SAGEBRUSH: CRAWLSPACE (2011)—The Evening Class Interview With Actors Kristy Leigh Lussier and Jim Lile

My involvement with the sophomore edition of the Sun Valley Film Festival (March 14-17, 2013) has involved negotiations with the Idaho Film Office (IFO) to increase media visibility for the event, in hopes of shaping the festival to become a desirable destination experience for out-of-state visitors wishing to combine recreational skiing with film viewing; a package that Idaho—and Sun Valley in particular—are poised to provide. The IFO, of course, is hoping that some of those visitors will be scouting for locations for upcoming film projects, which is admittedly the presiding objective of a film commission. But even as Idaho woos financial investment from out-of-state, it celebrates its regional production by exhibiting a curated selection of films crafted partially or wholly within the Gem State. With exhibition being the weakest aspect of Idaho's film culture, the role of the Sun Valley Film Festival (SVFF) as an exhibition venue has become increasingly vital. Producing a film that few will see is of limited value; thus, my hat goes off to SVFF for providing local talent a chance to shine and to, hopefully, be seen by a broader audience. Although the tension between national cinemas within an international network of distribution has been discussed at length, attention to the difficulties that regional cinema faces in achieving a national identity is equally important, though too often blithely disregarded.

Regional programming makes sense of course. The Toronto International Film Festival—which has evolved into one of the world's largest film markets—began as an effort of frustrated Canadian filmmakers wanting their films to be seen by the world. A comparable impulse is inspiring the development of the Panama International Film Festival, which—like SVFF—held its inaugural edition last year at about the same time. For me it's an interesting exercise to watch two film festivals being built upon similar impulses, if on dissimilar scale. Bruce Fletcher, who programmed the now defunct Idaho International Film Festival, was the one who invited me to consider the importance of regional filmmaking and with my visit to the Idaho International in October 2007 my interest in Idaho's film community began. Since then it's been of considerable interest to monitor Idaho's "community", as inspired and fractured as it now appears. Once I moved to Boise, attending the monthly Boise Cutters meetings at the Owyhee Hotel has proven to be a great introduction to creative individuals and projects being endeavored at the local level. This is how I met the team behind the 2011 short Crawlspace, produced by All Fools Productions, co-directed by Christian Lybrook and Tom Hamilton, and starring Jim Lile in the lead role with Kristy Leigh Lussier in a strong supporting turn.

All Fools Productions came to do a preview presentation of Crawlspace at Boise Cutters and I was not satisfied with the teaser—I wanted more—so I turned to Lybrook, who was sitting near me, and I said, "I know you have a screener in your backpack. Give it to me." He was startled if obedient and I took the screener home and watched it. Crawlspace impressed me. I found it to be an evocative and ghostly tale of coming to terms with one's past. It felt perfectly honed down to its essential core, which reflected the care and responsibility taken with the script. I'm grateful to Jonathan Marlow at Fandor for agreeing to stream the film concurrent with the Sun Valley Film Festival, along with Lybrook's more recent venture The Seed (2013), to promote not only All Fools Productions but SVFF itself. When that stream goes live, it will be accompanied by a conversation held earlier with Lybrook.

One thing I need to stress about Christian Lybrook is that he is adamantly non-auteurial, in the sense that he isn't trying to grandstand or claim all credit for himself. This is actually quite an attractive quality. Lybrook has made it clear to me that both Crawlspace and The Seed are collaborative ventures with his creative partners; but, it just so happens that he's the guy out in front because Tom Hamilton is preoccupied with a newborn and Chris Brock—co-writer, co-producer, assistant director and miscellaneous crew—is either shy or unfamiliar with self-promotion. So as a caveat, though the Fandor piece is being billed as a conversation with Christian Lybrook, he is speaking on behalf of the team and wants that to be known up-front.

Two members of the film's extended team, however, were out in front of the camera. I spoke with Kristy Leigh Lussier at the following Boise Cutters meeting and met with Jim Lile more recently in my home. My thanks to both of them for being willing to discuss their involvement with Crawlspace. I'll approach this in a mannered way and present Kristy first.  Photos courtesy of All Fools Productions.

