High on the velvety steps of the Seattle International Film Festival‘s opening night gala, I had a chance to speak with Clark Gregg, the one actor who has been in as many Marvel films as Robert Downey Jr. From the first inklings of the Marvel Movie Universe in Iron Man, Gregg has played Agent Coulson, an uncharacteristically likeable but no-nonsense agent of S.H.I.E.L.D; the super-secret, super-hero organization led by Samuel L. Jackson‘s Nick Fury. S.H.I.E.L.D has had a hand in all of the Marvel movies leading up to The Avengers as they are the organization responsible for assembling the troop of heroes together and Gregg, alongside Jackson, have been the face of The Avengers years before the movie’s release.

For those who haven’t seen The Avengers, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you never will but will still give you fair warning that there are some SPOILERS in here for it. In the second act of The Avengers, Gregg’s Coulson is run through by villain Loki with an enchanted scepter, effectively gutting Coulson and leaving him to die wide-eyed on camera. Later, his death is used as motivation for the team to drop their egos and unite into a viable team. As such, Coulson is the unsung hero, the catalyst for the Avengers assembly and their saving NYC.

With the announcement of Marvel’s network television show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, many were speculating the return of Coulson, even though this wouldn’t strictly make sense in relation to The Avengers. However, it turns out that Coulson is still alive…but Gregg had no idea that he was.

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What was it like having your character come back from the dead?

Clark Gregg: Well even though I knew that this was the comic book world, I didn’t get my hopes up. His death was the motivation for the Avengers to unite so it was very cut and dry. I was sad to be leaving this character that I played for four movies but it had to be done for the sake of the story.

So you had no idea that you would be returning?

CG: No. It seemed really definitive. When we were shooting the scene where he dies, I kept asking if they want shoot it again where they just graze me, because they gutted me pretty good. I thought if I was ever going to return, they might want a version where I didn’t look so dead but that was what we went with. When I got the call, I was as surprised as anyone else. I thought he was dead.

What has it been like working on the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D?

CG: It’s been really similar to the movie because Joss is writing, directing and producing. But instead of having all the superheroes, this is about real world people and the group that Coulson leads and works with.

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The question that remains is whether or not Whedon had any intention of keeping Coulson alive after the series. I would assume that Whedon built himself a little loophole with the whole “blood-covered cards cards from the locker” gambit, giving himself an out if The Avengers was the success that it eventually was and he wanted to continue being able to use Coulson.

With Whedon given the reins to the television show, the only natural helmer of that project was Gregg’s Coulson so it goes without saying that the whole revival, however deviant and perhaps unwarranted, is a necessary evil to the success of that spinoff.

As to whether or not the television show will be a hit or not, things are still up in the air but my gut is telling me that it’ll be dead in the water in terms of critical reaction but will still claim a legion of fans who want to be in the know for the ongoing Marvel Movie Universe saga. For those of you who haven’t seen the trailer for the ABC‘s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. check it out right here:

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Hot off the success of his documentary, I had a chance to sit down with Tom Berninger of Mistaken For Strangers. Brother to The National frontman, Matt Berninger, and emerging filmmaker, Tom set out with the band for their year-long world tour with all intentions of making a rock doc. He came away with something else entirely. Boldly turning the camera on himself, Tom’s final product was an intimate take on familial challenges and finding himself rather than a portrait of the much loved indie rock sensation.

Talking about the reaction to the film, his take on the lost nature of the tech generation, indie rock vs. metal, his relationship with his brother,
horror movies, how the film “needed a Darth Vader” and what he would like to do next (a Johnny Appleseed movie?), Tom had a lot to say.

Although the film has no current plans for a major theatrical release, it has been making the festival circuit rounds after opening the Tribeca Music Festival in New York. Next, it will hop continents over to Sydney, Australia for the Sydney Film Festival. Keep an eye out for this one as it’s definitely worth a watch. For more thoughts on the film, click on over to our review of Berninger’s Mistaken for Strangers.

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How have you liked Seattle so far?


Tom Berninger: It’s been great. I’ve been here many times in my life. My sister lives here so I’ve visited the city a lot.

I didn’t know you had a sister.

