An interview with Debra Granik – My kind of filmmaker
Stray Dog is the latest project by Oscar-nominated independent filmmaker Debra Granik. This time around Granik chronicles the unusual life of Ron “Stray Dog” Hall, a Southern Missouri resident and Vietnam veteran, who devotes his time to helping a diverse range of people including, family, neighbors and fellow combat veterans. Granik met Ron in a church of all places and cast him in a minor role in her chilling drama Winter’s Bone for which Jennifer Lawrence earned her first Oscar nomination in 2010.
Employed as an RV park manager, audiences see a relaxed, leather-clad Ron hanging out with his biker friends at trailer parks, smoking, dancing and shinin’ (drinking moonshine). As the doc progresses, we realize that there is a lot more to Ron than meets the eye. For instance, he takes online Spanish lessons so he can improve communication with his new Mexican wife, Alicia. While the duo seem to have a loving relationship, it is strained because her two sons Angel and Jesus still live in Mexico City. Viewers also learn of the emotional impact of Ron’s two stints in Vietnam. In spite of his macho demeanor, he receives professional counselling to help with sadness, self-loathing, guilt and nightmares. Ron manages his emotional trauma by being a very productive person; his acts of kindness are a form of therapy.
Ron, with his fellow comrades takes part in motor cycle convoys to a Vietnam Memorial in DC and attends the funerals of veterans even when he doesn’t know them personally. Understanding what it’s like to be poor, Ron worries about the future for his daughter and young grandchild from a previous marriage in a small town where economic hardship is rife. When stylish Angel and Jesus finally reach America, we observe their dismay at the way of life in a rural town.
Overall this slice of American life documentary received very positive press following its premiere at the LA Film Festival. Granik manages to uncover an unusual human being, an upstanding citizen who cares about the world and the people who inhabit it. From doing repairs for the elderly to lending money to those who have fallen on hard times, Ron “Stray Dog” Hall is always there. IFQ enjoyed talking at length to Debra Granik about the filming of Stray Dog, her cinematic influences and the subject matter she is drawn to.
Independent Film Quarterly (IFQ): Tell me a bit about how you got started as an independent filmmaker?
Debra Granik (DK): I got started making training and industrial films for trade unions. These films featured people in their workplaces. All the locations were photogenic; the work had lots of texture and details, and they were all places I had never been before — a plastics factory in Leominster, MA, following an exterminator in a Boston housing project, the inner workings of a large supermarket. As I photographed, I started to dwell and wonder about peoples’ survival techniques, what makes work bearable, what keeps life from being dreary, unexpected affiliations and diversions people have. I got absorbed in observing people in their work, which led to wondering about what happened outside of work. From this early experience, I knew I loved observing and wondering. Documenting and fictionalizing. I had a proclivity toward voyeurism and curiosity which are all in the wonderment cauldron.
IFQ: Your latest project is an unusual follow up film to Winter’s Bone although there is obviously a connection. Tell us a bit about how you crossed paths with Ron and the time you spent with him?
DG: I met Ron in a Biker Church near Branson, Missouri. I was struck hard by staring at the word VIETNAM tattooed on the arm of the man next to me in the pew. I could not participate in the church service spiritually in an authentic way, so I was left as an outside observer, with time to look around. The closest person to observe was Ron. I guess the last word I expected to read that day was “Vietnam.” Being next to him, led to the mental chain of events: Who is this man? Where does he live? With whom? When and how did Vietnam factor into his life? What happened to him there? What happened to him afterwards? What does his biker identity mean to him? What does it mean to me? What would happen if I talked to him? I had to reel my wondering back in because at that moment I was in the throes of casting Winter’s Bone. The reason I was in the church in the first place was to look for some burly local men to cast, and here he was. Next, I had to work up the nerve to approach him. After the service, as he went to his bike, I hurried after him. I had to do the awkward cold call, ” Hi, I’m, uh, doing a project in the area, and I’m wondering if ….”
Ron was wonderful to work with. He did a stronger version of the scene than what was written. He did one so strong that my brain could not have generated the text in which he used a local expression, “I’ll nail your dick to the wall.” He had a lot of color and panache, a presence and a sensitivity. I was definitely attracted to his articulate and expressive qualities.
