Production Diary

November 2001:

So far co-producer, Jen Talbert, and I have had the pleasure of conducting interviews with Lane co-conspirators Craig Nutt, Jim Willett, Igor Alford, and Anne LeBaron. I have had some great phone conversations with Tim Reed (aka Fred Lane himself) and Mitchell Cashion, both of whom I will eventually interview, as well as Davey Williams, LaDonna Smith, and a few others (whose names I will not mention now because I have not yet approached them). The characters are spread out all over the country, but one at a time, I plan to interview them all until I’m done. I have been working on this project little by little since 1999 and have no idea when it will be finished, due to my busy schedule keeping me from being able to devote the time needed to finish it quickly (not to mention the fact that I am self-financing the entire production).

June 2005:

Well, I'm happy to report that I was able to accomplish more on this film in the past month than I have in the past four years. J.R. Fritsch and I spent several days traveling around Alabama and Tennessee shooting interviews. We really enjoyed meeting and interviewing Roger Hagerty, LaDonna Smith, Jim Reed, Mitchell Cashion, and Doug & Candy Newby, and I was overjoyed to be granted the opportunity to spend an entire day with T.R. Reed (aka Rev. Fred Lane himself!) and Jeanie Holland. Everyone has been very open and welcoming, and the more I find out about the subject matter, the more interested I become. My funding (aka my nest egg) is a little smaller now, but J.R. and I shot so many hours of footage that, combined with the footage I shot four years ago, I now have enough to start working on cutting together a trailer and work-in-progress even though I still have more interviews to shoot.

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Skizz Cyzyk acquiring "The Three Voinks" from T.R. Reed

August & September 2005:

In August, I made a road trip to Chicago for the Chicago Underground Film Festival, and while in town, I was able to shoot an interview with Fletcher Paul Hayes. Filmmaker and Movieside Film Festival director, Rusty Nails, worked the camera, while Cashiers Du Cinemart editor, Mike White, assisted. In September, while attending Birmingham, Alabama's Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, I made another attempt to interview Davey Williams (the fourth attempt in five years), and was delighted to finally meet Davey in person. The interview was well worth the wait, and to make it even more special, Lucia Small (MY FATHER THE GENIUS) lent her very nice camera, and Peter Gilbert (HOOP DREAMS) shot the interview for me. Later that night, Jen and I got to spend more time with Davey at one of Birmingham's more interesting drinking establishments, The Garage. The previous night, we ran into Jim Willett, who we had not seen since interviewing him back in 2001. The three of us ended up at a film festival party on a gutted floor of a highrise. Meanwhile, Ted Bowen recently started an online message board for the doc, which you can find here:
http://com3.runboard.com/braudelunaspataphysicalreviewboard.

October & November 2006:

In October, Jen and I flew back down to Alabama to attend the Kentuck Festival of the Arts, just outside of Tuscaloosa. T.R. Reed and Jeanie Holland were both selling their art there, and to our surprise, so was Fred McGann (who I've been meaning to interview in Richmond for several years now). The festival was wonderful. It takes place outdoors, in a wooded park. We bought some art and saw musical acts like Dan Hicks & Hot Licks, The Pine Hill Haints, The Avett Brothers, and Peter Case. We met T.R.'s sister, Barbara, who I should've asked to interview while I had the chance, but I wasn't thinking. We also caught up with Bill & Leah Alford, Roger & Bonnie Hagerty, and met Johnny Williams. We went to Johnny's house to see the "Raudelunas Museum" and then he took us to a bar in the middle of nowhere, where the specialty is catfish, and we were all the guests of honor. It was a great trip, and gave me a chance to try out my new camera (it's so new, it arrived a couple days before the trip and I spent the flight to Alabama reading the owner's manual). Now I wish I could go back and reshoot everything with the new camera.

