The film community mourned on Monday the sudden death of indie veteran Bingham Ray.
Ray, 57, died Monday after suffering a stroke at the Sundance Film Festival.
Focus Features CEO James Schamus, filmmakers Michael Moore and Greg Mottola and critic Roger Ebert were among those who shared their memories of Ray with TheWrap on Monday.
At the Sundance Film Festival Monday afternoon, a Who's Who of the independent film world gathered to remember Ray (pictured at left during the memorial).
In attendance was Ray's partner in October Films Jeff Lipsky; producer Christine Vachon (below right); Jeanne and Bob Berney; former MGM chairman Chris McGurk; Sony Pictures Classics co-chairman Tom Bernard; Sundance execs John Cooper and Keri Putnam; former Sundance director Geoff Gilmore; lawyer Andrew Hurwitz and many others.
Also read: Laughing, Crying, the Sundance Elite Drinks to Bingham Ray
The memorial, ironically, had been originally planned by Ray as a party for the San Francisco Film Society, which he had just joined as executive director in the fall.
Moore credited Ray with igniting "a golden decade for documentaries," telling TheWrap that Ray wanted to buy the documentary "Roger & Me," but was outbid. He subsequently bought "Bowling for Columbine" for United Artists. Ray, Moore said, was ready to buy the film before watching it.
"I said, 'You haven't seen it,'" Moore recalled Monday. "And he said, 'I trust you.'"
Also read: Bingham Ray, Indie Film Veteran, Dies at Sundance
Moore made him watch the movie. And Ray bought it.
"Bowling" ultimately grossed $21.6 million -- three times the previous record for a documentary.
"With 'Bowling for Columbine,' because of the incredible box office it did and then winning the Oscar, it kind of opened the gates for documentaries," Moore said. "I always gave him credit for being the visionary who saw the potential of feature-length documentaries that were made not for television, but for movie theaters."
He called Ray's death "a huge loss for his family and his friends, but it's also a loss for our art form and for independent film."
Head of the San Francisco Film Festival when he died, Ray was a co-founder of October Films, which was folded into USA Films, and later became Focus Features.
"All of us at Focus are blessed to know that Bingham -- the very definition of an independent spirit -- is part of our DNA," Schamus said a statement to TheWrap. "If anyone could claim paternity of us, it would be he.
"I wish, on behalf of all my colleagues here, I had something meaningful and resonant to say, but the loss is too sudden and too great - I simply refuse, at least for this one day, to speak of Bingham in the past tense."
One of Ray's closest friends, Tom Prassis, told TheWrap that "everything about him was unique."
