When I found out that the folks over at Ironbound Films had made Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie, a documentary about one of the most unique television hosts from the 1980s, I was intrigued. Then when I learned the documentary was going to have its world premiere this month at the Tribeca Film Festival, I was fortunate enough to email interview one of the three creative forces (and directors) from Ironbound, Jeremy Newberger.

Tim O’Shea: Was it hard to track down folks that had worked on the production of his show, or are many of them still active in the industry today?

Jeremy Newberger: Finding the producers of “The Morton Downey Jr. Show” was easy. Getting them to overlook twenty years of repressed rage and therapy bills was a little trickier. Most of them are still in production on everything from theSPEED Network to “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” Show creator Bob Pittman is now CEO of a little company called Clear Channel.

O’Shea: Much has been made of the bigoted/anti-gay slur that Rev. Al Sharpton uttered (and was the subject of some coverage for the documentary last year). While I know Sharpton declined to be interviewed, were there other reluctant interview subjects that you were able to convince to participate? Don’t you expect once the film premieres at Tribeca and gains wider attention that Sharpton will have to comment on the clip in some regard?

Newberger: Often with documentaries, potential interviewees decline. Most people we approached were ready and willing to participate. In some cases, it seemed as if they were waiting for our call. Reverend Al Sharpton will speak volumes about our project, with either his words or silence.

O’Shea: I had long forgotten that present day presidential hopeful Ron Paul was on Downey’s show. What other present day movers and shakers were you able to feature from Downey’s shows?

Newberger: We have often referred to “The Morton Downey Jr. Show” as spring training for today’s pundits. In addition to Ron Paul, we feature Gloria Allred, Pat Buchanan, Stanley Crouch, Alan Dershowitz, and Curtis Sliwa, to name a few.

O’Shea: What did you learn about Downey in the research of the project that genuinely surprised you?

Newberger: One of the biggest surprises was the Downey family’s relationship to the Kennedys. Morton Downey Sr. and Joe Kennedy Sr. were neighbors and best friends. Clearly Morton Downey Jr.’s upbringing helped shape hisworldview.

O’Shea: How early in the project did you realize you wanted to include Chris Elliott among the interviews for the doc (because of his Downey imitation)?

Newberger: In the late ‘80s, all three directors watched “The Morton Downey Jr. Show” and Letterman after. At the time, a 28-year-old Chris Elliott was doing a hilarious Mort impression on Letterman. He loved Mort, and was one of the people I mentioned who was “waiting for our call.” We interview Chris at Manhattan’s Bowery Poetry Club. His performance had us rolling on the floor.

O’Shea: You attended many of the tapings of the show yourself (in fact, as noted here) “Jeremy even played Morton Downey Jr. Show dress-up with his high school friends.”) When the cameras were off, was there a substantial shift in the demeanor of folks involved in the show? What insight did you gain (which helped inform your work on this doc) from attending those tapings?

Newberger: None of the three of us ever actually made it to a taping, either because we weren’t allowed or couldn’t get a ride. We were forced to watch (and imitate) it in our living rooms. Our friends (then heroes) who did attend are featured in our film. We gather them for a therapy session in Downey’s old studio.

O’Shea: In the doc, are you able to draw parallels between some of Downey’s tactics with tactics employed by TV and radio talk show hosts of today?

Newberger: We visit a Tea Party media conference to tap into the latest crop of Morts. The cultural critics in the film detail the anatomy of a populist entertainer. Mort’s producers reveal how one is forged.

O’Shea: How challenging was it to convince Bob Pittman to license the Downey footage to you?

Newberger: The founder of MTV, Bob Pittman we believe was convinced by our creativity. We didn’t just want to make a Morton Downey Jr. documentary, but an in-your-face, take-no-prisoners cult classic. We took a gamble that Bob would share our vision. He rewarded us with the show footage.

O’Shea: Creatively, was there a debate whether or not to include animation in the documentary to recreate moments in Downey’s life that had not been filmed?

Newberger: The three of us were all on board to animate parts of the film. Not necessarily to recreate un-filmed moments of Mort’s life, but to portray his demons. Our South African animator Murray John employs a hand-drawn,“Heavy Metal” style.

O’Shea: Were there other challenges to overcome in getting this documentary made?

Newberger: The biggest challenge we faced was combing through more than 400 tapes of show footage to not necessarily capture the finest moments—as if putting together a “best of” compilation—but to sculpt a narrative and get inside Mort’s mind and motivation.

O’Shea: Anything you’d like to discuss that I neglected to ask you about?

Newberger: ÉVOCATEUR: THE MORTON DOWNEY JR. MOVIE is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2012. We encourage your readers to attend a screening:

Here’s hoping Morris dedicates himself to a larger related project on the subject. In the interim, I could watch Tink Thompson tell stories all day long. The man can work a camera.

I’m not a big fan of Ken Burns documentaries. They are important projects that are thorough and well researched, no doubt. But they are just too dry for me. Maybe I need to revisit them, particularly given my affinity for baseball–and his project of the same name.

The basic concept of the Please Subscribe documentary (“Please Subscribe follows YouTube celebrites David Choi, Happy Slip, Daxflame, and Tay Zonday as they discuss how online media and YouTube has affected each of their lives and the face of entertainment.“) sparked my interest fairly quickly. The documentary, made by CJ Wallis and the Soska Sisters, hopes to play at several film festivals in the near to long term.  I recently conducted an email interview with Wallis. In addition to this documentary, according to Wallis: “I recently directed/edited/conceived the forthcoming Sarah Slean music video and am currently in development on my debut feature film, Frank Flood.  The girls are getting a ton of attention for Dead Hooker In A Trunk and are currently in development on two scripts. I also have some original music under the label Elective, which is also going rather well.”

