Crawford: Filmmaker David Modigliani on Bush-Era Political Stagecraft (Watch the Movie in Full Here!)
David Modigliani is the director of a new documentary called Crawford. A hit on the festival circuit, the film offers a poignant view of the small Texas town that was transformed overnight when George W. Bush bought his 1,500-acre ranch on Prairie Chapel Road back in 1999. Crawford just made its groundbreaking premiere online at Hulu.com, and it has been warmly received by both critics and audiences alike. Noteworthy for its even-handed approach, the film features the perspectives of ordinary citizens who were able to witness history at close range during extraordinary times.
Says the Texas Observer:
Modigliani honors [the] spirit of egalitarianism by focusing his film not on Bush and other grandees, but rather on half-a-dozen unfamiliar figures, men and women who live their lives in Crawford out of range of the scores of TV cameras deployed to cover the big cheeses melting in the Texas sun.
And from Variety:
Filmed over several years, Crawford plays like a rise-and-fall drama populated with colorful, contrasting characters who have profoundly mixed feelings about being used as props in Bush's political stagecraft.
I recently had a chance to talk with David Modigliani about his documentary and its subjects. The text of our conversation is below, along with the film itself. Thanks to the filmmaker's generosity, Crawford in its entirety can be viewed in high-definition, free of charge, right here at The Huffington Post.
What does Crawford tell us about the state of the American political process?
David Modigliani: I think it shows just how much stagecraft is involved in the political process---and how effective it is. I started this project because I felt duped. I didn't know Bush wasn't from Crawford, Texas. When I found out that he'd moved to Crawford in 1999, a couple of months before announcing his candidacy for President, I realized how well the creation of a folksy, aw-shucks small town political persona had worked. I consider myself an educated citizen, but I could have sworn he was actually from Crawford. I had bought the narrative without thinking twice. So I wanted to see this town he'd made into a symbol. And I wanted to make a film indicting him for it.
As it turns out, I found something much more compelling---the people of Crawford, Texas itself. It's been thrilling to see audiences meet these characters---to see the ways in which their lives change profoundly over the years. So, thankfully, Crawford is not a film about George W. Bush---who wants another one of those?---it's about a tiny town thrust into big-time politics. It's a look at the Bush era through the eyes of the people who've had a front row seat. It's about a town that goes from 15 minutes of fame to ground zero for 20,000 protesters---becoming a microcosm for national conflict in the process.
Ultimately, the people of Crawford come to question the political stagecraft into which they've been thrust. They live behind the scenes of the narrative---and that experience leads them to look at news and politics with a very different attitude.
Your film does a nice job of presenting multiple viewpoints, but one gets the sense that the overwhelming majority of Crawford residents are strong supporters of Bush. Or at least they were. Has Bush's support fallen in Crawford the way that it has across the rest of the country? Or is it still a stronghold, more or less, of uniform allegiance?
Bush's ascendancy in 2000 was thrilling for the people of Crawford. The high school band played at the inauguration, every store on Main St. was bought in a day, and the Baptist pastor called it a miracle. He says early in the film that not all of [his] members voted for Bush, but probably out 99.9 percent. By now, most of the people in Crawford feel a bit used; they were put at the center of a story that's gone wrong, and they're ready to move on. Bush's popularity has plummeted there, just as it has across the country. It doesn't mean the Crawfordites won't vote for John McCain, but overall, they're finished with this particular Republican.
How has the online release gone? This seems like a logical next step in film distribution.
On Hulu.com, Crawford just made the first major online premiere in history! The response has been incredible. The film has been flying around the web, getting embedded in websites and posted on Facebook pages. Folks can watch the film in amazingly high quality---and pass it on to friends. The DVD, which includes our screening of Crawford in Crawford---and the town's reaction---has also been selling really well. It looks great on a big screen. Folks can watch the trailer, preview the extras and buy the DVD at www.crawfordmovie.com.
One thing we don't see much of in the film is Bush's ranch. I can't imagine they're open to having filmmakers wander the property. Did you attempt to get permission to enter the premises? Did you have any interaction at all with Bush administration officials?
Through an aide to Condoleezza Rice, I actually got an early five-minute assembly of the project passed to Harriet Miers, and then on to the President. This was July of 2005, before the protests began. I got an email that said he'd watched it on the treadmill one morning and said he thought it was great. I followed up with the aide to Rice and had my crew on alert to go out to Crawford for a chance to visit the ranch. Two weeks later, I'd heard nothing. I emailed twice more. Crickets. Finally, an email came back; no text, no subject heading, just an embedded picture of me at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, standing in the crowd. And then I heard nothing more.