TB: Yeah, she’s not in the movie.

Do you have more siblings than Matt and your sister?

TB: I have an older sister and an older brother. My sister is 10 years older than me and my brother is 9 years older. I’m the surprise 9 years later. She came to the screening last night and I get the same question every single screening, “How does your sister feel? Where is your sister in it?” I had to call her up and ask, “How do you feel?” She’s hilarious. She was like, “I didn’t really care at first until it got really popular, now I have a problem with it.” She had seen the movie, and like I say, our family has a sense of humor that could be taken the wrong way and out of context so some of the things she says is hilarious but we couldn’t get it in without making her look like a bitch. I couldn’t do it or she would never forgive me.

The song ‘Mistaken for Strangers’ for which the documentary is named seems to be about some kind of drifter, unrecognizable in the night even by those closest to them. Do you identify with this mysterious man and do you find parallels between him and your relationship with your brother and is that why you named the documentary after that song?

TB: We had a lot of different names for the movie. The first name was ‘Summer Lovin’ Torture Party,’ which is a lyric from the last album, and then the other title was ‘For Those About to Weep’.

That would be suiting.

TB: Yeah, I liked it because it was a play on the AC/DC song and what a lot of people consider as The National’s music which is solemn. We thought that was good but some people didn’t like that so eventually we sent out a big email asking people to help with the title and we got ‘Mistaken for Strangers’ and that was great.

It’s a very suiting title because it sums up your relationship with Matt.

TB: It is. It’s a great title. I don’t really take songs literally but me and my producer Craig Charland said sometime a long time ago about how one of the themes of the movie is people our age, late 20’s, early 30’s, who are still kind of lost. Either they have good jobs or bad jobs but life is unfulfilling. This isn’t the first generation where a lot of people aren’t gonna make as much money as their parents but there’s a lot of people out there who feel lost and it’s ok. You’ll figure it out in 5 years, and I’m not saying never give up, but you’ll figure it out at some point in time.

That’s funny you say that because that’s what I took away from the film.

TB: We knew that there was a part of the movie that was a great thread throughout the movie and we kind of just happened upon it where the camera is on me all the time and we chose these moments where I was feeling like crap. Like when they wanted me to invited the girl and I said no because I’m not ready. It’s bullshit because you should just embrace life but I think people our age are expecting something more and I don’t know if there is anymore. I hated my 20’s but I’m loving my 30’s. It took me 10 years of being lost.

Being lost is part of our generation in a way that it never was necessarily a part of our parents’ generation. You get out of college, you get married, find a job and stay with it for 30 years and that’s just not the formula anymore.

TB: There’s this idea of being happy like, “I should be happy now. I should be feeling good. Why am I not happy? My parents were happy,” but were they? I came from Cincinnati, Ohio and my parents married at 24, 23. That was kind of late in the early 60’s. Who knows if they were happy and if they felt like they made the right choices. Our generation doesn’t know what’s best. Maybe it was simpler times back then and maybe that is happiness: finding that person that you’re ok with. This generation, we’re always searching for something better and I don’t know if there is anything better. It is what it is. It takes a lot more to make us happy but people are searching. The idea of the title certainly reflects me and my brother as we are so far apart in age and we definitely grew up to be completely different people. I was searching for a creatively outlet because I didn’t have a band or another four guys around me to help me do my thing. I only had myself and I was self defeating for a long time.

Did the process of making the film help your relationship with Matt?