Tim O’Shea: When you contacted the four YouTube celebrities featured in Please Subscribe, did any of them need convincing to be involved in the documentary?

CJ Wallis: The only real person that needed a little bit of a nudge was Daxflame, and is mainly because he is actually represented by one of the bigger agencies in Los Angeles, so there was a bit of looking into one another and the project before they could commit to it. He is also a bit gunshy as his YouTube experience with the public hasn’t necessarily been as positive as the other four.

O’Shea: How did you arrive on picking those four folks in particular?

Wallis: David Choi was where the entire project sort of started. One very late evening in 2008 I think, the Twins and I stumbled across David’s high energy DuckTales video and it shattered us. It is long and repetitive and I think everyone involved ran out of ideas and energy midway through, but that’s what made it amazing. I had featured David’s “YouTube Love Song” on the viral section of a youth tv show I used to direct/produce on and somehow David’s videos kept finding their way in front of me.

Early November 2009, the three of us were re-watching the videos and the idea came up about doing a documentary about these people. A casual internet search into the matter launched the project instantly as David was due to appear in Canada in under two weeks for the first time and play a show in our hometown of Vancouver – saving us the plane tickets, hotels and rentals elsewhere. We e-mailed him and he got back to us and was instantly onboard.

The second day of filming with David, we were driving someplace and in his usual humble manner quietly offered “i could prolly get you tay zonday…if you want…” and suddenly we had Tay Zonday.

O’Shea: Logistically what was the biggest challenge in doing the documentary?

Wallis: As with most filmmakers at whatever level of success we are at currently, it was money. During the time the documentary was coming to life, the girls and I had recently finished their debut feature length film, Dead Hooker In A Trunk, that was also primarily paid out of our own pockets so when Please Subscribe happened, the credit cards were already very much full and there wasn’t a ton left to draw from.

Daxflame needed to be flown to us because it is too dangerous for him to show his house and where he lives which is something we explore in the documentary. Tay Zonday lives in Hollywood, so we begged and pleaded and found our way down there thanks to sympathetic family members etc etc.

While already in Los Angeles (with no immediate chance of coming back within our timeline) we had a YouTube personality that was tied strongly to Daxflame’s story choose not to be involved. We learned they were involved in a previous documentary that is famous (in the wrong way) within the Youtube community and we suddenly needed a fourth subject. David suggested we message Happyslip, who we also enjoy, and she happened to be in LA for a day or two and she graciously gave up her free time on the trip to be involved. It saved the day a thousand times over.

All interviews or filmmakers tend to say things like this, but in all sincerity: all four of these people have rapidly become lifelong friends to the three of us. And the people surrounding them in their lives that we met are no different. Alot of people in this industry, in my experience, tend to only ask you a question so that they can eventually just answer it themselves back at you, so it is rare to find so many people at once who are so endlessly selfless, generous and kind. We stay in regular contact with David’s friends Peter and Sam and are planning to see them all in the middle of July. There is mumblings of shooting a music video for David while we are down there.

O’Shea: A great deal of your recent work has been for feature film, short film and music videos, was working on a documentary a form of returning to your roots of producing for local TV programming in Canada?

Wallis: Actually, it was more of a return to the way I learned filmmaking. My friend Jeff and I would always have a camera on us and would film friends and random events, either together or separately, and then cut them up into fully polished/structured mini documentaries with sound cues and intricate sequences and pass them around to our friends – as they usually could be enjoyed out of context. Those things allowed for a lot of experimentation and mistakes and were always fun to cut up.

So this is sort of the same deal in a way. We got our friends together, shot a bunch of stuff with an idea of where we were going, and now we have to sit here and sort it all out all the surprises and left turns that were thrown at us along the way. It’s wonderfully loose and fun compared to working on a feature or short but, as the film is in it’s second major overhaul now in as many months, it can also be a curse because there isn’t that structure or safety net of having a pre-written scene to work from to know when you’re finished. Obviously everything is up to us how it’s presented and that’s where the pressure and self-doubt can creep back in and infect the fun. You always feel like something can be cut or timed a little better.

O’Shea: Given your own musical background, did you find it easier to interview the musicians featured in Please Subscribe?

Wallis: I wouldn’t say it helped in interviewing them, but it did help with the bonding sides of things off camera. I think there was only one technical question I asked to any of them and it was to Tay, something about the structure or key of Chocolate Rain and he shrugged a “it’s a counterpointed song in Eflat.” It just wasn’t something that ended up being talked much about.

O’Shea: You are collaborating with Twisted Twins Productions on this documentary, how do your differing approaches toward this kind of work serve to compliment each other’s skillset? How did you and the Twisted Twins divvy up the work on this documentary?

Wallis: The girls and I have been working together on things for the last 3 years now, I think so everything is sort of blurred or second nature as far as official job titles go when we are on a project or set. And despite the fact that they make the crotch driven boy movies in the house and I make more mopey dramatic things, we have similar tastes so it’s not that difficult for us to mesh on things outside our comfort zones…

For Please Subscribe I was on camera and location sound so we’d figure out the nice areas we’d want to shoot and when I’d be setting something up on the camera, the girls would be putting the LAVs on our subjects as well as producing or acting as the AD’s and keeping everyone in good conversation and happy. Everyone did a bit of everything. I do all of the post production work for our stuff, so when it gets to that stage, the three of us huddle around our make-shift studio in the apartment and it gets done.