It seems like your subjects were cooperative, and nearly all of them were charming on camera. Was anyone rude to you? Were there any people in town who objected to your presence? Or are they immune to the cameras by now?
I wanted the people in Crawford to express themselves as fully and dynamically as they could---to articulate their viewpoints and show us the way their lives were changing over time. While shooting and while editing, I tried to get out of the way. I'm tired of what I'd call the Michael Moore approach to documentary filmmaking, in which the director injects himself into the narrative of the film. I'm tired of political polemics that preach to one side or another. I wanted to tell a story that showed the impacts of political stagecraft. I wanted to get behind the scenes and get the story from the people who had a front row seat to the Bush era. I knew the politics from both sides would filter through if I could just tell the story of the town itself.
At first the people of Crawford were very skeptical of us. As the film shows, they often felt burned and misrepresented by the media. But we were young and we had a very small camera, and when we kept coming back when Bush was out of town, I think the people of Crawford came to see that we cared about their stories and their viewpoints more than anything else. They began to trust us and open up to the camera. That was vital once the protests began in 2005 and things spiraled out of control. The relationships we'd made in town allowed us to get an inside-out perspective on the maelstrom.
I was struck by the blind ignorance of Norma Nelson-Crow the souvenir shopkeeper and Bush devotee. Is it uncouth to say that I found her frightening?
As the film progresses, I think Norma's identity becomes wrapped up very closely with the President. She says she considers herself a kind of ambassador for him. She becomes tied to him more tightly than anyone else in town---not only financially but also emotionally. When things begin to turn south for Bush, she's unwilling to change her perspective, and I think part of that is because it would mean changing herself.
So what is Crawford really like?
Crawford is a very warm place, particularly once you drop beneath the surface. It's a wide-open town, where doors are unlocked and keys are left in the car. As one of our characters, Pug Meyers, says before Bush comes to town: "There hasn't been a whole lot of chaos... Everybody knows everybody."
Cindy Sheehan is featured in some archival clips. The footage of her talking about her son and the media's response to her protests is hugely emotional. The way that some people chastised her for speaking out seems horrendous to me---this notion that she was somehow dishonoring her son's memory by calling for an end to the Iraq War. How is Cindy Sheehan perceived in Crawford today? Is she reviled? Is she a sympathetic figure? Somewhere in between?
Cindy Sheehan and her fellow protesters were seen as outsiders who brought an even bigger circus to town. Most Crawfordites felt that she was using the town as a symbol, much like Bush did in 2000. Bush created a folksy, small-town persona and Sheehan arrived to call his bluff. The message was, essentially, if you're a man of the people, lean over the fence and talk with me about the death of my son. The movement Sheehan started in August of 2005 was derailed to some degree by the arrival of Hurricane Katrina at the end of the month, but if you trace public opinion on the war, her protest was the turning point. She was a spark, with a compelling narrative, that created an outpouring of public dissent. But, to people in Crawford, it meant more backlogged roads. One man referred to her as the "bitch in the ditch," but I think perceptions have probably softened since then.
Did the making of this film increase or decrease your hopes for America's future?
Both. I think the film shows that the U.S. is a purple country, even in Crawford, Texas. It behooves each party to demonize and stereotype the other---to draw divisive lines and oversimplify things into a lame dichotomy. I think there's this notion that small-town "Red State America" is filled with ignorant people who are somehow "other" than people in other parts of the country.
When I first arrived in Crawford, I had some of those preconceptions. Instead, I found people who were warm, hospitable, bright, and funny. They had political viewpoints across the board, but---and this sounds trite---they were people, above all else. I would say to "Blue State America" that people in small towns are folks to engage, rather than to write off. If the political parties and their rampant advertising---and the media and its lust for conflict---would get out of the way, I think we'd see more connection and union in the country, which would allow us, in turn, to face our problems together instead of across divisive lines of fire.
The film is filled with some pretty powerful characters and some very emotional storylines. Is there one person or storyline that really hit home with you the most?
As a filmmaker, I'm always looking for folks whose lives are changing the most---folks who experience the biggest arc. I was particularly taken with Tom Warlick, a bright, slightly rebellious kid from Crawford High School. As a thirteen-year-old Bush supporter, Tom visited Washington, D.C. for the 2001 inauguration ceremony. He describes seeing all of the protesters and realizing that there were people outside of his town who thought differently---that there were other ways of looking at the world. Through a close relationship with his history teacher, he started reading articles on the web and exploring his own ideas. Soon, he became adamantly anti-Bush and began to wrestle with his own identity within a very conservative, sometimes stifling town.
What was the worst experience you had while making the film? The most unsettling experience?
