3/15/01

BEAVER TRILOGY

 

Richard Griffith, the original Beaver Kid,
in Beaver Trilogy.
When filmmaker Trent Harris walked out into the parking lot of Channel 2 in Salt Lake City one day in 1979 to test out a video camera, he had no way of knowing that the next twenty-two years of his life would be so greatly affected by what was simply supposed to be test footage. In the parking lot on that fateful day was Richard Griffith, a young man of twenty-one from a nearby town called Beaver.

Griffith, who had done impersonations throughout his life and had dubbed himself the "Beaver Rich Little," was in Salt Lake to check out the TV station. He was taking snapshots of the Sky 2 helicopter when Harris approached him. Griffith hammed it up for the camera and did impressions of John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone and Barry Manilow. Later, with the help of a screwdriver, he started his 1964 Chevy Impala (replete with engravings of Farah Fawcett and Olivia Newton-John on the front side windows) and simply drove away.

Trent Harris then started receiving letters from Griffith about a talent show he’d organized in Beaver in which he was going to perform as "Olivia Newton-Dawn." Harris agreed to come and film it for Channel 2. After getting his makeup done at a local funeral parlor, Griffith took the stage as the final act of the talent show in the Beaver High School Auditorium dressed as a leather-clad Olivia Newton-John and sang a heartfelt rendition of "Please Don’t Keep Me Waiting." The next day they said their goodbyes and Harris returned to Salt Lake City. That was the last that they would see of each other until January of this year when Beaver Trilogy played at the Sundance Film Festival.

But something about Richard Griffith had got a hold of Trent Harris. After moving to L.A. he made two short films over the next five years that were basically just reenactments of his chance meeting with the kid from Beaver, Utah. The first of these,The Beaver Kid (1981), features a very young Sean Penn, who shot with Harris during his off hours from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The second, The Orkley Kid (1985), features an equally young Crispin Glover the same year he appeared in Back to the Future . (Harris had initially invited Sean Penn to reprise the role of Griffith in The Orkley Kid, but he wasn’t available; Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz and Anthony Edwards all auditioned before the part went to Crispin Glover.)

In both reenactments of his initial encounter with Griffith, Trent Harris explores themes that are present, if only subliminally, in the original footage. The reenactments also delve into the fictional aftermath of Griffith’s performance as "Olivia Newton-Dawn" in a small, Midwestern town. Before and during the talent show people are seen trying to disassociate themselves with the (potentially embarrassing) event. While Larry (the name of Griffith’s character in both reenactments) is getting his "makeover" done by a local mortician, he confesses that she’s the "only one that’s come through so far." He later calls the director and requests that he bury the footage. In The Beaver Kid, he even contemplates suicide, putting the barrel of a hunting rifle into his mouth.

Harris’s own self-portrait in these reenactments is no less forgiving. While driving into Beaver, he and his cameraman make fun of the town and the spectacle they are about to see. During the show itself the filmmaker climbs on stage to get a better camera angle, showing little concern that he might actually be disrupting the performance. After the show, when Larry pleads with him not to do anything with the footage, he callously denies his request.

Twenty years later, Trent Harris (who also directed the features Ruben and Ed and Plan 10 from Outer Space) finally got around to editing the original video footage. Paired with the two reenactments, he submitted Beaver Trilogy (85 min., color and b&w) to the New York Video Festival, where it premiered in July 2000. It was later invited to the Edinburgh and Sundance film festivals.

Harris, though, had no idea what had happened to Richard Griffith. He had tried to track him down without luck. At Sundance, waiting outside the theater before the film’s screening, he had given up any hope of seeing him. Unlike the callous filmmaker depicted in the film, Harris has a genuine respect and affection for Griffith and he wasn’t sure what to think when Griffith didn’t materialize. He was, he admits, partly relieved, partly disappointed and partly worried. He had no idea that Griffith had waited on line, purchased a ticket, and was sitting in the audience.

Crispin Glover as Olivia Newton-Dawn in Beaver Trilogy.

On line outside the theater, Griffith had asked a woman from New York what she was waiting to see. She answered, "The Beaver Trilogy." He said, "Really, what’s that about?" She said it was about some guy from a town called Beaver, Utah. Later in the conversation she asked him where he was from. "A town called Beaver, Utah," he replied. Totally unaware that she was talking to the original Beaver Kid himself, she reassured him, "Well, I guess this will probably hit pretty close to home then, won’t it?"