* * *

Michael Guillén: As I've been interviewing folks in Boise about its local film production scene, I've been struck by the absence of women, particularly as directors. Either I find women behind the scenes engaged in production or in front of the camera as actors, like yourself. Can you speak to your background and how you came to acting? And what it's been like for you to be an actor in the Treasure Valley?

Kristy Leigh Lussier: I moved to Boise almost six years ago. My background is similar to Christian's: creative writing and an English literature background. I did some film study work in the Midwest, have done a lot of production work, and actually used to work with South by Southwest. I did a lot of independents down in Austin as a production assistant and got my feet wet on film sets down there.

For fun—when I first met Christian, Chris and Tom—I mentioned to them that I was a screenwriter and have always loved the writing element of filmmaking, but have always wanted to be onscreen as well. I did a lot of theater in high school and in college. Early last year I thought, "Gosh, I really have to get back into the film realm." I had taken a break, had a couple of kids, and wasn't doing much more than caring for my babies at home. But I'd heard about film projects going on and knew films were being shot around town so I began paying attention.

I started surfing Craig's List to get back into the scene. That's where I spotted Christian's ad for Crawlspace. He was looking for an actress to read for the part of Beth. We met and he cast me in the role. Crawlspace was the first thing I did in Boise's film community after years of being away from filmmaking. We shot it in May. Since then, I've worked on at least 9 or 10 other projects, including Brandon Freeman's Mark of the Veil, a couple of I-48s, an H-48 with Troy Custer, and last summer I was cast as a lead actress in a feature film project by Kim Kovac [A Ghost Of A Chance] out of Mountain Home.

Facebook and social media have helped me to network, to find out what's going on in the community, and have led me to projects like Crawlspace. I met Jim Lile working on Crawlspace and, since then, Jim and I have worked on the bulk of all these projects together. You meet other actors who are involved in a project and then you keep each other connected. If you hear about something, even something you can't do, then you offer it to someone else. "I've heard about this audition. I can't make it but you should try." I've noticed that a lot of people in the community really keep each other informed. So if it's a role that I won't fit because I'm too old or not young enough, I'll send the notice to a girlfriend of mine or someone who I might know that could fit the part or might be interested in the role. Boise's acting community keep each other in the loop and help each other out.

Guillén: I'm glad to hear you acknowledge that there is a community.

Lussier: I've only been involved with it for a year, but what I've noticed is its entrepreneurial sense; friends like Christian, Chris and Tom who say, "We can do this. We're not experts, we don't have a million dollars, but we can do this." I've been so happy over this last year with all the projects I've gotten to be a part of because most of these people want to tell a great story, they have great ideas, and they pull together people who they trust and who want to help them tell that story. Most of us work at careers outside of these projects, but we do them for fun and as a form of self-expression.

Guillén: Have you signed up with local casting director Catrine McGregor?

Lussier: Her name keeps popping up but I've never met her, though I would definitely consider that. Obviously, I would love to go further. Everyone wants to go further. Sure, I'd like to wake up and make movies every day and get paid to do it; but, if I only continue doing this, for fun the way I have been, and meeting a lot of people and having a good time with my friends making films on the weekend, I would still do that. I love the nature and the spirit of it.

Guillén: It seems to me that most of the positions available for films in Boise are in production. You mentioned you've trained as a production assistant. Would you consider going back into the production side of things?

Lussier: I would love to stay on camera. If I did move into the production realm, it would probably be writing or directing (though I have some fear about directing). As a screenwriter, it's a part of me and a piece of my soul to put it down on paper and tell the story that way. I feel confident that way. I feel confident as an actor to bring a script, a role, a person's story to life. To translate that story to screen as a director? I haven't done it yet. I'd be up to the challenge, but I'm hesitant to go in that direction. It's a matter of time.

Ironically, because of I48 I spent the weekend hanging out with a lot of local film people. I spent Saturday evening talking to some well-known people around town about a script that I had written last year and tossed around ideas about how to get the script to feature and put it to film. How would we shoot it in Idaho? How would we fund it? By its nature the script asks for a big budget. But I love that independent feel and I don't want to leave Idaho. I would rather shoot here. I would rather put people in Idaho to work behind the camera and in front of the camera. I love writing and, sure, I would love to get a million-dollar paycheck for a script, but if I had a chance to make it here instead of selling it, I would make it here in a heartbeat.

