’s lifetime of experiences into riveting biopics.

The Coming-of-Age Story

Born in 1963, a young Feinberg grows up in a Reform Jewish family in Cranston’s Garden City. He lives among diverse, first-generation immigrants in the newly built suburbs. Curious about their respective backgrounds, Feinberg’s friends visit each other’s temples and churches. Feinberg’s father, a sixth-grade teacher, shows footage of the Holocaust to a classroom, saying, “Democracy is fragile, and we have to protect it.” A 10-year-old Feinberg is deeply moved and will remember this lesson for the rest of his life.

Feinberg starts making movies at the age of 8, borrowing his father’s 8mm Kodak Brownie. He covers his face in moist paper towels to mimic wrinkles or bandages. He punches holes in the film and draws around them in red marker to create gunfire effects, a technique he will later see in Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.” Like Spielberg, Feinberg gathers friends to make short films, including animations, spy thrillers and a three-minute sketch about Charlie Chaplin transforming into Mr. Hyde. He gets his film developed at the local pharmacy, funding his passion with his allowance and Bar Mitzvah money.

The Hollywood Saga

“I always said I’m going out to Hollywood,” recalls Feinberg. After a year at the University of Rhode Island, he scores a free flight to Los Angeles through the DHL courier service. Feinberg crashes with a friend of a friend, and he attends film classes at UCLA. In 1982, he enrolls at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and meets aspiring filmmakers from all over the world. Feinberg runs into Richard Gere, who is filming the movie “Breathless,” and becomes friends with prolific director Joe Johnston.

Sometime in the late 1980s, Feinberg thinks about his many drives past the ACI Maximum Security Prison in Cranston. “I wondered, what is it like in there?” Feinberg remembers. “It was a mystery.” He imagines a futuristic penitentiary where robo-guards watch over the cells and bars are replaced with laser beams. As Feinberg writes his science fiction screenplay, he listens to Sting’s song “Fortress Around Your Heart,” and he names the work-in-progress “Fortress.”

Feinberg sells the script to Twentieth Century Fox, and Sean Connery is briefly considered to star. Eventually, Australian director Stuart Gordon takes on the project and heartthrob Christopher Lambert is cast as the lead. Feinberg spends three months in Australia; he oversees the shoot and learns to scuba dive. When the movie is released, Feinberg has lukewarm feelings, calling it a “C+” effort, but “Fortress” is a financial success and performs especially well in Europe and Asia. “There were so many thoughts and ideas that weren’t fully executed in the right way,” Feinberg reflects. “The director had a difference in taste. But it did get nominated for a Saturn Award, and we did do a sequel with Columbia’s Tri-Star.” The film firmly establishes Feinberg as a screenwriter.

The Homecoming

In 2003, Feinberg returns to Cranston to spend time with a friend. The friend is finalizing a divorce, and he doesn’t want to face a family Christmas party alone. While there, Feinberg is disappointed to learn that the Providence Film Commission had been dissolved. Yet this vacuum piques Feinberg’s interest; within days, he is invited to a meeting with officials at Providence City Hall.

“I gave them a list of things I would do [for the local film industry], including tax incentives,” says Feinberg. “They said, ‘Would you be interested in being head of the Rhode Island Film and TV Office?’ My hair stood up.”

At this point, Feinberg has spent 22 years in California. Like so many people in the film industry, Feinberg’s opportunities have ebbed and flowed, and the future of his career is hard to predict. Meanwhile, Feinberg recently broke up with his fiancée. “That was probably the most painful time, because I actually cared,” he says, contrasting the engagement with more ephemeral courtships. At this surreal juncture, Feinberg considers a dramatic change.

In a flashback, Feinberg remembers being a kid in 1973, when “The Great Gatsby,” starring Robert Redford, was being filmed in Newport. One Sunday, as his parents drive a car down Route 37, Feinberg gazes out the window and thinks, “Maybe one day I’ll be in charge of all the movies of Rhode Island.” The memory comes flooding back, and he applies for the executive director position.

Feinberg resolves to move back to Rhode Island, and he transports 36 boxes of his possessions across the country on a train. He soon receives the official job offer from Randy Rosenbaum, then-executive director of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. So begins a new career, which is now 22 years and counting.

“There’s been ups and downs,” says Feinberg. “Naysayers. People trying to beat up on the dream. But overall, I have had the most blessed love affair with the state of Rhode Island. I always tell people, ‘You can love Rhode Island as much as me, but you can’t love Rhode Island more than me.’ And I could say the same thing about movies.”

The Horse Whisperer

Feinberg misses his days playing pickup basketball games in L.A., and he flirts occasionally with golf. One day in 2006 or 2007, while scouting for locations in Warwick, he spots a pair of horse riders on the bridle trail in Goddard Park. He’s mesmerized.

Feinberg learns of C and L Stables, which is relatively new at the time, and inquires about rides. Though he can’t ever remember mounting a saddle, he signs up for a $30 ride with a group of strangers. A half-hour later, “I get off, and my smile is so wide, I felt like a child. I was so happy. I went back the next Saturday, to see if I felt the same way. And I did.”

Inspired, Feinberg asks Lee Philips, co-founder of C and L Stables, about riding lessons. He learns how to canter and feels a life-changing thrill. He suddenly remembers a blanket from his childhood, which was covered in the images of horses, and once again, horsemanship feels like a case of bashert. The sensation of destiny continues soon after, when a horse named Cruiz shows clear signs of affection. Smitten, Feinberg buys the horse, and they ride together regularly, as often as five times per week, from 2010 to 2021.

“I’m a horseman,” says Feinberg. “I know horses. I understand horses. Horses understand me. Those were my Super Bowl years, my time with Cruiz.”

When Feinberg is forced to put Cruiz down, he is crushed. He feels conflicted every time he rides another horse.

Yet in 2023, Feinberg learns that a horse named Rusty, who bears a striking resemblance to Cruiz, is scheduled to be destroyed somewhere in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Feinberg buys Rusty, saving him from the slaughterhouse. He learns that Rusty is a former harness racer, but he suffers from an equine shoulder condition called sweeney. Feinberg decides that actually riding Rusty would aggravate the pain, so the two now walk side-by-side through the woods.

“I think of my temple as the natural trails of Goddard Park,” says Feinberg. “I would be at peace with the world and nature and God and all of this spirituality in the park with my horse.”

The Comeback Story

Feinberg starts working on a new script, writing in the evenings and on weekends. When the project is ready, he plans to submit a proposal to the Ethics Commission so he can produce it locally. “I don’t want to say anything until I get my ducks in a row,” he says. “But it’s a uniquely Rhode Island story. I don’t want to make it anywhere else. I think it’s super important, and super important to make now.”

ROBERT ISENBERG is a freelance writer and multimedia producer based in Providence. His latest book is “Mile Markers: Essays on Cycling.”