O’Shea: Not surprisingly, you’re using YouTube to promote the documentary–what’s been the response from folks at YouTube?

Wallis: David sent me an e-mail one day that he had sent the official trailer for the doc we posted to his main contact with the YouTube higher-ups. They got back to me that they all loved it and it was a hit virally within their head offices and there was talk of featuring our video on the main page of the site. There were a lot of questions about what we were going to do with it and if we were planning to release it on YouTube. I said we were planning to go the conventional route of festivals into a home video sale but would be interested in hearing what they had to offer (as they have recently started their film rental program) and I didn’t anything back and stopped getting responses from them. They recently celebrated their 5th anniversary where they got each of their celebrities and made little documentary-esque videos about each. The one they made for Tay, shot on the Canon 7d I imagine, that is pretty close to our trailer which was a bit frustrating/demotivating at first but could also just be a big coincidence…

O’Shea: Is it too early to discuss how many festivals you’re going to submit Please Subscribe for consideration?

Wallis: We had a goal of a major film festival in mind that had a hard deadline about a month after we finished filming. A cut of the film was slapped together quickly and we got it in in time but was, admittedly, a bit too scattered and not a proper representation of the footage we have. As a director, you always want to take the home run shot of submitting to a Cannes or Sundance wherever but the reality of the situation is, or what I think our thinking has evolved into over the last year or so with ‘Hooker’ as well, is get it any and everywhere that will have you.

The audience and responses may grow a bit slower but at least your putting yourself and your work in front of audiences rather than submitting to three or four major festivals and sitting on a project for a year or so waiting around, which is what happened with my short Last Flowers. The smaller and mid-level festivals I’ve gone to have been some of the best film experiences of my life and there is so much else going on with the major festivals that have nothing to do with the movies themselves, I think all I can suggest is save your entry fees for someplace that looks a bit more warm and inviting.

O’Shea: Sidebar question, as a fellow fan of Conan O’Brien–how frustrating was it for you to see NBC bail on him as host of The Tonight Show so quickly?

Wallis: Despite the lives being affected, it made for great fued TV. I sort of had a soft spot for Jimmy Kimmel that has grown substantially since he called Leno out on his show. On a selfish level, when I go to LA, I’ve always gone to tapings of things (game shows, late night shows, anything) just to watch the chaos or see how shows vary the way the crew operates and functions etc and with Conan in LA, I was finally able to go to tapings of something I actually enjoy. And as we speak, Leno’s ratings as worse than what Conan’s were when they dismissed him. I assume the TBS show in November will shoot in LA still, but that doesn’t help us on our July trip, heh. He got a big chunk of money – it’s not the Tonight Show but I’m sure it helped take the sting off it. And the Tonight Show hasn’t really been the Tonight Show since May 1992 and they just chased their best chance at getting it back.

Gertrude Berg

Whenever I discover a gap in my television/pop culture culture, I have an immediate need to fill that gap. Aviva Kempner‘s documentary, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, was an important person and project I knew nothing about. To fill this information chasm, I contacted Kempner for an email interview. As detailed at the Cielsa Foundation website: “Ciesla Foundation produces and distributes award-winning films about strong and important, but often unknown, Jewish heroes. Its mission is to educate and inform audiences about social and public interest issues of the past and present through storytelling and filmmaking….Award-winning filmmaker Aviva Kempner, whose credits include Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, Today I Vote for My Joey, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, and Partisans of Vilna, is Ciesla’s director and founder. Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg chronicles the “humorous and eye-opening story of television pioneer Gertrude Berg.  She was the creator, principal writer, and star of The Goldbergs, a popular radio show for 17 years, which became television’s very first character-driven domestic sitcom in 1949. Berg received the first Best Actress Emmy in history, and paved the way for women in the entertainment industry.” My thanks to Kempner for her time. I hope the interview motivates you to donate to the foundation and to Kempner’s efforts.

Tim O’Shea: I’m sure you have many ideas for subjects to pursue, but after wrapping 2002′s Today I Vote for My Joey how many concepts (ballpark figure) did you consider and set aside before deciding upon Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg?

Aviva Kempner: I was thinking about doing a few dramatic scripts and did not get much further than research. I also had a couple more documentary ideas but none were fundable at first glance. Another one did receive research funds and am now happily back on working on that film on The Rosenwald Schools. Once I went to the Jewish Museum in New York’s exhibit of Jews Entertaining America and saw the Molly Goldberg living room I knew that was my next film project.

O’Shea: In terms of researching Goldberg, was there one pivotal interview or discovery that really proved to be the critical aspect in building the documentary?

Kempner: When I decided to do the film and read about the blacklisting of Philip Loeb and how it hurt also Berg I knew I had a striking third act. I also did not know how big a media empire she had so I knew that I would have a lot to tell audiences that would propel her into the status that she so deserved.

O’Shea: Leba Hertz’s San Francisco Chronicle review of the documentary includes this line: “What especially marks a Kempner documentary is how she is able to take a single subject and use that person as a launching point for a microcosm of the times.” Is that something you aim to do with each of your documentaries?