It's a lot of fun to have people in the community that you can go to and say, "Hey, I'm working on this script. Can you read it? Can you give me your ideas? Can you give me your thoughts?" Or, "So and so's working on this project and I thought of you. What do you think of his idea? Do you think you can do this? Would you come shoot it?" It's a lot of, "Hey, come help us do something and make something and bring something to life." A lot of people around town are willing.

Guillén: Can you recommend other women who are doing good film work here in Boise?

Lussier: Whitney Maunie is a great young actress who's been doing good work around Boise for the past few years. Kirsten Strough is a good producer-director out of the Boise State University group who's just graduated recently.

* * *

Guillén: So Jim, what's your background? How did you come to acting?

Jim Lile: Like many people who have an interest in the industry, I was just a fan of movies; but, the more I watched films, the more I watched actors and how they acted. I was always jealous of people who could act and play roles and as I developed professionally and no longer worried about standing in front of a group of people and giving presentations, I knew my skills were ready.

Gregory Bayne had an open casting call for a handful of positions for his film Person of Interest. I'm a corporate guy, usually in a suit during the day most of the time, and I thought, "Well, I'll play one of the FBI agents. That'd be an easy introduction." Then as I sat there, I scratched my head and thought, "Wait a minute. There's a role for a guy who's a war vet with PTSD who's lost a leg, is kind of weird, and is pivotal in this one scene, even though it's a small part." Even though he didn't have a lot of time on screen, his character underpinned the story. I decided I wanted to do that, which was good because the role of the FBI agent ended up being completely cut out of the film. So I got that part and got such an energy rush from doing it; it was a natural high. I was excited to get the role and loved being on set during rehearsals.

Guillén: You had no official training as an actor?

Lile: No. I've started official training two months ago. I work over at Nike in Portland and I take classes from Jana Lee Hamblin at Act Now Studio. I get great feedback from her. Now that I have a handful of films under my belt, I feel good about getting more training. I feel doors are opening. I've started to work with an agency. Grimm's interested in meeting with me! It's filmed in Portland. Knock knock on wood.

Guillén: So after Person of Interest, Crawlspace was your second project?

Lile: Yes, and my first as a lead.

Guillén: What is the value of getting your start as an actor in Idaho?

Lile: The benefit is the work. I just turned 40 a couple of weeks ago and I often see movies that have roles for guys 35-40 as the leading character. There's not a lot of competition for that in Idaho. I feel that I'm getting consistent work and that definitely feels good. It gives me on-the-job training. I've learned my own way of reading a script and thinking about mannerisms or how my presence comes off on film when there are cameras around. Interestingly, many of the things I've taught myself are 80% in the ballpark as to how professionals organize and learn their dialogue, and their actions and reactions to scenes. That's definitely a pro.

The con is that there are a lot of people who have an idea about a project, they write a story and have a camera and a couple of guys and they want to make a film but they don't understand the editing process, or lighting, or what it means to add music and undertones to a film. Probably half of the local projects I've done have never been finished. Maybe, ultimately, that's a good thing? I don't know.

Guillén: You've mentioned that you're continuing your training in Portland because it's convenient to your work, but would you have considered training here in Idaho? Is there any kind of real training for actors in Idaho?

Lile: There's some training. There's a lot of stage work. The people who offer training tend to come up to this area from Salt Lake to do training; but, I'm not quite sure how I feel about some of those folks who are brought up here to do the training. I get a mixed review from local actors. Why would I want to get training from someone questionable?

Guillén: And the point is that training builds upon natural instincts, natural talent, which I suspect you have as an actor. When I was talking to Christian about the filming of Crawlspace, he told me you filmed the last and most powerful scene first.

Lile: He was ambitious.