TB: Absolutely. He didn’t really know what I was doing or what this movie was gonna be until late in the editing stage but he saw it and him and Carin Besser, the other producer, and Matt’s wife, who also helped me edit, pushed me to keep filming myself. We knew that there was something in the movie with me as the main subject matter that is important and my life and struggle are something that a lot of people can relate to. We’ve always had respect for each other but I’ve figured out his way of thinking and his creative process, which at times can be overbearing, but he’s starting to figure out the way I work. I don’t quite know where I’m going but I’m going forward in all directions. I don’t always have a clear vision where he might. He always, like he says, has delusion optimism where whatever you’re doing just think it’s great because 99 percent of the time it’s not gonna be great but that 1 percent of the time, that little sentence in the script or that one little cut will be great and we’ll keep that part. Through this, we’ve become adults. We came together on tour and through that we’ve learned to see each other as adults now. He sees me as an adult and this movie has definitely helped. Our relationship was always great though. We knew this movie was a good movie and a movie that has to be told and it’s nice that a lot of success has come from it but we have grown together in a weird way. We’re excited to work together in the future. I would love to work again with my brother because we have this weird chemistry onscreen. We are like Laurel and Hardy. We are so different that it brings out some things in my brother that I think he likes. It shows that he has this sense of humor and isn’t this dark, brooding lord of The National. He’s really funny and he has a brother that is nothing like him and he has to deal with me and I have to deal with him and I have to deal with indie rock, which is great by the way. I love The National. I think we’re good for each other.

You’re like a ying and yang.

TB: A ying and yang, yeah. We’re honest with each other. I’m honest in the way I filter things through and I’m honest to my point of view and he values and respects that.

But in a lot of ways, you and your brother are polar opposites.

TB: In many ways but he got me into movies. When I was a kid, we didn’t have cable t.v. but he got my dad to get this thing called a VCR. All I had was 3 channels and all of a sudden I could put in this movie with graphic violence. Die Hard and Predator, I’d never seen these things and they were the greatest things in my entire life. There’s swearing and nudity. I was like, “What are these things? I love em. I want to make movies.” I was like 5 or 6 and I remember him taking me to the driveway and we would talk about movies all the time. I don’t know what we would talk about except for Predator and Aliens. I think Matt has always had this super confidence that made me feel like I could do that. I could be a movie maker. It took me another 20 years or so but he’s always had this idea that you can do anything for me. For a while, it was hard because I saw his success and I felt lost because I felt like I wasn’t doing what I promised myself I would do. I was making short movies but I didn’t know if I had what it takes or if I was even making the right movies or what I was gonna say or if what I was saying it the right way or even making it marketable. Him taking me under his wing one more time and us making this thing together and working with me and us clashing worked out really, really well.

While you set the movie up in your head before beginning, did you ever expect yourself to not be a part of the film at all, because late in the movie you have that moment of epiphany where you realize that you are the subject of the movie and this is your experience?  

TB: I shot myself knowing that I would want to be, and I didn’t know that there was gonna be a movie, maybe just a DVD extra of ‘Matt’s Brother Tom’ or a behind the scenes look but I wanted to be in it because I knew I was making it and there were fans that didn’t know that Matt had a brother. There was something funny about the way I look and my taste in movies and music that might be an interesting angle so I kept filming myself a little bit. I didn’t know that the movie was gonna be all about me and my brother. For a long time, I was trying to make your typical rock doc or band documentary but with a style all my own but I didn’t think I was gonna be taking it over until much, much later. I didn’t have anything so I kept through myself in during the editing at their behest. They said, “You have to keep filming yourself Tom because this is good. You do have something good but what’s really good is you.” But sometimes, I didn’t feel like shooting myself right now so it was difficult but I thought this would make a good movie if I was willing to do it.

If you make another documentary, would you take a similar approach of free-balling it and seeing where it goes or would you try to be more organized from the get-go?

TB: Much more organized. I never really wanted to do documentaries. I still want to do fiction narratives. I would definitely prepare more but what worked out really well is I do kind of free ball it a little bit. I have an idea in my head, and like my brother taught me, I just go with it. What this movie has taught me is that those screw ups and fuck ups and the moments when I caught myself drunk or something were actually really poignant. They might be funny but they’re also really sad. I made good choices but I would definitely prepare more. I know the style that I have but whatever comes to my mind at the moment, I will do. I will get my structure down and then just go off because that worked really well.

In the film there’s almost a villain in the tour manager, the guy who keeps shutting you down and is just really harsh. Have you reconciled with him at all after this film or has he apologized for treating you poorly?