Kempner: I am very obsessed with the 30’s and 40′s ’cause as a child of a Holocaust survivor it so sadly affected my family. So I cannot stop figuring out the challenges and horrors, which butted against the accomplishments and heroism of Jewish figures of those days.

O’Shea: How vital was Berg’s family in terms of getting the full story for the documentary.

Kempner: Before I do a biopic I always ask permission from the family and the Berg family was very willing to let me do the film, gave wonderful interviews and great access to photos.

O’Shea: Understandably, the troubles of actor Philip Loeb are vital part of the Goldberg show, but how did you cover that aspect of the story without allowing it to dominate the documentary’s overall message?

Kempner: I am hoping that one day a filmmaker makes a film on Loeb and Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg helped inspire that. I think there is a feature that needs to be made about him.

O’Shea: Who would you say is the target audience for a documentary like this? I would think mainly a U.S. audience, but I realized I was wrong when I saw that there are showings in Canada.

Kempner: Target audience is older citizens, especially Jewish ones. Also TV buffs, feminists, documentary and history fans.

O’Shea: You will be speaking at an upcoming event (UCLA’s The Goldberg’s TV Show DVD Launch)–were there already plans to compile the DVDs before you started the documentary or did it come about partially because of the documentary?

Kempner: I think UCLA was considering bringing out the shows for a long time and the success of Yoo-Hoo, Mrs Goldberg convinced them such a DVD release would be successful.

O’Shea: Speaking of DVDs, what kind of extras do you plan to have with the Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg DVD when it is released in mid-2010?

Kempner: Great stories from the interviews I conducted originally from the film with actors on the show, family members and more Gertrude Berg appearances, including a hilarious one with a hula hoop on Steve Allen and a poignant one about the Chanukah stories if I raise the money. There will be great details about how Eli Mintz came to America, more on Philip Loeb and his relationship with Zero Mostel, how Anne Bancroft and Steve McQueen appeared on The Goldbergs and other great stories about Berg.

O’Shea: As part of your documentary releases, how often do you try to do benefit showings, as was recently held for Columbus Torah Academy?

Kempner: Different groups all over the country, like a Detroit synagogue library fund and the arts fund for the Jewish Community Center in DC, used the film as joint fundraisers.

O’Shea: As stated at the website: “The Ciesla Foundation produces and distributes award-winning films about strong and important, but often unknown, Jewish heroes.” Given that Casuse is “the story of Larry Casuse, a young Native American activist and inspiration to his peers” a one-time deviation from the foundation’s mission–or an attempt to broaden the scope of the foundation’s mission?

Kempner: It’s a story that I knew as I was in New Mexico, am a character in the script and I knew Larry well. I joke that its still an under known hero and its almost Jewish being tribal.

O’Shea: In a down economy like the one we are currently in, how much more critical are the donations to a 501 (c) (3) public, tax exempt education foundation like yours?

Kempner: I have been able to make my film because of the last line in Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire is“I depend on the kindness of strangers.” Wonderful people all over America have helped me make my films and I am so grateful to them for their help. They are making history with me.

O’Shea: Is there anything you’d like to discuss that I neglected to ask about?

Kempner: How do I raise the $190,000 I am still in debt?

Must Read Poster

Back in January 2009, I had the pleasure to interview Morgan Dews about his documentary, Must Read After My Death. It was quite enjoyable getting to watch the documentary then, and I was pleasantly surprised when he emailed me this week to let me know his work was available on DVD.

As noted at his website, the DVD (stuffed with great extras) can be bought for $20– and/or snag the original movie poster ($20) from Dews directly (“who gets to keep the proceeds!” Dews was quick to add and offer to sign for an extra buck).  To order it, you can send an email to Dews at info AT mustreadaftermydeath.com (I’m trying to spare Dews some spam here, please be sure to place a proper “@” in place of ” AT ” when you email him) to place a direct order with him. Or, if you prefer the comfort of Amazon for $19.99, you can go that route. Other options include watching online at Gigantic Digital for $2.99; iTunes for $9.99; and in the near term–Netflix (soon, according to Dews).

It’s been nearly a year since I watched the documentary, and parts of it were some powerful, it still lingers in my mind. See this documentary, please.

Does she actually need the money and isn’t she running the risk of overexposing herself? OK the latter part of that question is truly absurd, I’ll admit. Once you have the power to set up a school in a foreign country and are in the process of developing your OWN cable channel (no really its her OWN channel as in “Oprah Winfrey Network”) with Discovery (to replace Discovery Health) in 2010, you really cannot be overexposed.

If you have ever heard Oprah introduce Doris Kearns Goodwin enthusiastically (as she did around the time of Obama’s inauguration, when Kearns Goodwin appeared as a panelist) you know that Oprah can even make sedate presidential historians sound as exciting as the day Tom Cruise was hopping on Oprah’s couch. With that kind of voice power and sometimes (seemingly oddly placed) enthusiasm, I must admit I look forward to hearing what kind of intonation she’ll opt for when tackling subjects like “the star-nosed mole that hunts underwater using bubbles to smell its prey, to epic spectacles, including millions of fruit bats darkening the Zambian sky”. I just like to imagine here saying, as a teaser: “Next week’s episode, we visit with the star-nosed MOOOOOOOOOOLE!”

Yep, should be fun.

