See all in Features

The phantom worlds of Nina Menkes

Features

19-hour drives

YOU'VE TALKED BEFORE ABOUT HOW HARD IT WAS/IS TO MARKET YOUR FILM. DO YOU STILL FEEL THAT WAY, OR DO YOU THINK THE FILM'S SUCCESS SO FAR HAS HELPED TO MUTE THAT PROBLEM? The recognition helps, but it is still a really hard sell. Every festival we go to the first screening will be less attended than the second. Members of the audience promise to tell their friends they have to see the film, and then the second screening will be filled with people that will tell us they heard so many amazing things about the movie they just had to come see it. When we hear stuff like that, it convinces us that we need to just figure out how to duplicate that on a national level.

IT'S FAIR TO CALL TWWGB A PATRIOTIC FILM, BUT WAS IT ALWAYS INTENDED TO BE? HOW DID YOUR IDEA OF WHAT THE FILM WOULD BE "ABOUT" CHANGE AS FILMING CARRIED ON? I agree that [it] is a patriotic film, but we definitely didn't set out thinking "let's go make a patriotic film." ... I think our first thought was just that what the Maine Troop Greeters are doing is a genuine act of kindness, and there aren't many purely good things like that happening out there. It just seemed like a story worth telling. [O]ur initial plan was to try to look past the politics and make a film that was just about supporting the troops.

[E]verything changed as soon as we went home with our three subjects. The moment we saw what their lives were like outside the airport the focus shifted, and we knew that the film was really about aging in America. What do we all go through, as we grow older? And how much does having a purpose in your life affect everything else? But even as we were walking into the edit room with all of our footage we still weren't sure what the film was "about" because we weren't quite sure what we had. We knew we had a lot of emotional moments and the three subjects had all gone through a lot while we were following them, but could we craft it into a story? The three months last summer editing the film and finding that story was the hardest part of the entire process for me.

WAS IT HARD NOT TO GET INVOLVED WITH AND HELP THE SUBJECTS IN THE FILM? (WHENEVER I SEE THE SCENE OF BILL MOVING, I FEEL AWFUL FOR HIM AND THEN WONDER IF THE CREW JUST HELPED HIM OUT AFTER...) Many people have asked us about that scene and whether or not we helped Bill or thought about helping him. We did not help him and I can't speak for Gita (Pullapilly, the film's producer) or Dan (Ferrigan, the co-director of photography) but I didn't really think of putting down the camera and helping him. One thing about Bill — I've never met a man with a stronger will or internal drive to just keep pushing ahead. So even on his darkest days, and that was certainly one of them, I just had tremendous respect for him and knew he didn't need our help. He would get through it. He would keep pushing, and if I put the camera down to help when he didn't need it, then in a way I would be letting him down because then I wouldn't be capturing his story for others to see.