At Kentuck, left-to-right:
T.R. Reed, Fred McGann, Johnny Williams,
Roger Hagerty, Bill Alford

Fred McGann clued me in to a November arts festival in Richmond, Virginia that T.R. and Jeanie would be at, and told me about a radio DJ who is a big Fred Lane fan who might interview T.R./Lane. Naturally, I'd want to be there for that, plus I've been meaning to go to Richmond anyway to interview Fred McGann and his wife Cathy, and Charlie Ogden and his wife Helen (Cathy's sister). It turns out the radio DJ is Chris Bopst (of WCLM's The Bopst Show), who I hung out with for about a month during the summer of 1982 in Ocean City, Maryland, as it seemed like we were the only punk rockers either of us could find in that town at the time. Small world. So the weekend before Thanksgiving, with barely any planning (because MicroCineFest had me tied up for the previous several weeks) I drove to Richmond, interviewed Charlie Ogden (Helen wasn't home), interviewed Fred & Cathy McGann, shot some footage of T.R. and Jeanie at the arts show, and had a wonderful dinner at Mom's Siam with T.R., Jeanie, Fred, Cathy, and their friend Cathy. At one point during the dinner, someone asked a question about the Pataphysical Revue, and everyone turned and looked at me as if I were the expert (remember, three of the people at the table were AT the Pataphysical Revue, while I was 9 at the time). I feel so honored to be so welcomed into such a great group of people, and I'm thankful for them giving up their time to speak with me on and off camera, and for sharing their pasts with me.

February 2007:

I have a career working for film festivals, which frequently takes up more than 40 hours a week, especially during the times when I have hundreds of entries that need to be watched and critiqued. That's what has taken up most of what would have been my "free time" for the past couple of months, and will continue to do so for awhile. As I watch entry after entry, I realize that a lot of filmmakers tend to have a new film every year, yet I've been working on the same film since 1999. That's kind of embarrassing, so I'm determined to hunker down and get this thing finished. I made a deal with myself, which I've been living by for the last couple of weeks and will continue to do so. At first, the deal was if I watched two hours of film festival entries, then I would spend one hour working on my doc. I then changed the deal - if I'm home for the evening, regardless of what I've been doing all night, at 10 PM I will work on the film for at least an hour, maybe two, before going to bed. This has worked out nicely. I've been working on transcribing all the interviews in order to make editing easier and more organized. I still have more interviews to shoot, but in the meantime, at least I'm getting SOMETHING done. Transcribing is a time-consuming task. Each interview might take me one or two nights to complete, and those nights are spread out over the nights I'm actually home (the Davey Williams interview took four nights over the course of one week - but it's so worth it!). Revisiting each interview, word-for-word, has triggered all sorts of new questions I'd love to go back and ask each interview subject, but it's also gotten me very excited about editing. I keep hearing lines that make me think, "Oh, that HAS to go in there somewhere!"

July 2007

I have most of the interviews transcribed and I'm trying to schedule some time to shoot the remaining interviews needed. In the meantime, here's some interesting links I've found recently:

September & October 2007:

In September, I finally finished transcribing all the interviews I had shot so far. Minutes after backing them all up on a Flash drive, my computer died. Yep, I lost a bunch of important files, but luckily I don’t have to re-transcribe anything. I was able to start reading through all the interviews, making notes that should help during editing. The new, replacement laptop arrived just hours before heading to the airport to start my Fall traveling season. First stop, Birmingham, Alabama for the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. I had hoped to meet up with some pertinent people to the film while in town, but I stayed pretty busy at the festival. I knew I’d be back in a couple weeks. Next stop, the BendFilm Festival in Bend, Oregon. The Oregon trip didn’t have much to do with the documentary except that I stressed to get ready for a big project at work before rushing off to the airport, instead of preparing for an upcoming 9-day trip to work on the doc. A day after getting home from Bend, I took off again, this time on wheels and armed with equipment.

DAY ONE: Six hours to Durham, North Carolina, where I interviewed filmmaker Jim Haverkamp, a Fred Lane fan who made a Lane-centric public access TV show back in the late-90s. Another six hours to Atlanta, where I crashed with my friend Blake.

DAYS TWO and THREE: I had earmarked the next two days to go to Miami to interview Kramer, who ran ShimmyDisc Records, the label responsible for most Fred Lane fans hearing Fred Lane in the first place. Some communication mix-ups meant that I didn’t get the interview, and didn’t really accomplish anything on the film for those two days, but I got a lot of driving done and got to see some of Florida. Those two days were essentially a long, out-of-the-way route to Birmingham, Alabama, where I crashed with my friend Kelly.