Here’s the basic background on the documentary:

“Crude Independence is a documentary film about the heartland in the process of transplanting itself, and its new heart is pumping oil. In 2006, the United States Geological Survey estimated there to be more than 200 billion barrels of crude oil resting in a previously unreachable formation beneath western North Dakota. With the advent of new drilling technologies, oil companies from far and wide are descending on small rural towns across the state with men and machinery in tow. Director Noah Hutton takes us to the town of Stanley (population 1300), sitting atop the largest oil discovery in the history of the North American continent, and captures the change wrought by the unprecedented boom. Through revealing interviews and breathtaking imagery of the northern plains, Crude Independence is a rumination on the future of small town America— a tale of change at the hands of the global energy market and America’s unyielding thirst for oil.”

And follow this link, to see which festivals will be screening the documentary in the coming months. One more detail–you have to respect any project that is executive produced by Jonathan Demme.

February 2, 2009 Update:  Hutton emailed me over the weekend to let me know the documentary, Crude Independence had been selected for the 2009 SXSW Film Festival, where it will be part of “the Emerging Visions competition, highlighting first-time and up and coming filmmakers.” Congrats to Hutton and Howard (along with the rest of the Couple 3 Film crew).

Tim O’Shea: When you first read the New York Times piece last January–were you actively looking for a subject to make a documentary about?

Noah Hutton: Yes. I had worked on a documentary the previous summer in Uganda and was trying to find a project of my own for the approaching summer. I read the New York Times piece and everything started falling into place. Oil prices were rising every day, I had just been blown away by There Will Be Blood, and after my first scouting trip out to North Dakota last January, I knew there was a film to be made there.

O’Shea: Was Sam Howard involved with the project from its beginning, or did he come onboard later in the process?

Hutton: After I came back from North Dakota last January, Sam was the first person I talked to and we began to develop the project together.

Sam Howard: I was initially indifferent to the idea, worried about summer internships and the lot, though Noah’s excitement intrigued me from the get-go. Eventually his ever-increasing interest led me to some literature on the subject, and from there I was one business school-related existential crisis away from getting on the plane.

O’Shea: Did it take a great deal of effort to get the townspeople to talk with the cameras on–or were they pretty open to talking with you from the outset?

Howard: This was a most interesting issue for me. Upon our arrival, the people of Stanley gave us a very mixed response, and I think that had a lot to do with where we came from. As college students from the east coast, many painted us as an adjunct to the “New York Slime(s),” and it became very apparent we would have to fight that image if we wanted to make any headway. We were able to do this honestly, because our agenda was far from a liberal smear campaign, a fact that definitely shines through in the final product. So warming the town to our presence ended up really being the key to its on-camera comfort. We did this by making sure we met first people without the cameras, allowing the interaction to take precedence over the future filming.

Hutton: One of the greatest successes on this front came when we were filming a town hall meeting at the courthouse in Stanley led by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND). We had interviewed Senator Dorgan a few days earlier in Medora, and when he came to Stanley for this town hall meeting that touched on issues with oil drilling in the region, we set up our cameras and were filming from the back of the courthouse. Near the end of the meeting the Senator paused and took a moment to announce our presence and introduce us to all the townspeople in the room. It was a powerful moment and one that really helped us to gain the trust of people we interviewed thereafter.

O’Shea: Both being the children of actors–do you think as documentary makers you are more sensitive to the need to respect people’s space/rights while at the same time pursuing a story as aggressively as possible (within reason)?

Hutton: I certainly have seen how unrelenting the press can be with my parents. But in terms of our own approach in a small rural town, we had no choice but to respect people’s privacy if we hoped to gain an ounce of trust in a place where everyone knows each other’s business. As Sam touched on earlier, we assured people that we had no agenda with the film—that we had no predetermined perspective or thesis about the boom that we were trying to capture. Our goal was to let the townsfolk and oil workers tell the story for themselves, so that the viewer of our film can shape their own opinion. There aren’t any environmental concerns about drilling presented in the film because we simply didn’t find that perspective up there. It may be there in ten years, but it’s really not there now.

Howard: I don’t think it really has anything to do with the profession of our parents. I have learned that any resonant conversations with others are usually had on a foundation of mutual respect – that type of respect is very subjective, and you have to be malleable to get the best out of your subjects.

O’Shea: When did you become interested in documentaries and making documentaries in particular? Have you ever seen Rosanna Arquette’s 2002 documentary, Searching for Debra Winger–or is that a documentary you both intentionally avoided?

Hutton: I’ve never watched Searching for Debra Winger in its entirety. I’ve seen the parts of it my mother was in and I was there when she taped the interview in our backyard for it. Personally, I became interested in documentaries around the time I started watching Werner Herzog’s films, and have since seen everything I can find that he has made and hold his work in the highest regard. I’ve had the good fortune of talking to him on several occasions about documentary filmmaking and his experiences. I was lucky enough to work on a documentary in the summer of 2007 in Uganda under the guidance of Academy Award Nomimee Susan Todd, a brilliant documentarian and a gifted teacher. It was that experience and advice from Mr. Herzog that compelled me to go out there and make a documentary, but my long-term hope is to direct narrative features.

O’Shea: In the early stages, when you were developing the proposal and looking to raise funds, is there one aspect that proved quite daunting and almost made you abandon the project?

Hutton: Our first plan of action after I returned from my first scouting trip to North Dakota was to apply for grants to fund the film. We were rejected across the board, which was difficult to regroup from at first, but I expected it to be difficult to get a first feature documentary funded with a limited reel and no other promised funding. We then moved on to find individual investors, which we did, and the rest was fairly smooth sailing.

