Scott Christopherson and Professor April Chabries, Theatre and Media Arts
When I originally acquired funding from the ORCA office I entitled my project Mormons and Drugs. I had planned on making a documentary film chronicling the lives of Latter-day Saints that struggle or have struggled with drug addiction. I was enrolled in a documentary production class (TMA 274) in Winter 2005 and in this class I began making the film about Latter-day Saint drug addicts. I focused primarily on my brother and my relationship to him. As I shot and edited that film, I realized the power of re-drafting. Throughout the course of the semester I made approximately seven different versions of the film until I finally felt somewhat satisfied with the final product. The final film ended up being six minutes and thirty seconds long and was entitled My Brother Doug. Doug, my older brother, has struggled with an addiction to cocaine, meth amphetamines, and oxycontin pain medication. Two years ago we ran a marathon together in Iowa. Drawing from old marathon footage, I created a film that compared Doug’s battle with drug addiction to running a marathon. Doug and I both finished the race. On December 12, 2005 my family and I attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting celebrating Doug’s year mark of sobriety. It was one of the best experiences of my life watching my brother share his battle of drug addiction with other addicts. The congregation roared into cheering and singing “Happy Birthday” to my brother as he got up to speak. This was a great finale to the project. However, that’s only the beginning of the project as I found out this semester.
As I enrolled for classes during this semester (Fall 2005) I wanted to expand the documentary into a lengthier thirty-minute format. For this reason I took a class that helped me develop my non-fiction film idea into a well organized structure that prepared me to make a higher quality film. I thought I learned how to re-draft the semester prior to this one, but I soon learned I hadn’t. Over time, my film morphed from Mormons and Drugs to Guerilla Filmmaking and finally ended up with Only the Pizza Man Knows. You’re probably wondering what is the significance of all these titles. At first I thought I’d proceed to make an inspirational film about my brother and other LDS drug addicts that have turned to Christ to overcome their addictions. As I did this, I struggled to find a deep passion for the subject and wasn’t able to apply the film to me personally. I decided that, for my first major film, I better choose a topic that hit close to home and this one certainly did. After writing over ten different drafts of prospectuses and treatments (the equivalent of a script for documentary films), I funneled my ideas into the root of some of my deepest problems—my family’s colored past.
When I was 14 years old, my father lost his job and my family filed for bankruptcy. My family has never really confronted or talked about why and how my father fell into depression and went bankrupt. I couldn’t respect or understand my father anymore. I once looked up to him as the measure of success, but after the bankruptcy he struggled to find a steady job and support our family. Because of the difficulties my family went through, I’m paranoid about money. I’ve begun to fall into my father’s bad habits with managing money. I have outrageous credit card debts and I find myself competing to have nice things that my friends have. I fear the problems my dad faced are now haunting me as a college student and I’m terrified to be a filmmaker because I won’t have a guaranteed salary. All of this has been hanging over my head and haunting me for the past ten years and I want to explore and understand the situation. I’m planning on making a 30-minute documentary entitled Only the Pizza Man Knows. This documentary will explore my personal fear related to the potential instability of documentary filmmaking and how that fear stems from my father’s financial instability.
I’m excited about the opportunities ahead of me with this film and I’m indeed grateful for the start the ORCA office has given me by awarding me with these funds. Thank you.