Guillén: He said he was stunned by your performance in that scene and that he knew the film was going to work after he saw what you did. He said you came right into the scene, grabbed the emotion, and wowed everyone on the set. So my question would be: without any official training as an actor, where did that come from? How did you know how to emotionally inhabit that character and ground him in your performance so quickly?

Lile: The simplest way to answer that is that you read the story and—if you believe in the story and if you understand the character and what he's gone through—then you can do it. I associated any feelings I had of unresolved guilt in my own life to the character. I felt that final scene was a moment of reconciliation in my character's life. He had come to terms with his brother's death. I thought about it and felt he had to first break before he could rise. He needed to hurt and feel his pain and then let it go. He realized he shouldn't carry this burden anymore. So that's how I thought about it and then I brought personal sadness to it to make the connection more real to myself.

Guillén: Christian said no one expected you to actually cry in that scene.

Lile: Right. [Laughs.] I wondered. Nobody said anything. It got really quiet and dark for a minute and I said, "Give me one second." Then I sat down, thought about these things, and put myself in the mood. I thought of a phoenix. Even though you don't really see me rise, you do see me cry with the relief of letting go. That's what I wanted to show. Christian didn't actually even know that I cried at first because he was at such a distance underneath the crawlspace and the way he was all tucked down. He was having a hard time seeing through the camera. But we did one shot, one take, and I got up and everybody was really quiet. It was a little embarrassing. I walked off and gathered my thoughts and everyone was standing there staring at me. I was wondering if they thought I was mental. Then I came to find out when he got home that night that he didn't know I had cried, but he made me feel really good about it. I think it shocked people. I grew up as a tough sports guy so people who knew me then who have seen the film say it really moved them.

Guillén: Hey, Channing Tatum has built a career being the butch guy with a vulnerable side. Audiences lap it up. So you're on a winning track there. Since you've had an opportunity now to work with a few of Idaho's filmmakers, and can compare, can you give me a sense of Christian's style? Of what it's like to work with him?

Lile: I absolutely enjoyed working with Christian. I've also much enjoyed working with Troy Custer. They're probably not that different in some ways. As an actor, you get their artistic creativity. You get that they spend time on setting up their films. They prep their films. They both have a strong grasp of the visual impact of their films with many cuts and many different angles that help the film build.

I've done more work with Troy Custer than anybody. Troy's a great character. He has such a passion for film. He is probably as good of a DP or DP coach—knows how to set up shots and scenes—as anybody I've seen. The product he delivers is as good as Christian's. They both have beautiful shots. Half the failure I see of films shot around Boise, even films I've been in that I haven't liked, is not so much the quality of the acting, but the quality of the film: how they cut in, the tone, the speed of things. You can have a great performance in a film and watch that performance and be enthralled, but that same performance filmed from many angles, many shots, the right tone in lighting, the right look with the close-ups and the cutaways will make it work that much better. Definitely, I would love to work with either of them again.

Guillén: Who else have you worked with that bears promise?

Lile: I'd work with Greg Bayne again. It was a great experience. His was a very comfortable environment, well-organized, smooth, polished, no stress. It was like you were walking into somebody's house to have a cup of coffee and then, "Okay, let's start filming." I see it as a Clint Eastwood style: "Take your time. Get ready. We'll start when you're ready to go."

Kristy and I both acted in a feature-length film called Ghost Of A Chance by Kim Kovac which is now in post. I need to go back and re-shoot one scene with her but I think most of the film is ready to go. We'll see how that goes. It'll be interesting. She's never done a full-length project and there's a lot of newness to it.

Guillén: I need to ask the dreaded question. In order to develop as an actor, will you need to leave Idaho?

Lile: I have been pushing and trying for probably a year and a half to help produce and create projects. A couple have been failed attempts. I've taken the approach of trying to build a project that's right for me and would work for me in terms of characterization and story, with the right ensemble of crew, professionals like Christian or Troy, but the problem is we don't have the right network in place, with the right screenwriters and production crew that can step in. We don't have that professional level of people to drive projects. Half the time people will come into a read or an audition and the script's not even done. Then it's two months before you get a callback. They don't have a distribution model. They don't know what they're going after. Their only plan is to submit to film festivals—which isn't a bad route in a lot of cases—but folks don't seem to know much past that. They don't know that there are mechanisms to get to DirecTV and cable contracts.