After the shooting of Winter’s Bone wrapped, I visited him on his own turf to say good-bye. At his true-life home, I had a chance to glimpse his system of survival, the textures of his RV park homestead, the dwellings, his neighbors, the important role of dog spirit guides–layers and layers of his life experiences that make one think about how we put meaning together with pieces of our lives that are hard to reconcile. There was lots to note and observe throughout the park, many contradictions and contrasts which is what sparks us to think and wonder about day to day life and choices different from our own. That’s the mettle of life that lots of doc filmmakers like me get drawn to.
IFQ: One of the film’s strong themes is about bridging cultural differences, did you find you had to do that yourself to fit in at the trailer park, mixing with the locals to secure the footage you needed?
DG: Cultural differences are vast and, yes, in as much as I would like a chance to learn something about another person’s lifestyle and existence, it goes both ways. The looker and the look back. With someone like Stray Dog, he learns about me from the questions that I ask (which reveal what I don’t know). He knows I have no combat experience, he can see that my diet is shaped by my social class, he can see that I am not at home with firearms, that I am anxious about militias, he can tell that I’ve never ridden a motorcycle. We mutually try to decipher each other. Ron’s friends were for the most part open and receptive to the notion of recording and photographing. There is mutual curiosity and mutual bemusement. In my forays into documenting, I have found that there can be a pleasure in telling a stranger something about your interpretation of things, your customs, especially if the stranger seems interested. I am overt about my interest.
IFQ: Obviously Ron’s Vietnam career was a big part of why you chose to get up close and personal with him.
DG: Vietnam was the route of entry. America’s involvement in South East Asia shaped a lot of my world view, and yet I had never had a chance to speak with and listen to someone who had been involved viscerally and emotionally. To a large extent, and any doc filmmaker will say this, getting up close and personal is due to the person you’re following permitting this access. Ron made it possible. He is eager for opportunities to contemplate the why and how of his time on this planet, and therefore he doesn’t throw up a lot of walls.
IFQ: What challenges did you face with making this film? Although, thankfully you seemed to have the support of the whole community there
DG: On the ride across country with the large convoy of bikers, we did have a big challenge. The biggest obstacles with neo-realism practiced outside your own social class, race or gender will be just that – crossing into those chasms of difference. One will always need a ferryman to bring you across. Once you find that person, you can slowly enter an arena you may not know. You can be told of the ways, shown the customs, try to hear of the beliefs, the fears, the protocols. You get cross-pollinated. You leave feeling more than when you arrived, you leave with the bitter-sweet of being more tuned-in to another’s existence. And even with your guide, there are places you can’t go. Places where people let you know, you are not welcome. We do not want to be filmed. There’s no glory in filming people who don’t want to be filmed. In some instances there’s no way to talk yourself out of being lumped together with the news media or the fear of being misrepresented. There will certainly be those times, when as an outsider, the people you are trying to film feel leery about what you will do with the images. Of course, the way a person asks you to stop filming affects how you feel about yourself and your work. I have to concede that frequently it’s hard for me (and perhaps other filmmakers) to accept NO.
We experienced this situation very bluntly when some bikers on the run did not want us to record. Regardless of whether we thought we were filming highly visible public events, members of the group were not comfortable with our presence. They felt infiltrated. We had to respect that. Those are their feelings. We had to rein in our desires to record. We didn’t want to be shut down completely. It was an intimidating process to negotiate.
IFQ: Not to generalize, it seems you are drawn to films that focus on strong people living in small, rural towns? Can you elaborate on the catalyst for helming this project?
DG: I gravitate toward visual anthropology. I am drawn to life paths that are different from my own. I find that my observation skills are sharper when the setting is not familiar. I’m more “on” and thinking deeper when there’s new incoming information. They don’t have to be rural, but I guess that stoic, scrappy survivors always steal my heart. They are my heroes of everyday life.
IFQ: Who would you say has influenced your filmmaking style?
DG: Italian neo-realists, British neo-realists (old and new from Tony Richardson and Ken Loach to Shane Meadows and Andrea Arnold). Czech new wave. Recently, I am appreciating the American realists of the 40’s. So many influences–some just on the visual level. Others on the content or storytelling decisions/ risks taken. On the doc front, I was really sparked by Gianfranco Rossi’s essayistic doc Sacro Gra and a couple of years back when Detropia came out, I was excited about the liberating form that Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady were introducing into the American doc landscape. The list is long! Most recently, I saw the film Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski, and I got excited about using a tripod again. I’d say that’s an example of getting influenced very quickly.
IFQ: Are you surprised about the attention it received as well as awards?