O’Shea: Looking at your 2007 work, Shooting for Peace, can you look at your more recent work and see ways in which you have improved as a documentary maker?

Hutton: Shooting for Peace was an interesting project because it was a collaboration between myself and three others, all operating as co-directors. So there are parts of the film I feel like I had a strong hand in shaping and others that I had virtually none in. I have become bolder—more willing to approach strangers, make calls, and ask questions in interviews that may be uncomfortable on a personal level at the time but are for the good of the project. Initiative is the most important quality—if something interests you, just go out there and make the film, write the article, take the photographs.

O’Shea: Have either of you found that what Sam has learned in the Tisch School of Film producing program to benefit the development process with Crude Independence?

Hutton: Sam is the perfect partner for a project like this because his practicality, budgetary management and acute sense of story are what has kept and continues to keep this process moving forward and tethered to the real world and our real bank account. You should have seen the Excel spreadsheet he was managing on location in North Dakota. We came in under budget and even got to stop to see a movie on the drive back to Minneapolis.

Howard: The production minor at Tisch has definitely helped me in terms of practical story telling – I say practical, because there is always a means of making a film more efficiently without compromising its integrity. I’ve heard a plethora of lectures that have spoken to this topic wonderfully.

O’Shea: Before its release, do you intend to show the final documentary to John Warberg, Herb Geving or Senator Byron Dorgan, or other townspeople that had major presences in the project?

Hutton: We’ve already sent a copy to Mr. Warberg, and we will do the same for Mr. Geving and Senator Dorgan. We are hoping to screen the film at the Fargo Film Festival so that locals can come see it, and beyond that, we will send screeners to the town hall in Stanley, ND, for all those involved to pick up.

Howard: I think it’s important to note that we developed pretty great relationships with a lot of people that have transcended our departure. We keep in contact with friends there via email and text, and are very excited for their feedback on the final product.

O’Shea: How many festivals have you submitted the documentary for consideration? What’s on the horizon for the project in 2009?

Hutton: As of now we know that we’ll be in competition at Cinequest, The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and the Oxford Film Festival. (Editor’s Note: Since this interview was done, the film was picked by some of these festivals, as shown here.) We’ve submitted to a healthy lineup of festivals through the spring and early summer, and we’ll see what we can generate out of those. It’s a truly American story so we’re hoping that the film will be seen across the country in festivals large and small.

O’Shea: You are marketing the film on YouTube, Facebook, WordPress and IMDB.com–how much has the Internet been instrumental in drumming up interest in the project?

Hutton: We’re just starting to get the word out there about the film, and will make more of a push once we start showing it at festivals. We kept a WordPress blog throughout the entire process of making the film and have been able to keep in touch with a lot of people interested in the project through that platform.

Howard: I think that the Internet is the sole greatest asset to a new filmmaker, in terms of both generating interest, and eventual distribution. Even the fact that we have over 3,000 hits on our YouTube preview is astounding to me – there has never been such a cost-effective platform to show ones work.

O’Shea: Do you think the United States Geological Survey realized what economic changes they were setting into motion with their decisions back in 2006?

Howard: That’s an interesting question, because the economic impact of this discovery hasn’t yielded that much to the town itself in terms of the actual oil it is pumping – the price of gasoline is the same in North Dakota as it is in states that don’t have any oil to drill. In the same sense, the huge migration of oil companies to the Northern United States hasn’t drawn the necessary political interest (see the ’08 campaign cries for offshore drilling) to create an economic awareness amongst the greater American population. The fact is that we still get most of our oil from overseas, and we’re going to have to wait a few more years to see if this boom writes itself larger.

O’Shea: Given the economic upheaval that has swept the United States in recent months, have you considered doing a follow-up segment on the city in 2009 (for a DVD release)?

Hutton: As far as I have heard from people in Stanley, the drilling has continued despite the economic crisis and more jobs are still being created in North Dakota. In fact there was an article in the New York Times in December about how North Dakota continues to be immune to the crisis in the rest of the country. So if we did go back to make a follow-up film, we might find that we’re making the same film again.

Howard: I don’t necessarily see the gravity of the economic crisis coming anywhere near this area like it has to other places in rural or suburban America. Oil is in high demand, and will continue to be for the next decade. As long as this demand remains, towns like Stanley will continue to add a great deal of jobs, both in retail and infrastructure. The only thing to look out for that could warrant a follow-up would be if oil prices sunk to an unstable low (to the point where searching/drilling became unprofitable for companies), rendering that investment useless – though I truly don’t see that happening any time soon.

O’Shea: How critical has Alex Footman’s work editing the film improved the overall look and message of the project?

Hutton: Alex was crucial in the post-production because he came in with a fresh set of eyes as well as a sharp sense of story and narrative that he put to use in editing the film. We worked together through August and early September on the edit, and often Alex would continue editing certain sequences while I spent time composing the score for the film, and then we would reconvene and lay in the music. His work kept the film on message and he was constantly able to step back and ask the large questions about where the film was going. This allowed us to maintain a dialogue through post-production so that we could talk through any roadblocks we met in constructing a full cut of the film.

Tim O’Shea: Growing up with your grandmother, did you have any idea the degree of what she and her children endured as a family?

Morgan Dews: None. As I say at the beginning of this film, this is a story that my grandmother never ever talked to me about. I found out about it through the tapes after she died. She would always say, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” This story is basically the opposite of that. She had psychiatrists saying that she should express herself, her doubts, anger and fear. These audio diaries became a place for her to do that. So it really is made up of the worst hours of the worst days of the worst years. In that sense, it isn’t a complete picture of their life as a family, which was, in many ways, quite lovely. It is the secret story of the dark days of a family.