TB: No, we’re good friends. We were good friends before and after. He’s been the front of house and main sound guy for ten years. He’s been around a long time. He was somewhat a victim of the editing but he’s tough and all business. Earlier on we knew that the movie needed a Darth Vader and Brandon had some scenes that were so amazing where we was giving me shit and he didn’t care. He still wanted me to make a good movie and help out with the band. We just made sure that he was ok with it. To be honest, looking back, I was not the best. I was not a good employee and he was doing his job. The scenes in the movie, I was a little bit of a doofus and a baby. I think he has a right to get angry and lay down the law. I never apologized and he was totally fine with it but he is getting remarks. People are treating him a little differently but he thinks it’s almost good. He said, “People are listening to me. I have this presence of watch out.” He was definitely kind of a victim of the editing and he knew it was coming.

Were they apprehensive about shifting the focus from the band onto yourself considering the marketing of the film seems like it’s a documentary on The National where it’s really not. It’s your show and your relationship with your brother. Have you experienced any backlash about that or are you worried that you might receive some?

TB: I have not seen any backlash. I only get forwarded positive reviews, I don’t read much. I certainly don’t look at their message boards but I’m sure there is. I’m sure there’s people who wanted to get inside the bands head. The band didn’t know what I was doing for a long time and they always said to turn the camera on myself more and be in this movie. I think they were saying that as kind of trying to focus on you Tom. Do what you wanna do and we’ll still put it on a DVD for you because they like me but I think they were a little concerned with my questions and my lack of direction. So I think they were happy that they heard that the movie was less about the band and more about me and my brother. When they finally saw it, they did really like it. I always thought that with all the interviews with the guys, I would always first ask them what I thought were typical rock doc questions and then I would move onto brothers and then I would talk about me and my brother. That was always the best stuff because I eventually started complaining to them and that’s all we kept of those interviews, me complaining about my brother. It started to look like the band guys were my psychiatrists or a shoulder to cry on and that was really interesting to me. It made me laugh but I was hoping that this might maybe be a better way to meet these guys and get inside their heads. For me, my movie and who I am in relationship to the fans it’s more interesting to not hear them talk about their writing process but how they feel about Matt and how they feel about brothers or even my struggles. My pain reflecting off of them. You still get to get into their heads and know them as people, they’re just not talking about albums or touring. I think there’s a better documentary for someone else down the line to do that. I think I made a good choice not making that documentary. It would be a waste. This was a better move on my part.

Yeah, the rock doc has been done so many times before and it’s become a tired formula by now and you’ve changed that formula up here. So you say that the band has responded really positively to the film, how has the feedback been from screenings and what have people been saying to you?

TB: Almost all amazingly positive. We couldn’t have asked for a better response to the movie. We really didn’t know what was going to happen. We didn’t know if we had a good movie. Matt always said, “We have a really good movie Tom” but that was his delusional optimism speaking. Before we screened it for anyone, I was still really concerned because the movie is just me. I still want to make movies but I didn’t know that this was the way it was gonna turn out. This wasn’t the way I planned on breaking into the industry. What’s been really amazing for our group, me, my brother, Carin Besser and Craig Charland, our two producers, we are realizing people are seeing this as a sibling movie. This is a family movie set around a rock band. The rock band is simply the backdrop. We knew that we had a piece of that in it but we didn’t know how much people would find their relationships with their brothers or sisters or even close friends. We want to make sure this film gets seen outside of the documentary range, maybe even in family drama. So this was much more than we expected. It’s been all amazing.

In the movie, we see your early, low-budg horror movies made up in the mountains. Do you still have a big interest in horror movies and do you plan to return to that and make your own independent or even studio horror movie?

TB: Yeah, I’ve always wanted to make the scariest movie ever made. That’s my goal. I still want to make a great thriller, a great action, a great horror movie. I think I’ve moved on from total blood and violence but I don’t know. My greatest dream was to play a villain. I always wanted to play Freddy Kruger or Jason. I wanted to play the killer in a movie. I don’t know if after making this movie those opportunities are gonna come around. To be honest, I feel like the horror genre today does kind of bore me. I used to love them as a kid but those movies were reflections of even earlier 80’s horror movies and most of the time, I don’t get scared at horror movies. Thrillers are what I want to do.

If you were given the keys to make any movie you wanted to, do you have anything that you would have to do that’s been circulating in your mind?

