Posted // October 3,2007 - CW: You’ve been unusually open about your personal experiences. Ideally, you don’t want [your movies] just to be The Richard Dutcher Experience; you want the viewer to pull something away from it as well. Does it make it harder if the story seems too close to your own biography?
RD: I would hope not. I’ve always felt, the more specific you are culturally, the more universal the stories become. That’s why I have no problem going into cultural or theological specifics of Mormonism because, even though it’s different from what most viewers would see, it makes it real, and it makes it something believable for an audience member. … But I guess I hadn’t really thought about it because I’m not really all that famous, you know?
People ask me sometimes why I’m in my films. … A lot of the time, it’s plain economics. Like Falling, which was so inexpensive and so close to my own personal experience, at least metaphorically. [When] you have no money to begin with and you’re crunched for time … [rather than sit] for four hours and explain to an actor what you want them to get, [it’s better] just to be able to step in and do it and move on to the next setup.
CW: When you think about continuing to make cinema about faith in some fashion, how does it feel to be writing about a universe that feels completely different from the way it felt before?
RD: What I referred to before as my collapse of faith was just a moment when … the universe shifted for me in an instant. It was one question I asked myself. … No angels came to talk to me; no devils came to talk to me; it was my own inner self answering that question. It was such a sudden and violent shift. … In cinematic terms, it was like in the movies when you’re in space and two ships, one dislodges and starts to drift away. That’s what it felt for me. I actually physically felt like my faith was just suddenly broken away, and there was nothing I could do to grab it back. And that was an absolutely terrifying moment. What do you do when the entire way you view the universe … is suddenly pulled away?
You know, I have zero suicidal tendencies, so for me it was not an option of, like, “End it all!” It was just, one day I’m in this universe and the next day I’m in this one, and I have no idea how this universe functions. So the past few years for me has just been kind of looking at the world in this new way and saying, “What is it all about?” I’m going to use [the filmmaking] process in order to try to understand what’s going on in the world, or with me in the world.
CW: It seems like filmmakers haven’t found a place for really questioning cinema about faith. How do you feel about the way faith is dealt with in general in movies?
RD: It’s basically nonexistent. It’s … preaching to the choir, or it’s more a reaction to a social structure: You’re angry at the Orthodox Jewish power structure, so you make an angry movie that attacks that. So you either have films that attack religion and spirituality or we have films that are … just promoting them.
When I think, “Who would I gather around a table like this who’s interested in the same kind of filmmaking?”—and we’re talking about living filmmakers—I don’t even know where to go, you know? But … it’s kind of exciting because here’s an area of cinema that people just aren’t interested in dealing with, and there’s such a wealth of material there.
CW: Is it just that the fear of alienating the faithful is so strong that the approach is either to ignore it, prop it up, or, as you said, just completely needle it?
RD: Boy, I could talk for an hour about that. … What I seem to find about LDS filmmakers is that they’re very serious about film as a business, but they’re not interested in film as an art form at all. They don’t understand film as an art form at all. For the past several years, I’ve been frustrated, saying, “Mormonism finally gets a chance to express itself cinematically, and look what it does.” And the thought that hit me a couple of years ago was, well, maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Maybe Mormons finally did get a chance to express themselves cinematically, and maybe they have done so. [Maybe] what we have gotten over the last eight years is a very accurate reflection of the culture. And, if that’s true, that’s something I think people should look at.
CW: Was there a time when it got wearying to you to be the go-to quote about LDS filmmaking, or did you continue to appreciate the opportunity to talk about it?
RD: I didn’t get tired of it then because I felt the message just wasn’t sinking in. But it never sank in.
What I realize now is that, when God’s Army came out … and when it succeeded, I was thrilled and announcing to everyone, “Look what we can do now.” But I remember getting up at BYU and UVSC talking to packed houses … and I said, “There’s finally a market; we can finally tell our stories.” And it hit me that all anybody heard was, “There’s a market.” And all the rest of it was just wasted breath. I think that’s what LDS filmmakers have been interested in—just the market.
Now, I’m tired of it. … I really don’t want to talk about LDS cinema anymore because I feel like I’ve been shouting in an empty room for a really long time.
CW: It seemed pretty clear to me from your Daily Herald letter that you still have a lot of concern for LDS cinema, which isn’t something you’d expect from someone who has said, “I’m done with that.”
RD: Well, I’ve been kind of thinking about that, too: Why do I still feel such a … concern? When I was trying to explain myself on a blog, [I used a] Buddhist metaphor: If you’re taking this journey and you need to cross a river, you build a raft to cross. Then, when you get to the other side of the river, you don’t say, “I’m so thankful to this raft for helping me cross this river” that you put it on your back and carry it the rest of the journey. You leave the boat there and you continue on. But you’re obviously very grateful for the boat. You’re not going to hate the boat, or tear the boat up. You just go on.
And that’s what’s been frustrating for me is that … I’ve tried to be publicly as generous as I can, refusing to go into details because I know that won’t do any good to anybody. It was like [the Daily Herald letter]; you know, I wrote all about LDS cinema, and in the last few paragraphs, I talked about my journey taking me elsewhere. And the frustrating thing for me is, I’ve heard no end of the last three paragraphs, and nobody pays any attention to what I said before. For me, those principles that I talked about—even though I may take those principles outside of Mormonism as far as the kind of films that I should make—I feel those are very valuable.
