By Matthew Howe
FULL DISCLOSURE:
I was the first-unit cinematographer on The Battle of Pussy Willow Creek. Contrary to what some of you might think, that does not make me biased toward the film. I'm very, if not more, critical of the films I work on than I am on other movies. I honestly hate most of the films I've shot and their memory only brings me pain. If you want proof of my merciless self-critique, check out my book: Film is Hell: How I Sold my Soul to make the Crappiest Movies in History.
PWC is different. I knew from the script that this was something unique and exciting. That's why I signed o. After shooting a bunch of movies that were less than artistically fulfilling, I wanted to put my efforts toward making on something I could be proud of.
And proud I am. The Battle of Pussy Willow Creek is one of the most unique films I've ever seen. Not to mention hilarious. I've honestly never seen anything quite like it.
The Battle of Pussy Willow Creek takes the form of a Ken Burns style documentary, (supposedly made by filmmaker Grace A. Burns) with his famous The Civil War used as a rough template for an insane story of the misfit soldiers who saved the Union from certain doom, and the ensuing cover up of their historic deeds.
I asked Wendy to describe the genesis for the film:
"I'd been wanting to do an indie feature for a long time, but my ideas are always pretty large and rather beyond what you can normally do on a shoe string budget, or in this case, a dental floss budget. Then back around 2000 I was hiking in the Shenandoah Valley... so many Civil War battles were fought in that area and I kept seeing these plaques commemorating a battle or saying that such-and-such army had marched through here.
"I hadn't really given much thought to the Civil War before that and for some reason seeing these markers was the first time the whole thing truly felt real to me. Then I started thinking about the Ken Burns Civil War film. I thought, wow, there really isn't anything too complicated about those films, mostly you're seeing talking heads, old pictures, or scenery. Then it occurred to me that you could tell an entirely fictional story using this same technique."
So-called mockumentaries have become a genre of their own even before the breakout hit This is Spinal Tap (The Rutles, anyone?) But Cohen maintains that, while she is a fan of Tap and its ilk, PWC is different. "The most obvious (difference) is that it's in the form of an archival doc, which is a subgenre different than what is used in Spinal Tap and the rest. But more than that, the intent is different.
"It was never my intention to spoof anything, but rather to use the techniques popularized by people like Ken Burns to tell a fictional story instead of a non-fictional one. I don't even like to call the movie a mockumentary. To me it's a "fictional documentary."
"I wanted to tell two stories. The first story is the one the "historians" are telling you about - the story of the characters in the past. It's the story of how certain types of people have traditionally been excluded from mainstream society, despite any glorious contributions they may have made. There are certain types of people whom we barely hear about when we learn about history: minorities, gay people, and women. The main characters in this first story are a gay colonel, an elderly Chinese immigrant, a mixed-race black guy, and a young woman. Not only are they despised minorities, they are also incredibly eccentric and "not ready for primetime". The Battle of Pussy Willow Creek is an action that the film claims saved the nation, but then was covered up because the powers-that-be did not want to credit these people. So my first story is about the tragedy of that type of exclusion.
Sometimes ideas which seem simple, turn out to me rather more complex. For Cohen, the journey from original idea to finished film was a long one. "I got the idea in 2000 and didn't finish the movie until the end of 2009. But I wasn't working on it full time at first, more just thinking about it, researching the Civil War, and coming up with characters. During that time I wrote a 100+ page prose version of the story, just to get it straight in my head. Now, if you count from when I started writing the screenplay it's 5 years. Personally I like to count from when I started pre-production on the film, in which case it's just under 4 years, which is the same amount of time it took to wage the Civil War."
As anyone who's ever done it knows all too well, making movies is hard. Especially independent movies. I asked what the most difficult part of this particular experience was. That difficulty was compounded for Cohen who not only wrote and directed the movie, but edited it, photographed some of it, and even created some of the graphics and effects.