DAY FOUR: The next day I met up with Lee Shook, who is working on a documentary about Davey Williams. He is a Fred Lane fan who has an interesting perspective on the whole Raudelunas scene, so I interviewed him. Later, he took me to meet & interview Mark Lanter, who played drums in the Raudelunas group. From there, I picked up Jen at the airport, and we went to re-interview Jim Willett. Jim was one of the early interviews in this whole production, but that first shoot was cursed with some very harsh sunlight, so we re-shot.

DAYS FIVE and SIX: Jen and I spent the weekend at the Kentuck Arts Festival outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where we ran into T.R. Reed & Jeanie Holland, Tim’s sister Barbara, Craig & Linda Nutt, Bill Alford, Bill’s friend Larry, Lee Shook, and Gary Taylor. I shot lots of footage and interviewed Gary. Craig gave me a disc full of Doug Newby’s photos from the Pataphysical Review and From The One That Cut You live shows, plus a lot of miscellaneous images. Saturday and Sunday nights were spent at Dogwood Lodge Gazebo, where Bill let us scan tons of photos from his collection.

DAY SEVEN: Monday morning I dropped Jen off at the Birmingham airport, and then headed to Eutaw, Alabama, to revisit Johnny Williams. I interviewed Johnny, and spent hours scanning a large chunk of his collection of Raudelunas artifacts, including copies of Fred Lane’s newsletters (Liquid Basketball, Naked Women Overthrow The Government Quarterly, and The Good Deeds of a Five Dollar Bill). From there, I drove through the rains & winds that were destroying Alabama homes (this, after having survived a weekend centered around some football game that kept us from getting a hotel room closer than 35 minutes from Tuscaloosa). I rolled into Atlanta and crashed with my friends, Genevieve & Scott.

DAY EIGHT: All this driving has taken a toll on my van, so I spent the next day in a Honda service center waiting room watching CNN coverage of the fires in California. 7 hours and $1900 later, I was off to shoot the final interview for this trip. The legendary Col. Bruce Hampton is both a Fred Lane fan and a big inspiration to the Raudelunas gang, plus he’s a really nice guy. I interviewed him at a Whole Foods (!) during a really horrific downpour. That night I got to hang out with a bunch of my favorite people at one of my favorite places (Trader Vics!).

DAY NINE: A 12-hour drive home to Baltimore from Atlanta, through some of the worst rain storms I’ve ever driven through.

At Kentuck:
Bill Alford & Craig Nutt, T.R. Reed & Bob (the turtle).

Nearly 3100 miles; 5 more hours of footage including 7 more interviews shot; approx. 500 images collected. This trip was a success, and especially significant! Up until now, regardless of all the footage and interviews I have shot, I did not yet feel like I had enough to make a film. Now, I can visualize the structure of the film, and with all the images collected on this trip, I’m ready, anxious, and confident enough to start putting this whole thing together (even though I still have some more interviews to shoot). I have some concerns though. Jim Haverkamp had told me that a big part of the fun of being a Fred Lane fan is all the mystery and mis-information surrounding the records, and that he’ll be sort of sad when this documentary answers all the questions. I have to agree with him, but at this point, I have to finish this thing – but I’m going to take that feeling into consideration. I’m also a little concerned about the perhaps unwanted attention this doc might bring T.R. Reed. He’s a busy artist who already graciously gives up enough of his time at arts festivals to talk to Fred Lane fans when he really needs to be selling his art. I worry that kind of attention will get worse, and that fans might buy up his art, not because they like it, but because it was made by the guy who was/is Fred Lane. And I worry about killing that unique camaraderie among Lane fans. Whenever I meet anyone who knows who Fred Lane is, there is a certain connection, like we know we’re in the company of like-minded cultural outcasts who have devoted our lives to seeking the coolest of the obscure, and we appreciate it for similar reasons. Fred Lane feels like our own fun little secret, and I’m about to let that cat out of the box. I have talked to people who consider themselves experts on Daniel Johnston and Jandek just because they’ve watched documentaries about both, though have never bought or listened to records by either. I will hate having had a hand in creating those kind of “fans” for Fred Lane, but I guess that comes with the territory.

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