The party following the screening was held in a huge tent. After what seemed like an eternity of wading through people I finally came upon Trent Harris and Richard Griffith. Both had these wonderful, amazed expressions on their faces as they reminisced.

"My gut was in a knot," said Griffith, reflecting on the screening.

"I thought, ‘My God, what have I done?’ Being as crazy as I was back then I figured I'd have to do something pretty outlandish to get any news media to come down [to Beaver]. As far as Park City goes, though, people made me feel real special. But I can't see what other people see, because it's me. I still think, ‘Man, was it really good or was it really bad?’ I'm still trying to shuttle that around in my mind. Do people really like this or are they making fun of this?

"I didn't want people to think that I was really tweaked or anything in that respect," Griffith said about his performance as Olivia Newton-Dawn. "To me it was just like another impersonation, you know what I mean? And that's the whole thing I wanted to present. It's just like an actor: if he wants to get inside a character he's got to become that person no matter what."

The following day, Trent Harris microwaved some coffee at his condo in Park City and showed me some things he’d picked up in places like Russia and Timbuktu. (Harris had paid for his trip to Timbuktu by selling his invitation from Penn and Madonna’s wedding to a collector. Ironically, Penn and Madonna later bought a house in Malibu from – you guessed it – Olivia Newton-John.) We then retrieved his cigarettes from underneath his car and sat down with a tape recorder.

 

Will Becton: So that first bit with Richard, that was literally just a camera test?

Trent Harris: Yeah, I just walked right out into the parking lot to test the video camera. It was the first time I’d ever picked one up. I’d been used to shooting on film and then they came up with this new contraption called a video camera, so I walked out into the parking lot to test it out. And there he was ...

Becton: Taking snap shots?

Harris: Yeah he was just taking pictures. He was all excited to be in Salt Lake and looking at the TV station. He was just taking pictures of the helicopter and the building. [Later], he set up the talent show and started calling me and writing me letters to try and get me to come down. And I did. Never regretted it.

Becton: Were you aware of the themes that you delve into in the second and third installments of the Trilogy during the filming of the documentary, or were these things that you discovered or invented later?

Harris: When you watch the documentary footage you think, "What a wonderful guy [Griffith] is. He’s funny. God, he’s funny. He’s got the energy of a hundred Beagle puppies. He’s just going like a madman." But underneath that I sensed some pain, really, is what it was. And also, I grew up in a small town like that so I know what they’re like. [The reenactments] explain the subtexts that weren’t necessarily in the documentary, that I didn’t capture in the documentary. It was subtext that I knew about. A lot of people think documentaries are truer than fiction, and it’s not necessarily the fact. Often you have to make something up to get to the truth. It’s sort of an odd thing but I think that’s what it is.

Becton: When I saw the first bit I just thought it was hilarious, it just seemed like it was from outer space or something. But when I watched the second two and went back and watched the first one ...

Harris: You see it in a different way. Individually they all kind of work by themselves, but when you hook them together they become a whole new animal. I think people are responding to it the way they are is because it’s such an odd form, and it works. And nobody’s quite seen that form before.

Becton: Yeah, it seems almost obvious. Like the most obvious thing you’ve never thought of or something. (Laughs.)

Harris: "The most obvious thing you’ve never thought of." I like that.

Becton: Another thing that surprised me was that apparently all the footage went unedited for years?

Harris: You mean the documentary stuff?

Becton: Yeah.

Harris: Yeah, I didn’t edit that stuff until pretty recently. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I really fine cut it. I’d put some of it together about a year or so previous to that, but I really put it all together and fine cut it about a year ago this time, in January.

Becton: Why did you wait so long?

Harris: Well, partly I didn’t have an editing system. Until I bought a G3 I didn’t have any way to cut it. That was really a lot of it. I hadn’t had a chance to fiddle with it previously because it’s always so expensive to go into an editing session.

Becton: Did you show Sean Penn and Crispin Glover the [documentary] footage?