Sound is an important part of the film, both in the detailed effects and both modern and fake period music composed specifically for the film. Cohen describes her approach to music. "For the main theme, called Hohokus Adios, I wanted something on par with/reminiscent of Ashokan Farewell - the main theme of Ken Burns' The Civil War. My idea was to use this piece of music in a variety of ways... sometimes haunting and beautiful, sometimes more strident, and sometimes even trippy and psychedelic. I also wanted it to even get annoying after a while, which is how I feel about Ashokan Farewell.
"I was lucky to find composer Patrick Derivaz, who is really amazing and at the time had just done a whole set of arrangements of Civil War era music and was very familiar with the genre. This was especially important because I had written a bunch of supposedly "period" songs for the movie (they're in the original script) and needed someone to set them to music that was believably of the time. At least one I had a sort of melody for, but I pretty much let Patrick do his thing on the others. I was just so pleased with how Hohokus Adios and those songs came out. That music might even be my favorite thing in the movie. Later, when I was working with my sound designer, Eve Cuyen, we realized that we needed a LOT more music than had been originally written and recorded for the film. Patrick was on to other things by that point, but luckily Eve is also a musician. We selected a bunch of actual Civil War music and Eve did the arrangements and recorded it."
Wendy also has some advice for aspiring thespians. "The one thing about non-Union actors is that some of them don't have much experience and don't know enough not to waste their money sending headshots even though they don't fit any of the character descriptions. I received a ton of headshots from people with little notes saying "in case you have other roles that aren't listed that I might be suitable for" or "please keep me in mind for future projects." Doing this kind of thing is just a waste of everyone's money and time. It's also really, really annoying."
Ms. Cohen's alter-ego for the film was one Grace A Burns. I asked her what Grace is like. "I imagine Grace to be someone who is very much in earnest, but who is extremely naive. I think she believes everything anyone tells her, and if two people tell her two contradicting things she believes them both equally and puts both in the movie. I think she is very well-meaning, but a little bit of a ditz. She definitely did not have very much control over her documentary, no matter what she may claim. For instance, I imagine her Narrator, J. Winston Barrymore,(played by actor Christopher Lukas,) threw out her voice-over script and just said whatever the hell he wanted. Grace let herself be intimidated into using it because he's the famous J. Winston Barrymore and must know what he's doing. It was fun to try to make the movie this person would make. I tried to stay in character most of the time I was putting the it together, which meant I had to be somewhat schizophrenic because unlike Grace, I was very much in control of this project and didn't want anything to end up in it by mistake. I didn't want to anything in the film that I hadn't thought deeply about and made a calculated decision on. The opposite of how Gracie would do it."
"Then I realized I had a LinkedIn connection with one of his editors. It was one of those things where someone connects to you but you don't know them but they're in your industry so you say "why not?" Anyway, I contacted this guy through LinkedIn and made my pitch and sent him my trailer. He thought the trailer was great, so I sent him a DVD, and he said he'd try to get it into Ken's hands. I guess he must have caught him at a good time because Ken sat down and watched it right then and there. My LinkedIn buddy emailed me while Ken was watching and said he could hear him "howling" with laughter in the next room. After that I was able to set up a phone conversation with Ken, and he turned out to be super nice. I was scheduled for a 10 minute call but somehow we ended up talking for closer to 30 minutes. He was very encouraging, and gave me a great blurb to use for my marketing materials. He is really a wonderful guy... I'm so lucky to have had the opportunity to show him my work, and it means a lot to me that he liked it so much!"
So if Ken burns has seen it, where can the rest of us get a look? "The film is currently available on both iTunes and Amazon.com. It's supposed to go to Netflix eventually as well, but I'm not sure when that's scheduled to happen. If people are interested, they can go to the movie's Facebook page which is probably the best place to get news about where it's showing and how to see it. They can also visit the website www.pussywillowcreek.com. The website is a companion piece to the movie, really... a fictional informational website about a fictional documentary about a fictional battle. There's some pretty funny stuff on there."
Funny indeed. And an independent film definitely worth checking out.