A major tragedy occurs to one of the characters in the film. It was shocking and deeply unsettling. I had to stop working on the project for a while. Ultimately, completing Crawford has been cathartic in relation to the tragedy, but it's something that sticks with me. It reminds me that the two relationships a filmmaker has with the people he's following---objective and subjective---can come crashing together in powerful and scary ways.
Misti Tuberville, for me, was the heart of the film---a voice of reason, and just a really sweet person. How is she doing? How much of an outcast was she in Crawford? Was she well-respected in the community? Was there tension?
Misti refers to herself as the "token liberal" in town. She's a gifted teacher who encourages her students to think critically---to have sources to back up their viewpoints---and she's pretty well-respected in town. But there are certainly those who worry that she's tampering with their kids. Misti describes some of her students coming to class with scripture to tell her that what she said the day before was blasphemy.
The generational divide feels so distinct in the film. The older generation, generally speaking, seems more hard line and right wing, while the high school kids you interviewed seemed to be diverting from that path in a significant way. Is my perception correct? Did you sense a palpable dissonance between the older and younger generations in Crawford? How do you think the place will change as we move forward into the future?
As students, the kids in town are being asked to think about what's going on in their backyards. When one of their teachers takes them on a field trip to the Peace House and they find that the folks there aren't all "dirty hippies who need a bath and a job"---as many of their parents have said---they open up a bit to more progressive ideas. Their exposure is more direct than the older generation, which tends to watch from a distance.
Do you keep in touch with anyone you interviewed? Have you been back to Crawford recently?
Before our SXSW premiere, we sent invitations and DVDs to everyone in the film. After three years of work, that was a very scary thing to do. Thankfully, the response was overwhelmingly positive. I think most of the Crawfordites were amazed that the film didn't look like a high school video project. I was thrilled that six of the characters in the film---from a very progressive U.S. history teacher to a very conservative Baptist Pastor---drove into Austin from Crawford for the premiere. Even so, most of Crawford at that point had yet to see the film. And from the outset of the project, I had the goal of showing Crawford in Crawford. I knew if I could do that I would have represented everyone in the film as fairly and truly as possible. My editor, Matt Naylor, and I kept that in mind throughout the process.
But how to screen it in town? They had no movie theater. Enter Tim League of the Alamo Drafthouse's Rolling Roadshow. Tim saw the film at South-by-Southwest and offered to send the Roadshow and its 40-foot mobile screen to Crawford. We got permission from the Superintendent of Crawford Schools to set up on the football field. It was a beautiful night and about 450 people showed up with chairs and picnic blankets. Most of the characters in the film attended. It was somewhat surreal. We were sitting on the football field where Bush made his first public appearance in Crawford at the 2000 high school graduation, watching that exact event appear on screen. We were an audience sitting exactly where that audience had been. We'd hear the sound of the train in the film and then we'd hear the real train go by a half mile behind us. You'd watch someone have a life-transforming moment in the film and then turn around and see them eating popcorn, looking up at the screen.
We shot the whole event, including a really special sit-down with the characters from the film. We talked about what it was like to be in a film and what they thought of it. Ricky Smith, who at one point in the film says that Cindy Sheehan should have been hung for treason, said: "Well, y'all did a little bit of Bush bashing, but naw, it was pretty even-handed all the way through. I think y'all done a good job." Midway through, I told them I'd been following them for three years and probably deserved a taste of my own medicine, so did they want to ask me any questions? It was a great dialogue and the whole event is one of our DVD extras.
Do you think George Bush is going to spend much time on the ranch in his post-presidential years? Or was the ranch just a ruse and a matter of temporary political agitprop?
President Bush has said that he and Mrs. Bush will move to Dallas to live there full-time, but that they'll keep their place in Crawford. I think Bush genuinely likes the place, but there's also no question that it was central in the political stagecraft that launched his national campaign.
Who are your favorite filmmakers? Your greatest influences?
Don't Look Back, D.A. Pennebaker's film about Bob Dylan's first big trip to England, is one of my favorite films for its verite style and the way Pennebaker trusts the camera to tell the story. Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida was a particular inspiration while editing this film. He finds incredibly dynamic characters and then trusts them, relentlessly, to hold our attention without much narrative---and they do. The film becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Do you have another project in the works?
People in rural Louisiana and east Texas are sitting on top of the Haynesville Shale, the largest natural gas deposit in the U.S. As oil prices have risen and technology has improved, energy companies have descended and started buying land. Janitors and waitresses are becoming millionaires. "Land men" are shoulder-to-shoulder in the chaotic records offices. It's a bit like There Will Be Blood in small-town Louisiana. I'm fascinated by the impact on these communities, and I'm interested in telling this major energy story through the eyes of colorful characters whose lives are changing forever. Sound familiar?
Thanks for your time.
My pleasure. Thank you.
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