Harris: I showed them some footage, yeah. But you have to be careful about that because if you show them too much, I think, it makes them self-conscious, in a way, and they start to try to mimic, which doesn’t work very well. What they really have to do is understand what’s going on inside the character and then they can play it. I wrote out the dialogue, so they had scripts to work from. And you get a lot about that character from his language. He’s got the most remarkable speech patterns. The way he talks, it’s just wonderful. It’s very poetic and funny and one thing flows into another. He doesn’t talk like other people. I mean everybody has a unique speech pattern but he has a particularly interesting one. It’s not planned out; it will just come to him and he’ll say it and it works. And then sometimes he’ll laugh at his own jokes.

Becton: Well, growing up in a town like that you’d probably have to laugh at your own jokes a lot of the time. A lot of people might not get his free associations.

Harris: Those places can be rough. If you’re any kind of outsider there is an awful lot of pressure to conform to everything in a small town. Everybody’s got to conform and everybody knows what everybody else is doing. It’s like an unwritten rule that "We all have to act the same way here." I mean nobody would ever say that but it’s kind of the way it works. It’s very strange. You find that in big cities too, actually. They’ll be cliques and you all have to dress in a certain way and like the same kind of music. In a big city there are a lot of groups like that, whereas in a little city there’s just like one or two.

Becton: Did the other people in the talent show seem committed to it?

Harris: I don’t think they knew what the hell was going on, to tell you the truth. I think he got some people to do it and they weren’t quite sure but "Okay, it’s a talent show and Channel 2 is coming to do something." And I think a lot of people did back out. In fact I know they did. And lot of people would say they’d do it or something and then they didn’t.

Becton: That’s something that you’d never know if you just watched the original documentary footage.

Harris: Yeah ...

Becton: Did you have any warning that you would see Richard at the screening?

Harris: Well, I tried to find him. And it wasn’t easy. I hadn’t seen the guy in twenty-two years. I tried to find him and hadn’t had any luck. So I got my friend Diane on it because I was running around doing a bunch of other stuff and she managed to find him and called him up and told him about it. He wasn’t sure how to handle the whole thing. I mean, you can imagine .…

Becton: He’d seen none of the footage right?

Harris: He’d seen none of the footage and here, all of a sudden, it’s playing at Sundance and it’s starring Sean Penn and Crispin Glover and him! And it’s kind of a weird episode in his life. He’s ambivalent about it. He’s got mixed feelings about what he did. So we were like "If you want to come down that’s fine or if you want us to send you a tape .… However you want to handle this, we’ll do it." He said he might come down. Well, we didn’t know. We waited outside the theater with tickets and he never showed up, so we didn’t know what had happened. And to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spring this on him in front of fourteen hundred people. In fact, I was terrified about doing that. It was really an odd experience. I went out in the parking lot during the screening and started drinking Jack Daniels with a friend. (Laughs.) And then I did the Q&A after the screening, which was great. Nobody left. Normally after those things half the audience will leave. It was completely full. It was amazing. People asked all kinds of questions and stuff, and then afterwards a bunch of people rushed up to the stage to, you know "sign this" or whatever and all of a sudden this face pokes up and says "You probably don’t remember me .…" (Laughs.) I just looked at him, and he looked at me. And I just grabbed him and started hugging him, and he started hugging me and then we started to hyperventilate. I’m going "I don’t, well you, uhh ..." and he’s going, "You don’t, why the …? How the ...?" (More laughter.) And all these people are standing around so I said, "Come on!" and we ducked out a side door out into this snowdrift to try and get away from everybody. Then a whole bunch of people went around to the front and then saw us and came running down. They recognized him and started taking pictures of him and getting his autograph. Everybody just loves the guy. They just adore him. And seeing [the film] in front of all those people, I think, turned out to be a real fortunate thing, a very good thing. Because he saw how much people liked it. You were at the party last night. I mean he was the biggest star in the room. Nobody asked about Sean Penn or Crispin! He was just having a blast.

Becton: He just seemed much more comfortable in his own skin.

Harris: Well, he’s a little older now and matured a bit and has been through a lot. I mean, talk about brave, that’s one brave son of a bitch to come down here to do that. I mean, can you imagine? Seeing that up there on the screen? I’m sure he was completely horrified and excited at the same time.

