Austinist Interviews SXSW: The Unforeseen Director Laura Dunn

I was actually on my way to Israel to do some work on water there when Terry called, and so that turned me in a different direction, and that’s how the film started. And Terry was a really wonderful, active mentor in the process… off and on, depending on where his own work schedule was. He probably isn’t going to take a lot of credit, but the truth is, he was instrumental in the original vision for the film.

How do you go about taking a story like this, with a decades-long history, and distilling it down into a digestible documentary form?

It’s sort of an intuitive process for me. I collected about 150 hours of footage for the film over the course of three years, and then it took me about two years to edit. So my process starts with reading everything I can find on the subject, and then targeting a handful of people I want to talk with. And usually those people lead me to more people who lead me to more people.

In my case, I had several days worth of non-stop conversation with Gary Bradley before I ever turned the camera on. I became interested in him because he was very charismatic and interesting and complex, and he was in a time of real transition in his life, so he was very interesting to talk to. So in some cases you just sort of follow your nose and find what’s interesting. And then you shoot way more than you can use—and then the editing process, for me, is very reflective of, “okay, what is it that I’m trying to say?” because there’s a hundred stories here that are interesting, and they’re all interconnected, but what are the core messages I want to get across?

For me it was a combination – I didn’t want to demonize the enemy, I wanted to sort of love my proverbial “enemy”. You want to love thy neighbor as thyself, so to speak. So I’m trying to look at Gary as a human being and be compassionate, and at the same time, there is a call to arms about the environment. You have to wake people up so that they realize there’s something precious at stake. Then you take all the footage and analyze it and try to find the pieces within it that have a narrative. And on top of all of that, I have to try to point to the larger themes I’m trying to get at.

You were talking about the movie being a microcosm of a larger theme. Do you think that the American Dream is fundamentally at odds with sustainable development? I mean, this is a country—especially here in the south and the west—that was in large part settled with a “tame and conquer the land” attitude. Is there such thing as “sustainable development” in America?

Well, I do think there’s such thing as sustainable development, and there are a lot of examples of people on small scales doing it here in Austin. Working on this project, I’ve become really interested in “green building” and not just “green-washing” of construction projects, but really minimizing your footprint. I mean, we all have to have a home and a place to live, so I do think that humans naturally have an impact on the environment, but that it doesn’t have to be in a way that destroys the environment for future generations.

Unfortunately, the “American Dream” has become owning a house with a yard and a fence around it. And these days, unfortunately, that house has to be at least 2300 square feet, and you have to have a green lawn, and there are all these connotations and association that are built into the American Dream that—given where we are in terms of our environment, especially in a place like Texas—are totally at odds with a sustainable future. And I think that’s one of the things I describe in my film. It’s kind of a meditation on the American Dream.
I spent a lot of time interviewing people who live out in these subdivisions, and they’re great people and they’re sympathetic. They just want to have a safe neighborhood for their kids, or maybe they’re first time homeowners and they can’t afford to live in Hyde Park. And so it’s not that they have bad intentions or that they’re bad people, it’s just that we have an economic model that doesn’t work.

That’s one of the interesting things about this city is that to not live out in the suburbs is an expensive proposition.

That’s so true—and it’s a real contradiction because Austin didn’t used to be that way. And you still see a lot of the seeds… the “true Austinites” who lived here when it was a much smaller town, and when the whole culture was different. The Chamber of Commerce and the development interests have intensely lured business since then, and you now have a very different culture emerging. And it’s not affordable for, say, filmmakers to live in Austin (laughs).

Is this a good city to be a filmmaker in?

Definitely. I came of age as a filmmaker here – I went to film school here, and found my voice as a filmmaker here. For me personally, it’s been a great place. I find Austin, and Texas in general, as a big field of resources. I think you have to take a lot of initiative; you have to really make of it what you want. But if you have that kind of drive, I think it’s a fabulous place. And I also think it’s a healthy place to make movies, because moviemaking is so intense and all-consuming. But in Austin, it’s a very relaxed atmosphere; so I think that can help you maybe have more balance in your life while you’re making your art. I lived in New York for a while, and I’ve been in LA, and I don’t think you get the same sort of nurturing, artistic environment there as you would here. And it’s smaller—the community is closely knit. There are good things and bad things about that, but it’s great for me.

Is the market for documentaries changing? With the success of films like An Inconvenient Truth, is it easier to market a documentary now than it has historically been?

Yes and no. I think for a while it was easier, and distributors who would never look at a documentary before were looking at and buying a lot of documentaries. Unfortunately, 2006 was not a good year at the box office for documentaries. The only film that was a real breakthrough and a financial success was An Inconvenient Truth. And while that was a great success, there were lots of smaller docs that were in theatres that distributors took risks on that really did not do well and didn’t make a profit. So I think distributors now are sort of wary of documentaries. There’s been sort of a backlash form all the enthusiasm.

But that being said, I think that in the sort of zeitgeist, culturally, people are more aware of and interested in documentaries. So it’s sort of a double-edged sword. I think documentaries will continue to be in high demand, but it’s a matter of convincing the channels and the gatekeepers that they need to keep buying documentaries and promoting them in theatres.

Do you think the backlash might have anything to do with the difference in opinion about whether a documentary should express a point of view or not? Is a documentary supposed to be, primarily, even-handed, or is it supposed to express a certain opinion?

My personal take—I remember in film school there always being this debate about objectivity versus subjectivity, and I think one of the reasons I got into documentary filmmaking to begin with is that my tendencies are sort of journalistic. I think that when I watch a lot of documentaries or, say, the news, I think there’s sort of a false assumption that they’re telling the “truth” and that it’s objective. But nothing’s objective—there’s always a point of view.

So I think if you make a documentary, and in the process of making it you try with everything you’ve got to try to understand the story with integrity and to be open and impressionable and to learn about the story rather than to use all the pieces in it as pawns for your pre-conceived agenda, I think then you should express your point of view, because that’s honest. That’s an honest way to tell a story.

My feeling is that there’s always a point of view – it’s just a matter of how you express it. Are you going to deny it and pretend there isn’t a point of view? Or are you going to express it? And then the question becomes, what is your point of view? And I think with someone like Michael Moore, his point of view is often that he has it all figured out, and that everyone else is stupid. And he may be right… but that’s definitely not my point of view. I think a lot of times, it’s not so much whether you’re supposed to express your point of view as—what is your point of view, and how does it come across?

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