Don’t get me wrong; I love Chattanooga. Some deeply primal part of me will always consider it home, even after I’ll have moved on to a place sculpted more (in our collective imagination, at least) by seismic waves and brush fires than by the shameful “removal” of its native people. I too am being forced Westward, though the coercion is far more subtle and less hateful in this century. I have been made to feel unwelcome here. I am a filmmaker, and making films in Chattanooga is nigh impossible.
It is now nearly three years since I began to “write” what eventually has become my first “talkie” feature, Hell Is Other People. Most of those three years were spent not on production (which spanned perhaps seven months), but on casting, re-casting, and re-casting again. Much of it was spent on devising the kind of film (and a production model) which would allow for shooting on an incredibly relaxed and loose schedule. There is something in the air or in the water here which makes Chattanoogans want never to leave their homes. Two once-potential members of the cast backed out because the production schedule was left so vague; the others would have backed out if I had then made it more rigid. One actor met with me, agreed to take on a role, and then never returned my calls. Even after production began, there were stretches of weeks at a time in which I’d be unable to get just three people in one place at one time. I was at one point barred from shooting in a parking lot; as anyone worth a peck of salt knows, there’s no place more dangerous than an empty expanse of asphalt. Further, on top of the above, there are few other filmmakers here. None of them speak to each other. I knew three years ago that I would be “the crew,” and that finishing a feature in this place would require an incredible strength of will.
Lest you think I’m badmouthing either Chattanooga or my Southern roots: neither this film nor my own filmmaking sensibilites would be what they are if I’d tried to approach them in, say, California. Working under such oppressive limitation has forever freed me from the excesses and sloppiness which so often plague low-budget filmmaking. I have learned to make large things from small nothings. My resolve has been permanently strengthened. I have been taught to know what I want and to aim only for that, because the achievement of even one minute of usable footage in this place is a minor miracle. Such lessons can be neither purchased nor received; they must be earned through continual and ever-mounting struggle. Having learned them, now, and having channeled them into the very way in which I approach filmmaking, it is time to move on to a more workable set of circumstances. I will leave Chattanooga, but it can never leave me.
The above was also posted at oakstreetfilms.com; see the comment thread on that post for an extended response to some thoughtful questions posed by Alicia Grega.