O’Shea: How hard was it to get the opening title sequence to mimic your grandmother’s handwriting?

Dews: That is her handwriting. “Allis’ Must Read After My Death File,” was quite literally on an envelope full of her transcripts of the tapes, and notes on those days and what was going on. The folder was given to my mother and uncles when she died.

O’Shea: At one point in the documentary, a family member is committed to a mental institution. It’s a jarring revelation and is one of the few details (to that point in the work) that is not revealed through audio recordings per se. Did you mean for it to be a startling moment for the viewer?

Dews: I think it was a pretty startling decision even at the time. It comes as a complete surprise, and I think is one of those shocking decisions that once taken, becomes very difficult to take back. I wanted the revelation to that my uncle had been committed to mirror the way it happened as understood in the tapes. It is startling.

O’Shea: Given how personally involved you are in the material, did you ever get another documentary maker’s opinion to make sure you were not losing your perspective on the project or making it to inaccessible to a un-involved observer?

Dews: Yes. I think Alison Bourke, my wonderfully talented executive producer saw the film and gave me notes 6 or 7 times. Not that we would always agreed, but I think she was most helpful in getting me focused thinking through every inch of the story. My wife Sarah Langley Dews was also there through the entire process from the very beginning and she is the credited story consultant, though she was much more involved than that implies. I also got many friends and family to screen the film and give me feedback, many many times. It can be quite difficult to maintain perspective while editing anything and something magical happens when you see a film with other people in the room. You literally start to see it through their eyes, and that can be extremely helpful.

I also have to say that my goal throughout the process of making this film was to shape a very classical story out of the material. I always thought that the strength of this story is the material and the craft with which it is constructed. I was always obsessed with the idea that you could make almost a narrative film out of this material, and have Allis tell the audience her story directly. That means that there was no need to interview anybody today and ask them what they felt about it, and no need for my connection to the material to be very explicit. My intention was to involve the viewer directly in Allis’ story and leave all my stories about that out.

O’Shea: How painful was it to watch this deconstruction of a family, your family–or were you able to detach yourself from the personal nature of the work?

Dews: It was excruciating. Some of the fight scenes took months to edit. It wasn’t very easy on the people around me either. After eight hours of listening to the same fight I was kind of shattered. At the same time though making the film was cathartic for me. It taught me a lot about the way I am and the way my family is. There is something amazing about the way families are gets passed on through the ages with very little change. I got to see that first hand.

O’Shea: Was your opinion of the mental health profession changed after making this documentary?

Dews: I find a lot of the ideas very helpful to me. I feel the same way I do about auto mechanics. You’re probably better off if you don’t need them, but when you do they can be extremely helpful or less so. Like so many things it depends on who you’re talking about. Certainly my family had some back luck, but I think they also were helped by some very decent competent and caring people.

O’Shea: Did you have to get permission to leave in some of the last names that were used (Dr. Lenn, for example)?

Dews: That’s an interesting question. I decided to leave my family’s last name out of the picture. In their case, it was to insulate them a little from the story, which is mostly about the trauma of their childhood. However in my grandparents case, and in the case of Dr. Lenn and others, this was really a story that could only be told after their deaths. I think if it had only involved my grandparents I would have used their last names. The short answer is that the dead have no image rights or say in the matter, and that’s why you can see John Wayne in a commercial today. Another answer is that Allis only referred to her experts by their last names. I would have had a very difficult time not using his name. Dr. Lenn was a doctor of social psychology and not a medical doctor or psychiatrist. The other answer is that, like all the people in the film, he is a product of the ideas of his time. He may come across as a bad guy, or may even be a bad guy, but like everyone else in the film, he is acting totally within the realm of the acceptable. The film works this way a bit, that part of the shock is just how different some things were, and how much other things are the same.

O’Shea: Amidst all the home movies, audio recordings and materials you sifted through for this documentary, was there one piece that when you found it you realized you had the lynchpin or pivotal piece for the documentary.

Dews: I think it was more an accumulation of things. At some point I said, “Wow, if I’m clever, I can make something out of ONLY this material, and that could be really amazing.” There was just a tipping point where I realized there was a good enough story and enough material to tell it. It was also realizing that this one very personal story was also very much about that time in history in America and had something to say I hope about american society.

O’Shea: How many festivals has the film been shown at? I noticed that at an upcoming festival you’re slotted to do a Q&A. Are you ever concerned that viewers will try to pry too much or do you consider no subject to be offlimits?

Dews: It’s been shown at about 33 festivals so far. I always really love showing the film to people and hearing what they have to say about it. On the one hand, I’m really interested as a filmmaker in how they react to the story, in what they take away, and in how the film combines with the stories the audiences bring. I really love talking about all of it. Audiences have really helped me learn about what was happing in this story and why these things went on. Audiences are really when stories come alive. Sometimes it’s really flattering when people pick up on things I was being very subtle about and sometimes they teach you about dynamics you were not even aware up, but were only able to sketch intuitively.

O’Shea: Do you intend to release the documentary on DVD–and will there be a commentary track involving any of the family (other than yourself, of course)?