TB: After making those horror-action movies, I did make a movie about Johnny Appleseed. It was my attempt at becoming a serious filmmaker, like, “I don’t only do horror movies. I can do period dramas.” All my movies thus far have been period dramas or period horror movies. It was called ‘Deer Path’ and it was the story of Johnny Appleseed literally carrying a mail-order bride through the woods to a frontiersman. Before he was Johnny Appleseed, he was a frontier porter. It was an interesting concept and it was executed ok. I shot it very slowly and either on dollies or tripods, not all handheld and crazy. I didn’t put it out to festivals but I did a small screening and people said it was kind of boring. I would like to revisit that and the Johnny Appleseed story. I did research on that and found that he was this crazy guy who was kind of like the Don Juan of the American frontier. He was very charismatic. There are more legends than truths about this guy but he was a real guy. He basically planted crabapples for apple mash for alcohol but he still traveled the frontier and hung around towns and had affairs with a lot of woman. There’s a story in there and I would like to revisit that. One of my favorite movies of all time is Michael Mann’s ‘Last of the Mohicans’, the score is probably half of it, but I always wanted to do a Johnny Appleseed movie looking like that because he was around that area.

Just cast Daniel Day Lewis and the movie will be green lit.

TB: Yeah, I know. I’m kind of surprised that there hasn’t been something about that guy. With Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist history movies that he’s been making with ‘Django’ and ‘Inglorious Basterds’, I feel like I have a real opportunity to do a revisionist history on Johnny Appleseed and make a legend out of him. There’s more legend than truths and he’s a really interesting guy. If I had 100 million then [that’s the one.]

At the beginning of the film, it didn’t seem like you were the biggest fan of The National’s music. Do you listen to The National anymore now than you did before the making of the film or is it still just not your scene?

TB: Well their new album just dropped today or yesterday. I like indie rock. I do appreciate all music but it’s just not my [jam]. I feel like I do pigeonhole myself but I like metal. There’s so much good metal out there especially being made today and it’s not always that aggressive stuff. It’s just so doomy and beautiful. I’ve always liked it. I like the epicness of it and the direct form of expression that metal has always had and the underdog quality of metal. A lot of people don’t like it or get it and I’m proud that I’ve got it. It’s very tongue-and-cheek. Indie rock seems to take itself too seriously. It seems to be less fun than other music where metal is all about just having a good time.

Do you have a favorite song of The National’s?

TB: I’ve always liked this one song ‘Friend of Mine’ which was a couple of albums ago. They never play it live because it’s really hard to play live but I always beg them to but they can’t. My brothers voice just runs out of steam.

It’s a studio song.

TB: Yeah. I’m like, “Why can’t you play all your songs? Why put it on the album if you can’t play it live?” but I think a lot of bands do that.

Yeah, like The Beatles stopped playing after ’66. They never played live again.

TB: Yeah exactly.

Finally, what’s next for you?

TB: I don’t know. There are some articles that said, “What is Tom Gonna Do Next? Is he gonna just stay in Cincinnati or get a job in New York?” I just wanna make movies. I’ve always wanted to make movies. Me being in my movie makes me look at what I’m gonna do next differently. I do have a presence that I didn’t know I had and people seem to like it. I do have an interesting take on things but I don’t know what I’m gonna do next. It’s gonna be a while. I’m well aware of the sophomore slumps. This movie took a really long time to craft and figure out and I don’t care about people say about needing to strike when it’s hot, I just don’t wanna rush it. I’m working on a couple ideas right now but it’s bad until it’s good. Whatever you do. It’ll take as long as it takes and I’m lucky enough to not have much of a deadline.

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Mistaken For Strangers is directed by, written by and starring Matt Berninger.

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Stephen Sihla and Eric Slade’s Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton is a close exploration of a man who embodied the tenants of free expression. Living under the mantra of ‘Follow Your Weird,’ Broughton was both a poet and a filmmaker, an avante garde champion of artist expression who refused to play by the rules of his time. As a contemporary of and grandfather to the beatnik generation, Broughton made artist waves within a population striving to break away from the norm and has left a lasting impact for poets, filmmakers and countless people. Sihla and Slade’s film charters the course of Broughton as a man and an artist as he bravely pioneers that frontier of queer entertainment.