Becton: One of the things I really admire about the second and third part of the Beaver Trilogy is that you weren’t afraid to portray yourself or filmmakers in general as being callous.

Harris: Well I think – can you imagine if I’d done it the other way? Made myself to be some sort of [hero] ... I mean, it would’ve sucked a big one. It really wouldn’t have worked for a couple of reasons. Dramatically it wouldn’t have worked very well because you need that opposing force. And another thing is, it adds an interesting element to the story about how people are exploited by the media. I’ve wrestled with that myself – about what’s exploitive and what isn’t. When does it become something that’s mean? And when isn’t it? Some people think this movie is mean. I’ve had that response. There were some people in New York who thought that, and some people in Edinburgh asked, "How could you do it?" I’ve decided the reason I don’t think it’s exploitive, and the reason a small group of people think it is, is because they see him as being sick. And I don’t see that at all. I mean, what are going to do? Turn the camera off? Give me a break. That’s what I told the person in New York. I said, "Do you want me to turn the camera off?" Of course not. I’ve made an awful lot of documentaries and it’s usually about people talking about the past. It’s very seldom that you capture something that’s happening right there in front of you. And part of it is that I’m a part of that. I mean the whole reason that’s happening is because I’m there, so you don’t hide that. A lot of [documentaries] try to hide the fact that there’s a filmmaker present. Which is very odd, I’ve always thought.

You weren’t at the awards ceremony last night, were you?

Becton: No.

Harris: Anyway, they gave one of the Maysles brothers an award. [Albert Maysles received a cinematography award for the documentary Lalee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton — Ed.] Are you familiar with their movies?

Becton: No.

Harris: Well, they’re the greatest. The guy’s old. He looks like he’s pushing seventy now but he’s the guy that got me going. I was so excited he was up there because he made a film called Grey Gardens. [Grey Gardens, 1976, was co-directed by David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer. — Ed.] If you get a chance, go rent this thing. It’s brilliant. And what it is is the filmmakers move into Jackie Onassis’s crazy aunt’s house [in East Hampton]. And she’s nuttier than a fruitcake. She got her skirts upside down and raccoons living in the ceiling. It’s a big mansion and it’s all falling down and it’s this weird-ass woman [Edie Bouvier Beale] and her mother [Edith] who’s dying, and the woman starts to fall in love with one of the filmmakers …. But they didn’t hide the fact that they were filmmakers. When I saw that for the first time it was like, "Of course!" I saw it when I was just probably in my teens. And he got an award last night. It was just great.

Becton: Did you talk to Sean Penn and Crispin at all about why you were creating the reenactments?

Harris: Sure.

Becton: And were these to be separate films, or did you know that they would eventually all be put together?

Harris: No. They were all films in themselves. I mean that film with Sean Penn, we literally shot that in three days with a home video camera. Hundred-dollar budget, literally. That money went for pizza and a few tapes and that was it. Sean has been great. He is so supportive.

Becton: That was while he was shooting Fast Times?

Harris: When we shot it, yeah. He just signed off on [Beaver Trilogy] a few weeks ago [prior to Sundance]. He said, "Of course I’ll do that." He could have really been the other way around, "No, I don’t want to do that. Are you kidding?" But not him. He’s one of the few people in Hollywood I actually like and respect. Most of those people are jerks.

Becton: Do you want to continue to explore the possibilities of the reenactment?

Harris: Yes, I am actually. I don’t know how practical it’s going to be with this piece I’m doing right now. It’s about this Khmer Rouge soldier I met in Cambodia. He had joined the Khmer Rouge when he was eight years old. He spent his whole childhood in the jungle, fighting, laying land mines. And now he has decided that he’s going to go out and clear the land mines. So he goes out by himself, nobody pays him; he goes out by himself with a stick and clears land mines. So far he’s gotten over four thousand. I went out with him one day and we got forty in one day. He’s fearless. So what I’m doing is, I’ve shot some footage of him which is like a documentary, but what I’d really like to do is a small dramatic piece that would be tacked onto the end of it which would be [about] little kid soldiers in the jungle and what that’s like. Just a day-in-the-life kind of thing.

For additional information about Beaver Trilogy, contact the film’s sales agents at Strand Releasing, at strand@strandreleasing.com.

 





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