Dews: The film will have a theatrical release and then come out on DVD/online/tv etc. I recently had the opportunity to do Q&A sessions at festivals with my mother and two uncles. They were all so fantastic. I wish I had been able to record those sessions. I would like to do that with them for the DVD, maybe just audio or maybe interviews. I’m not sure if another audio track is the right thing for this film, but certainly as an extra feature for the DVD and streaming elements.

O’Shea: Given that you come from musical family and you are a musician yourself, how important was to select the right composer for your documentary and how did you come to choose Paul Damian Hogan?

Dews: I am not a great musician, so it was clear to me from the beginning that I would need someone else to do the score. In the beginning I approached another really great composer, Albrecht Kunze. He made a score for the film, but we started working on it quite early and kind of wound up in totally different places. I showed him my very early ideas long before I really learned what the film was about. It was a very traumatizing thing for me because I had a really beautiful score from somebody I really admired but it wasn’t right for the film. I had a really great discussion with audiences in Amsterdam at IDFA. Somebody said they thought the music distanced them from the texts. I asked for a show of hands and about ninety percent agreed. Then I asked how many people loved the music and only about ten hands went up, and mine was among them.

About that time Gigantic Releasing made us an offer to distribute the film. They were willing to pay to rescore and suggested Paul. Mark Lipsky from Gigantic had taken me to see Paul Damian Hogan’s band Frances play a few weeks earlier and I really loved their neo-folk vibe. I didn’t make the connection right away to my film. A sound that was more connected to the sixties seemed to make a lot of sense. For me there is something very fifties science fiction about my film and the way my grandparents really embraced all this new frontier of technology that worked really well with Albrecht’s score. But people were having a really hard time connecting.

Paul was really a joy to work with, and I had also learned to be more up-front and vocal about wanting to create certain moods at certain points in the film and Paul was able to really work to give me what I wanted. Albrecht had started much earlier in the film with me, and the original trailer that I showed him was nothing like the final film and we only communicated by email, so we kind of wound up with two different interpretations of the material. By the time it got to work with Paul the film was finished. I was much more sure of what the story was and how the audience should be reacting at any given point. I had been screening the film for months, so it was much easier for me to give him the kind of direction he needed.

When I began working with Albrecht I felt that the whole way of doing scores was wrong and that you should really start out with the music as an emotional script for the work. But a story has a tempo of it’s own and it’s the story that is paramount and the music that should be working to that end. So now I have two scores that I really love for two totally different reasons. I hope somehow to make them both available at some point.

O’Shea: Are you still pursuing a “visual novelization” of your travels throughout Europe or what is your next project?

Dews: Oh absolutely! It’s a project I am so excited about. Mostly it’s working title is Road Movie, because the second act is a road trip I took with my best friends from Barcelona and my wife to be. But another title could be what my dear friend Paco says, “I’m happy when my friends are happy.” In a nutshel, it’s about a group of people move to Barcelona in the ’90s and become friends and then family for one another and how at one point they come of age together and go their separate ways. The road-trip was a really transformative experience for all of us and the point were we looked around and said, you should really go for it with that person, she’s a good partner for you. We basically married each other off.

The ‘visual novelization’ comes from the idea of taking a universe of footage my friends and I all created; videos, super 8, photographs, recordings, etc. and making a sort of autobiographical novel out of it. It’s a really similar idea to what I’ve done with Must Read After My Death. It’s an attempt to create a “fictional” and intimate narrative from the facts and souvenirs of your life. It really wants to be playful in a cinematic sense and honest in an emotional sense. My friends and loved ones are not as eager as I am to lay out their lives for all to see, so I’ve promised to fabricate as much as possible and cover them with the veil of fiction. Call it a fictional documentary comedy about love and friendship.

O’Shea: What else is on the creative horizon for you in the near to long term?

Dews: Just on me I have a list of ideas for 16 fiction and documentary films that are far to juicy and on the tip of your tongue to talk about. A couple I want to do with my wife, one I want to do with my mother. I’m trying to work with a few writers on fiction scripts for dramas and thrillers and I would LOVE to do science fiction, one of the great loves of my childhood. There’s always that question of what is it you want to spend your time doing. MRAMD was really healthy for me to do in terms of learning about my family when I’m about to embark on creating a family of my own. I’m obsessed with my Road Movie now and I hope I’ll continue to pick the projects that I simply MUST do. It makes choosing so much easier!

It’s an interesting tale, which I was able to watch thank to an AJFF screener, both from a baseball and family sense. It’s got a comical tinge to the project, for example, as the baseball tryouts were being shown the Talking Heads’ song, Road to Nowhere, was played. Throughout the film, you feel like the effort to form theIBL is doomed, whether it was or not. But that aspect of the tale was secondary to me. For me, it’s a story about loss and the importance of family, and in particular father and son dynamics.

I don’t think that the filmmakers intended to take a critical eye at the IBL’s formation. Periodically they film planning meetings and it seems that some concerns dismissed by senior leadership are briefly revealed. My favorite scene that show the blunt honesty behind the scenes is at the first tryout. Dan Duquette, (Former Boston Red Sox executive) director of baseball operations for IBL, pulled the tryout organizers aside and advised them to get the amateur tryout entrants far away from the real prospects before someone valuable got hurt. Duquette said in a more colorful, profanity-laced manner.

Having found out what happened to the IBL after the documentary was finished, I wish the filmmakers had spelled out the outcome more, but I think that’s more my own journalistic/closure curiousity. As the tale of a journey towards achieving several people’s dreams, it makes for a fine film honestly.