I had a chance to speak with the duo as they shed some light on their personal experiences knowing James and making this filmic epitaph of his life.

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There are many big players in the beatnik scene that are more well known than James Broughton, and honestly I had never heard of Broughton before this film. Were you  guys always aware of him or was there a moment where each of you discovered him for yourselves?

Stephen Silha: Good question. I guess I discovered him in 1979 when I stumbled into a little auditorium at the Museum of Modern Art in New York where they were showing his films. I kind of uncharacteristically sat down and sat there for about an hour watching these really interesting films from the 50’s and 60’s and I was kind of taken by their subtle homoeroticism as well as their spiritual quality. That was my first encounter with James’ work and then 10 years later, he and Joel were in the same cabin as me at a Radical Faerie gathering at a hot springs in Oregon.

Eric Slade: My first big exposure, and Steve and I are both from the Radical Faerie background which is sort of an alternative queer culture, I don’t know what you’d call it, and I think somewhere in the early 1980’s, I was at a Radical Faerie event at someone’s house and they showed ‘The Bed’ which is probably James’ most celebrated film and it totally captivated me. I’d never seen anything like it. It really stuck with me. Later in the 80’s, I met James a couple of times at Radical Faerie gatherings in southern Oregon but we never became close but Steve and him became very close.

I didn’t know that you guys had actually met him while he was living.

SS: Yeah, I was so inspired by him. When I met him, he was 75 and I was like, “I want to be that lively when I’m 75 and want to be surrounded by interesting young people.” It was just a good fortune that we were assigned to the same cabin and then he and Joel invited me for dinner and we ended up becoming friends and he certainly was a mentor for me.

What was it that made you choose Broughton as your subject for you film? Was it this friendship that you developed or a fascination with his work of a combination of both?

SS: I think it was both. I found that his books were out of print. When I went to bookstores, I couldn’t find his work. The only place you could see his films were at the Anthology Film Archives in New York or occasionally at a retrospective at the San Francisco Cinemateque. Originally I was thinking of a book but I realized it had to be a film to try and bring his work back because I think it’s incredibly relevant for the 21st century.

ES: One of the things that you were saying earlier is he wasn’t as famous as Ginsberg or Ferlinghetti or Kerouac or those guys and  I think one of the reasons is he and his friends in the 40’s and very early 50’s were creating this thing called the San Francisco renaissance which is sort of the soil that the beat movement grew out of. It was really their group that started live poetry readings. That hadn’t been done before and wasn’t popular before they started doing it. They laid all the groundwork for this and then these guys like Ginsberg came in who were incredibly talented but were also good at publicity so it was their group who got on the cover of Life magazine so James and a bunch of the people from his group in the San Francisco renaissance kind of got overlooked so James’ work, as incredible as it is, started getting buried in history. Part of Stephen and my intention was to bring that back and make sure that people didn’t lose sight of it. We’ve heard from a number of film and poetry scholars and historians that they are so grateful that this incredible work is coming back to the world.

SS: We were surprised that no-one had done a documentary about that San Francisco Renaissance period.

Because Broughton work was prominent in the beatnik subcultures from the 50’s to his death in 1999 and probable even lesser so then, why choose to make the documentary now?

SS: Again, I felt like since he died in ’99, and I was present at his death and it had a huge impact on me because my father died 5 months later and I felt like it was preparing me in a way, and it just felt like the right time to do it. In fact, I said to myself, “If I don’t do it now, it’s never gonna get done.” For me, it was a big step jumping out of print journalism which is something that I’ve been doing most of my life into filmmaking. I honestly couldn’t have done it without the partnership with Eric.

ES: It was a good partnership. We both brought really different things to the table for this. The film that we created is unlike most films out there because of what we each brought to it.

SS: I think another thing about the timing of it is we got an interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti who is in his 90’s now so there’s a group of people who aren’t gonna be around to tell this story soon so it was timely in that way because we wanted to make sure that the story got out before it was too late.

And had you two collaborated before?

SS: No it was our first thing together. We knew each other from Radical Faerie gatherings before but had never worked together.