DG: It was very hard to get traction for this film. The Los Angeles Film Festival really got behind it, and that was the turning point for the film to have a chance to be out in the world. LAFF really strived for biodiversity and took risks with their selections. It was a big honor to be included there. Some film journalists who responded positively to the film wrote about it in a way that generated interest in people who enjoy docs, which is also crucial to the film having a life. And then there’s the jury of fellow filmmakers who give you that much needed boost by conferring their appreciation on the film, which also feeds into people taking note of the film. When we were about to show the film publicly for the first time, Ron commented, “I ain’t everyone’s cup of tea,” and we had to acknowledge that we want to be strong enough to explore themes and life experiences that may not have popular appeal. But of course, after you and your team spend a long time on something, and the participants give generously of their time, it can be rather heart-breaking if it doesn’t take its journey to find the other beings who identify with the themes and feelings of the film. I never take any support for granted, I’m always surprised, relieved, and appreciative because we filmmakers want our cultural-worker contracts to be renewed. [Smiles.] We want some folks to want us to make another film.
IFQ: Has Ron and his family attended any premieres with you? If so how do they like showbiz?
DG: Ron is going to meet us this Fall for various screenings in the Mid-west. We hope he’ll come to a European festival as well. So far, we’ve only screened it on a personal level with Ron, the family and a few neighbors at a local theater in Springfield, Missouri called the Moxie. I hope he will find it interesting to exchange a few ideas with festival audiences in some places out of his zip code. Alicia is much more hesitant. She came into the scene when Ron had already been exposed to us and a crew. She was quite jolted by the idea that we’d be following them around. After a bit, she seemed to acclimate, and yet our presence always seemed to hold a mirror to the very difficult choices she had to make and the financial stresses embedded in rural American life. In that way, our presence was also somewhat uncomfortable for her. The rub was that we found her very dynamic, full of tenacity and loyalty, and a woman of the North American continent zeitgeist whose life choices have poignant universal identification. In short, Ron and Alicia and their kin do not seek show biz, but they’ve said, if they can make a helpful contribution to a festival screening, they will. Ron does feel that Vets being able to communicate with other Vets is very meaningful and cites this as one of his primary motivations for letting us hone in on him.
IFQ: How will Americans get to see this film, is there a distribution plan in place for a specialized doc such as this?
DG: We’ve had a rich dialogue with ITVS, and we’re investigating with them if the film could be a good match. An ITVS screening would make the film significantly available! We’re interested in the brave individuals and entities who are valiantly getting docs into circulation — it’s been exciting to see quite a few recent docs in theaters, after having seen them on festival programs and thinking, “I hope I get a chance to see that.” We hope someone can find a way to bring it out and about for those doc supporters out there, which seems to be a thriving audience.
IFQ: What is your message for viewers?
DG: The idea of message is always tricky because it seems like the meaning one gets from a film is always changing. As the maker, I feel like I learn what the film holds for people through audiences speaking about what they get out of it. That was especially important for me to hear when we were screening cuts of the film for colleagues and peers. The “message” or thoughts I got out of the process of making it was that there’s an AND in most everything, very little is black or white. The film forced me to dwell on the cost of war, class and war, some timeless issues in human history that we seem to get amnesia about, or minimize every 10-15 years. There’s not a message as much as a set of impressions about what biker culture fulfills in the lives of combat veterans, brotherhood, and the role of memories that never go away.
IFQ: What is your idea of success at a personal and professional level?
DG: My idea of success is to finish something I set out to do. It’s easy to worry that something isn’t as strong as you envisioned it was, or how it existed in your imagination. Another idea of success is having my assumptions change, for my set attitudes to be prodded and stretched, for me to push myself to look at something differently. I feel a sense of success when my brain likes spending time in the world of the project, taking the notes, looking, evaluating the images, trying to piece them together. I get excited and feel a sense of success when I laugh or get goose bumps from a scene or something a person on screen says or does. If it moved me, I feel a great sense of the power of images and interpretation, and then I’m happy I’m doing this work. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things (Henry Miller), and on a good day, that’s what I feel about filmmaking as my life’s work.
IFQ: Finally what’s next in terms of projects?
DG: Another adaptation of a novel for a narrative feature! One of our colleagues is writing the script for a mini-series for TV, hard-hitting, suspenseful lesser known American history. Meanwhile, the doc ideas keep rolling in. It’s hard to not run off and impulsively start one. I see how filmmakers like Herzog get that bug.