RD: I would hope not. I’ve always felt, the more specific you are culturally, the more universal the stories become. That’s why I have no problem going into cultural or theological specifics of Mormonism because, even though it’s different from what most viewers would see, it makes it real, and it makes it something believable for an audience member. … But I guess I hadn’t really thought about it because I’m not really all that famous, you know?
People ask me sometimes why I’m in my films. … A lot of the time, it’s plain economics. Like Falling, which was so inexpensive and so close to my own personal experience, at least metaphorically. [When] you have no money to begin with and you’re crunched for time … [rather than sit] for four hours and explain to an actor what you want them to get, [it’s better] just to be able to step in and do it and move on to the next setup.
CW: When you think about continuing to make cinema about faith in some fashion, how does it feel to be writing about a universe that feels completely different from the way it felt before?RD: What I referred to before as my collapse of faith was just a moment when … the universe shifted for me in an instant. It was one question I asked myself. … No angels came to talk to me; no devils came to talk to me; it was my own inner self answering that question. It was such a sudden and violent shift. … In cinematic terms, it was like in the movies when you’re in space and two ships, one dislodges and starts to drift away. That’s what it felt for me. I actually physically felt like my faith was just suddenly broken away, and there was nothing I could do to grab it back. And that was an absolutely terrifying moment. What do you do when the entire way you view the universe … is suddenly pulled away?
You know, I have zero suicidal tendencies, so for me it was not an option of, like, “End it all!” It was just, one day I’m in this universe and the next day I’m in this one, and I have no idea how this universe functions. So the past few years for me has just been kind of looking at the world in this new way and saying, “What is it all about?” I’m going to use [the filmmaking] process in order to try to understand what’s going on in the world, or with me in the world.
CW: It seems like filmmakers haven’t found a place for really questioning cinema about faith. How do you feel about the way faith is dealt with in general in movies?
RD: It’s basically nonexistent. It’s … preaching to the choir, or it’s more a reaction to a social structure: You’re angry at the Orthodox Jewish power structure, so you make an angry movie that attacks that. So you either have films that attack religion and spirituality or we have films that are … just promoting them.
When I think, “Who would I gather around a table like this who’s interested in the same kind of filmmaking?”—and we’re talking about living filmmakers—I don’t even know where to go, you know? But … it’s kind of exciting because here’s an area of cinema that people just aren’t interested in dealing with, and there’s such a wealth of material there.
CW: Is it just that the fear of alienating the faithful is so strong that the approach is either to ignore it, prop it up, or, as you said, just completely needle it?
RD: Boy, I could talk for an hour about that. … What I seem to find about LDS filmmakers is that they’re very serious about film as a business, but they’re not interested in film as an art form at all. They don’t understand film as an art form at all. For the past several years, I’ve been frustrated, saying, “Mormonism finally gets a chance to express itself cinematically, and look what it does.” And the thought that hit me a couple of years ago was, well, maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Maybe Mormons finally did get a chance to express themselves cinematically, and maybe they have done so. [Maybe] what we have gotten over the last eight years is a very accurate reflection of the culture. And, if that’s true, that’s something I think people should look at.
CW: Was there a time when it got wearying to you to be the go-to quote about LDS filmmaking, or did you continue to appreciate the opportunity to talk about it?
RD: I didn’t get tired of it then because I felt the message just wasn’t sinking in. But it never sank in.
What I realize now is that, when God’s Army came out … and when it succeeded, I was thrilled and announcing to everyone, “Look what we can do now.” But I remember getting up at BYU and UVSC talking to packed houses … and I said, “There’s finally a market; we can finally tell our stories.” And it hit me that all anybody heard was, “There’s a market.” And all the rest of it was just wasted breath. I think that’s what LDS filmmakers have been interested in—just the market.
Now, I’m tired of it. … I really don’t want to talk about LDS cinema anymore because I feel like I’ve been shouting in an empty room for a really long time.
CW: It seemed pretty clear to me from your Daily Herald letter that you still have a lot of concern for LDS cinema, which isn’t something you’d expect from someone who has said, “I’m done with that.”
RD: Well, I’ve been kind of thinking about that, too: Why do I still feel such a … concern? When I was trying to explain myself on a blog, [I used a] Buddhist metaphor: If you’re taking this journey and you need to cross a river, you build a raft to cross. Then, when you get to the other side of the river, you don’t say, “I’m so thankful to this raft for helping me cross this river” that you put it on your back and carry it the rest of the journey. You leave the boat there and you continue on. But you’re obviously very grateful for the boat. You’re not going to hate the boat, or tear the boat up. You just go on.
And that’s what’s been frustrating for me is that … I’ve tried to be publicly as generous as I can, refusing to go into details because I know that won’t do any good to anybody. It was like [the Daily Herald letter]; you know, I wrote all about LDS cinema, and in the last few paragraphs, I talked about my journey taking me elsewhere. And the frustrating thing for me is, I’ve heard no end of the last three paragraphs, and nobody pays any attention to what I said before. For me, those principles that I talked about—even though I may take those principles outside of Mormonism as far as the kind of films that I should make—I feel those are very valuable.
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