What was the experience like of reaching out to his former friends and lovers considering how much of a bond he seemed to have fostered with all these people. All of them seemed to have such loving memories of him, even his ex-wife who seemed in love with him to this day. Were they glad to see Broughton getting his day in the lime light again or was their any hesitancy to speak with guys about it?

SS: We did 37 interviews and none of those people were unwilling or hesitant at all to speak about Broughton. It was amazing.

ES: Almost everybody who we talked to, especially people who knew him more recently, said being around James was just this amazing pleasurable thing. He would almost always take your hand and hold onto it during your conversation and he just had this sparkle and this life to him that people liked being around. You hear that even with Suzanna and the time they spent together that having James in your life was a good thing for most people.

Was there a particular interview that you did that touched you in any way or made you see him in a new light?

SS: So many of them because we were piecing together [his life]. We didn’t really have a script for the film when we started interviewing, we just kind of used my journalistic bent to interview these people while we can and see what story emerges. In a way, it was James’ own journals, he journaled from the age he was 13 until he died, that was the most profound interview of the whole thing. We were getting his inner thoughts. It was interesting because a lot of people had sort of forgotten about him like Alex Gildzen, the guy who organized the Broughton archives at Kent state who tells a lot of the story in the film, he got so excited remembering James’ story and then he also remembered how painful it was to read some of the personal letters in James’ journals. The road to Big Joy is not all polished bliss.

ES: I think that in interviews with his former wife Suzanna and his son Orion, those were really poignant. You can see the really positive impact that he had on their lives but you can see that he wasn’t a great husband and he wasn’t a great father. There was difficulty to it too with those relationships. If you follow your true path, there can be damage along the way. Not everyone goes along with that path and I think Suzanna expresses that well, that she was really hurt by it.

In the film, Broughton says that film saved his life. How has film had a significant impact on you?

SS: It’s definitely given me a new life. It’s so different from print journalism to try and coordinate the six or seven dimensions of film. You’re trying to tell a good story and show a good story and I had no idea how important sound is to make a good film. I just feel like it’s given me a whole new area to play in for self expression as well as documentation.

ES: I originally embarked on this as a career path because I wanted to do, and I still see it as social activism. At some point early in my life, I wanted to make an impact on the world and it seemed like [I] made some impact but I wanted mass impact. It’s really gratifying that films I’ve worked on have been seen by tens of thousands, millions of people and I know that at least some percentage of them have their lives impacted or effected by it. This film has been especially gratifying in that way because people coming out of the theater who have seen the film want to live a more creative life. They want to find their inner spark and live more fully. That’s a great success if people are inspired to live bigger lives.

SS: We really do want to start a movement here. Given the fact that that’s the reaction that people are having, which is what we hoped, we’re really pushing people to figure out what is their weird and how can they best follow it. To that end, we’re encouraging people to have salons and have special events around the country for the film in the coming months leading up to Broughton’s 100th birthday on November 10th.

You just mentioned his saying to “Follow your weird”, did you guys take this as some kind of personal calling to make this movie?

SS: Definitely. We discovered that everytime we did an interview or an editing session, we would read Broughton poetry and talk about what each of our weird is. What the film shows the weird of a number of creative people melding together.

ES: One of the things we said earlier on when we were making the film is that we have to be willing to fail and fall on our face and have it not be [what we wanted.] I think that’s part of the creative process. Part of following your weird is being open to not working because otherwise you’re limiting yourself to things that you know are gonna work and that’s a pretty limited palette. That was part of our credo and we wanted to film not just to be something you watch but something you live through – an experiential prayer that you go to and come out transformed. We had big goals and very high standards. We also said very early on that we weren’t trying to make an experimental film. We weren’t trying to make a Broughton film but we did want to be inspired by the style of his work. For me, it was daunting and a little scary to follow in his footsteps to try and make a film that honored his work and followed his spirit but I feel like we did a good job. We didn’t made an experimental film but we made a film that embodied some of that.

Broughton was married for a number of years to Suzanna but he says that it was because it was just the status quo. It was the thing to do. His generation was characterized by this expressive freedom and yet these rigid sexual barriers and even Broughton saw his sexuality as a specter to  be overcome. How do you guys think Broughton would respond to the ongoing marriage equality movement  that has really emerged and flourished in the last decade?

