A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

I spent five or six days with Charleen [Swansea]. That was probably the shortest period overall that I spent with anybody. She's so intense, things happen so quickly with her, that I didn't need to be there long. Of course, there were also times when I'd go with her prepared to film, and film nothing because it wasn't interesting enough. I'd just relax and enjoy myself if I could.

MacDonald: Sherman's March

is another portrait of the South, and like the other films, it includes moments of interrelationship between whites and blacks. Your conversation with the fellow whose daughter has died is especially memorable.

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McElwee:

It's an amazing moment. It happened totally unpredictably. I was there because the car with its mechanical woes was becoming a theme I thought I might be able to develop. It's pretty much a single unedited shot that takes you from a discussion of the car to his son to his daughter's death to my mother's death. To me, that's preferable to piecing together five different shots to create the same impression. This way you can see the emotional shift in his eyes, hear it in our voices, as we move from discussing something that's mundane to something that's of profound importance to both of us. It's the kind of thing you could never set up ahead of time because people will put up their defenses. If I'd said, "I'd like to talk a little bit with you about the death of your daughter," he might have done it, but it would not have happened organically the way it did. That's something I feel very strongly about. Another instance of this is when I'm talking to Mary, the fashion model, near the opening of the film. I haven't seen her since we were kids. We start off talking about something very superficialwhere we used to play Supermanthen the conversation turns to her kids, then to her feelings about divorce. Again, it's all one shot and you can track the development of the dialogue in her eyes. There's a moment of real sadness there that to me is absolutely amazing.

MacDonald:

Did you assume from the beginning that the film was going to be a survey of Southern womanhood?

McElwee: I think that the way in which the film begins to put itself on track is fairly accurately described in the film itself. I knew I didn't want to make a

Space Coast

-like documentary of the South. I thought I would do a synthesis of

Backyard

and

Space Coast:

I would film some of my relatives, but basically the film would not be so much about me as about my homeland. I would have a personality, but initially I didn't know it would be as important to the film as it turned out to be. I began filming the Scottish games, thinking, "Well, here's an interesting event." The imagery was sort of bizarre: these guys tossing huge phallic poles around, guys in kilts wrestling on the groundall of it in the American South. It had a surreal quality.

The breakthrough occurred with my sister on the following day, when she saidsomewhat seriously, somewhat joking"You should use the camera as a way to meet women." She's sincerely upset about my having ended my relationship with my girlfriend, and she's looking for ways to get me back on my feet. I think she perceived me as being incapable of resurrecting my lifea lot worse off than I really was. (Obviously I had the wherewithal to get a camera on my shoulder and start filming something.) But at the point when she gave me her advice about how to use the camera, I experienced a minor epiphany. The next thing that happened was the announcement that Mary was in the neighborhood. Why

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not look her up

with the camera

and see what happens? The miniportrait of Mary went well. She was gone the next day, so there was no potential for filming her more, but it was a start. And it was a microcosm of how the film might work.

Then I met Pat, who was a natural film subject. She loved being filmed, had no self-consciousness whatsoever, was somewhat outrageous, articulate, and had bizarre outlooks on life. And she had nothing to do but allow me to film her. It was perfect.

MacDonald:

One complaint I've heard about

Sherman's March

is that you center on women who are bizarre, a little wacky, maybe objects of patronizing humor.

McElwee:

I see them as being independent and intelligent for the most part. But eccentric, yes. I don't see anything wrong with having chosen women who are eccentric, who are unusual. Having decided to film women who are independent in the South means they're going to have to be somewhat eccentric. The fact that they decided not to embrace the more traditional conservative values of the South, nor to accept the roles that most Southern women seem to accept, made them by definition somewhat eccentric.