Guillén: Gregory Bayne has the best sense of that among the local filmmakers I've interviewed.

Lile: Completely! So, to answer your question, will I be able to stay in Idaho? My goal is to build a killer film in Idaho that will take me out of Idaho. This is my arrogant view of the world: I'd rather not go stand in a cattle call line in L.A. thinking I have some skills as a guy who's now 40. I'd rather have somebody see a film and think, "Wow, that was a really good film. I loved that actor. I want to use him for this role." That's my pipe dream goal. I would love to see it work that way.

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All Fools Productions, Brandon Freeman, Catrine McGregor, Chris Brock, Christian Lybrook, Fandor, Gregory Bayne, IFO, Jim Lile, Kim Kovac, Kristy Leigh Lussier, Sagebrush, SVFF, Tom Hamilton, Troy Custer,

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BLOODSWORTH: AN INNOCENT MAN—The Evening Class Interview With Gregory Bayne

Quite possibly, Gregory Bayne might know more about alternate funding strategies for independent film—including crowd funding—than most Idaho filmmakers. This "faithful pragmatist" has funded four successful Kickstarter campaigns for three separate films (A Person of Interest, Jens Pulver / Driven, and Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man), negotiated a hefty distribution deal through video on demand and streaming aggregates, has written columns for Filmmaker magazine, and has been cherry-picked as an expert panelist to discuss funding for independent film at this weekend's Idaho Cineposium Film Conference (May 18-19, 2012).

Keen to the association between crowd funding and audience building, Bayne follows-up his successful Kickstarter campaign for documentary-in-progress Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man with an evening with Kirk Bloodsworth at Boise's Egyptian Theater on Thursday, May 17.

As part of a suite of research interviews conducted for an overview piece for Fusion magazine on Idaho film production, Bayne and I sat down to discuss Bloodsworth late last month.

* * *

Michael Guillén: Gregory, you started with a feature and have now shifted to documentaries. Does that mean that documentary filmmaking has become more your medium or are these simply the stories you want to tell right now?

Gregory Bayne: Well, you can easily get pigeonholed. For me it was more like, "What's the most reasonable thing for me to do after Driven? What will people be waiting for? Likely a documentary." I like documentaries. I like the stories that I can tell through them that maybe I can't tell through narrative features. It took me a long time to even say, "I'm a filmmaker", but that's what I do for a living and that's how I spend my time. But I guess I want it to be more encompassing? I want to be format-agnostic and genre-agnostic, y'know?

Basically, filmmaking is just storytelling for me. For example, my next project is Bloodsworth because Kirk's story really intrigued me. It's a great story to tell. Somebody had been looking into making his story into a feature; but, I liked him, I liked him as a person and I thought that the best way to tell his story was to do a documentary and let him be the star of it. Stylistically, it will be different to a degree than Driven; but, they're the same in that they're both stories centered on their subjects. I feel that the State of Maryland has told their version of the story several times at court, people have read it in the news, but what does it feel like to be a guy ripped off the face of the earth and thrown into prison for something he didn't do? What's that story? I can tell that story better as a documentary through somebody's true experience rather than trying to dramatize it.

Guillén: Clearly, finding the story is essential to building an audience. And a story of direct human experience has a better chance of having an audience relate to that direct experience through a shared humanity. But your decision to tell that story through documentary involves many choices along the way that intrigue me. For example, with Driven—and, I anticipate, with Bloodsworth—I respect that the story is told through the voice of its subject. You don't have a lot of talking heads in Driven, for example, to tell Pulver's story. Jens Pulver tells his own story. And it sounds like you're taking a similar approach with Bloodsworth? In some ways, it might be considered a no-no to give one face so much screen time; but, in the case of Jens Pulver, it revealed an emotional authenticity that engaged the audience. You can run with emotional authenticity for hours, I think.