SS: I think he’d be happy with the social justice aspect of it but I remember him saying that there was something about the 50’s that even though they were horrible in some ways, it was refreshing in that people didn’t have to be categorized as gay or straight of any one thing.

ES: It’s a good question and I don’t know what he would think. The thing about the equality movement is it’s pushing the boundaries in a great way but I also think that marriage itself is such a restrictive [thing]. I don’t think it’s following your own weird necessarily. The boundaries are pretty rigid around that so I don’t know how he would embrace marriage as a goal. Although he and Joel got married three times.

Juxtaposing this generation to the 1950’s, how much of his work was a result of being in his particular time and place especially considering that it’s a time with these intense social stigmas around sexuality and how much of his work do you thing was a result of that and struggling with his own duality?

SS: Oh I think a lot of it. That was central to his work throughout his writing and filmmaking career. He was really struggling with his own contradictions and it enabled him to see the contradictions in the world. He never really accepted any own religion. He said things like, “Jesus, Pan and Buddha are my sidekicks and we like to sit by Lao Tzu’s river.” 

ES: I think that the era, because the oppression was so tough, through those questions right in his face. You didn’t have a choice whether you were gonna grapple with those issues because you see them every day, and I think it’s still true today, but if he hadn’t been living in that era, that was what he was interested in anyway – our own contradictions. We all have a male and a female inside of us and he was fascinated by that. As much as he was struggling through it, he just loved diving deep into that question because its so central to the human experience.

Speaking about the male and the female, there’s definitely no shortage of male or female genitalia in the film. Were you worried that that might make it more difficult to get a rating from the MPAA and it get into wide circulation?

SS: Yes but we decided early on that that didn’t matter. That if we were being true to Broughton, we had to do that. Our trailer was pulled down from YouTube within a day of putting it up because of scenes from his film ‘The Bed’. At the moment, the film is not rated. If we do go theatrical, we will have to go through that system to see what they say.

ES: We’d early on said that PBS is not our goal but they actually said, when we talked to them, that as long as they can blur, they’d be happy to give it a try. But we didn’t want any restriction on that. To make the human body not part of the film would just not work.

SS: We did restrain ourselves however from showing the ‘Hermes Bird’ film which is an 11-minute erection.

Yeah, that would make it all the more difficult. So Broughton in his last moments seemed to adopt an almost breezy towards his own death, seeing it as an invitation to something new and weird without having some sort of morbid fascination that you see with a lot of sickly or elderly people. And Stephen, you were there with his for his passing, what was that experience like on a spiritual level and how has that effected you going forward from that experience?

SS: Yeah, I don’t think he took a breezy attitude towards it at all. His comfort with it came from his having really grappled and dealt with it for years. He wrote poetry about death all the time and he was able to take that attitude of the adventure of it, after doing lots of deep, inner work. The process of making the film has had a similar effect on me in that I’ve had to look at my own mortality differently and tried to bring that sense of humor that he brought to it. I’ve lost a lot of close people even since the film has been made and it’s been helpful to have Broughton’s voice in my consciousness.

Finally, what’s next for the both of you? Are you planning on collaborating again and continuing down the documentary road or are you thinking of exploring the feature film route?

SS: Or a Broadway musical?

ES: Who would play James? Right now, it’s all about getting this film out in the world but who knows? We could collaborate again.

SS: We still like each other.

Are you planning on continuing on the film road? Is this a more suiting avenue for getting your voice heard than print journalism?

SS: I think I may have the documentary bug. I’ve also become interested in experimental film but I’m giving myself another couple years to just recover from the intense process of making ‘Big Joy’ and trying to get this film out in the world in a good way. I see a lot of good films that don’t get out partly because the filmmaker is already onto the next thing.

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Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton has no official US or international release date but it will be making the festival rounds in the upcoming months. For those in Seattle, be sure to check it out at the Seattle International Film Festival at the SIFF Uptown- Fri, May 31 at 6 PM or Pacific Place Sat – June 1, 1:30PM.

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