Bayne: I totally agree. To be perfectly honest, I mostly watch narrative films and mostly just wanted to direct narrative features. That was my initial impulse. But then I fell into editing documentaries and began to like that approach to storytelling. I felt documentaries gave me a greater sense of how to tell stories than all the years of writing and watching dramatized narratives. One of my major inspirations are the Maysles Brothers, especially their film Salesman (1969). I love that movie. It's so interesting and heartbreaking and real and raw. One thing that documentaries have over narrative features—unless they're genuine classics—is this level of timelessness. So the Maysles Brothers inspired me and, more recently, Errol Morris's films, and one Chris Smith did called Collapse (2009), which I watched before making Driven and thought, "Oh wow!" Have you seen Collapse?

Guillén: I haven't.

Bayne: It's about this guy that supposedly predicted the financial collapse. He's something of a conspiracy theorist and Collapse is basically a movie that's just him in a room being interviewed through several different camera angles. It's just him for 80 minutes and I thought, "Holy shit! This is incredibly interesting." The guy was totally engaging and I knew from meeting Jens and having talked with him that there would be no problem with him carrying a movie too. There was a certain amount of the trifecta going on: a great back story, a totally engaging personality, and he had something happening. It's the same with Kirk Bloodsworth. The intensity level turns up to 11 from Driven in terms of what he experienced: being wrongfully convicted, sentenced to death, having to go through that, and then being the first death row inmate in the U.S. to be exonerated through DNA evidence.

My whole point is that—through watching films like Errol Morris' The Fog of War (2003)—if you see these engaging personalities and you allow them to speak and know you have the editor's touch in the end, you can in an authentic way shape what they're saying and tell it to the audience who is watching.

Guillén: Let's talk a bit about where you are with Bloodsworth. You're doing a benefit at the Egyptian Theater on Thursday, May 17, 2012 with Kirk Bloodworth in attendance to Q&A with the audience? My understanding is that part of that event is to film audience reaction? How much longer will you need after that to finish up the film?

Bayne: I also like the process to be as simple as possible. I'm working on two tracks with the Bloodsworth story. Along with my own documentary, we're doing a short piece for PBS for some new program they're developing. I filmed him throughout February back East but I'm not sure that footage will actually be part of the film. The concept I have for Bloodsworth encompasses four elements. First is his speaking in front of people and telling his story from beginning to end. It's compelling and he's a great storyteller. He's shaped his story really well and it resonates because—even though it's second nature and a little bit rehearsed at this point—it's still very emotional and authentic. It comes back to that. So, having him in front of an audience telling his story is just engaging. I look forward to being able to shoot that.

My favorite quote about documentaries is from Errol Morris who said that the best thing and the worst thing about documentaries is that they can be about anything. I love that and it's one of the things that draws me to documentary filmmaking over narrative filmmaking. That principle could be inherent in narrative filmmaking as well, but there's still formulaic storytelling tropes that one way or the other you have to fit in. With documentaries you're bound to a degree with the tenets of storytelling but the way in which you present the story is wide open.

So, the first element is filming him in front of an audience. Then there's the second element of interviewing him, much like I described the Collapse interview, with several cameras. I'm going to sit down with him for four solid days, which is what I did with Jens, and go through the whole story, hoping through that process to get beyond the technical aspects and go deeper. The third element is archival footage from day one of the murder, all the coverage around it, his arrest, his conviction, his appeal, prison.

Guillén: That sounds like a costly element of the film?

Bayne: Yeah. I don't know how costly it's going to be yet. It depends on how much of the archival footage I'll actually use. First, I have to pay a fee to get the footage to look at and then—once I actually use it—I'll have to pay money.

Guillén: You have earned a reputation as being something of a master of crowd funding. How successful were your Kickstarter campaigns for Bloodsworth? Could you use a Kickstarter campaign to offset the costs of securing archival footage?

Bayne: The original Kickstarter campaign for Bloodsworth was fully funded. The way it works in the documentary world—which I'm sure you're fully familiar with—is that you can't get any money from any agencies or granting organizations unless you're already way deep into the process. I raised the original money to get through the initial production process to come up with 20-25 minutes of good footage that tells a story, gives the scope of what I'm making, and present it to people at Sundance, at the Ford Foundation, to people at PBS, etc.

I didn't want to do the Kickstarter campaign because it was already my fourth, all of which have been successful. That's nice, but, I do perceive a burnout. So I was really nervous about the Kickstarter campaign for Bloodsworth. I had tried other ways to raise the money. The initial seed money I was supposed to get fell through but I knew there were a lot of things I needed to do that would require money, because the budget for Bloodsworth would probably be larger than it was for Driven. So I went ahead and did the Kickstarter campaign and I did it for various reasons. First, a lot of people just think about the money-making aspect of Kickstarter; but, if you treat crowd funding right, if you respect the process, and follow through with what you say you're going to do, Kickstarter can be a pretty amazing audience-building tool.

I had a nice track record already. For Person of Interest, we did what we said we were going to do with that movie and it got out. With Driven, there were two campaigns and, again, when the movie was done and it was released, everyone got what they were promised. So with the Kickstarter campaign for Bloodsworth, it was nervewracking and yet it worked. It also gave me the opportunity to create another level of audience for this new project that I didn't have prior. It's always good to do that. It gets the conversation rolling.

The campaign kind of sucked because it had the Thanksgiving holiday right in the middle of it and I thought it was going to be very hard to make the funds happen. But the story got picked up all over the place—there was a tidbit in The Washington Post and coverage in all the major online magazines—and the reason the Kickstarter campaign for Bloodsworth got picked up all over the place was because the Idaho State Tourism Board sent out a press release for me. I called them and I said, "Hey, remember that time you said that you really liked what I was doing and to call on you if you could ever be of help?" And they said, "Yes!" I was a little nervous towards the end of the campaign but then one day this writer who I've never met threw in $5,000 and that was the last little chip that needed to fall and then it was done.

The nice thing about this experience was this it was my quickest Kickstarter campaign. Ordinarily, to get a campaign 10% funded early on is the best strategy possible. If you can make it there, oddly enough you can get it funded the rest of the way. Within 24 hours, the Bloodsworth campaign went past 10% funded and then the work really began. Still, again, it went the fastest of all my campaigns in achieving the 10% but, again, I think that had to do with all this work I'd done prior, had delivered on my promises, and people were beginning to trust that I wasn't an asshole.

Guillén: So any sense of when the film will be ready to be released?

Bayne: Well, I'll have the bulk of the footage I'll need by the end of May, but then the animation aspect is a new element for me that I've never worked with before and I'm assuming that's going to take more time than I imagine it will. Half of the film will be animated by Matthew Wade.

Guillén: How did you decide to film this story? Had you read some news coverage and that's what lured you into the project? How did you then contact Kirk Bloodsworth?

Bayne: A friend of mine in Boise was friends with Bloodsworth and she had read Tim Junkin's book Bloodsworth: The True Story of One Man's Triumph over Injustice. She contacted me about the possibility of making a film about him, gave me the book and I started reading it, and I thought, "This is a great story." Then Bloodsworth and his people all watched Driven and thought I was pretty good at what I was doing so I sat down with Kirk and decided we would make a documentary about his story. That's how the process began. It was very simple.

Guillén: When you approach a prospective subject, what do you offer them? What do they get out of your telling their story?

Bayne: With Jens Pulver / Driven, because it's a first person movie, Jens owns half the movie. I think that's totally fair. I put in most of the equity, I made the movie and all that, so I should get something; but, then, Jens put in his life story. If Driven is making money right now and Jens isn't getting some of that, I would be a total asshole. So that's how I approach it. It's not like making a movie about Japanese whaling ships. When you're making a movie that's so specified and it's so definitively about one person and their story and they're investing their time to be with you and to tell their story and to allow you the creative freedom to make and own the movie, it nonetheless at the end of the day has to be shared. If there's a financial benefit, it's a shared financial benefit. I don't really see any other way to do it. You can litigate a project to the end of time, but there's a right and a wrong. If you're going to tell a story about a specific person and they're on camera for 90% of the movie, you both share the money, period.

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Chris Smith, Documentary, Errol Morris, Gregory Bayne, Jens Pulver, Kirk Bloodsworth, Matthew Wade, Maysles Brothers, Sagebrush, Tim Junkin,

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