After many months of work filming, the documentary film about me finally has a trailer online that the public can view.
'Close to the Bone' did not turn out to be what anyone involved in it expected. In fact, it ended up breaking every rule of modern documentary film and changed our lives along the way.
Swedish filmmaker Helenah Swedberg showed up to make a simple documentary about a guy (me) who teaches people how to hunt for food. Helenah has done work for National Geographic, The World Wildlife Fund, the Swedish government, PBS, and the US Park Service. She knows what she is doing and she had a clear idea of the type of movie that she was going to make here.
But gradually, the normal relationship between filmmaker and subject shifted. I wasn't very good at ignoring the person with the camera. After a few months of filming she ended up learning how to shoot a rifle and was helping me butcher deer. It eventually felt as though I was holding a camera and she a knife nearly as often as the reverse.
I don't often get into personal matters in this blog. But in this case there is no avoiding it, because this film ended up become deeply personal to both Helenah and myself.
The winter before this project began, my wife announced to me that she intended to leave and would be seeking a divorce for reasons best understood by herself. With this fact in the background, Helenah and I ended up falling for each other and became a couple by the end of the movie. The result is sort of a blend of 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' and 'Paper Heart.' With guns and meat.
Like I said, this was not the film that either of us set out to make. I thought that I had sacrificed everything when I set out to write 'Eating Aliens.' My life savings, my house, my previous career. It turned out that there was a little bit more to give through the process of making this film. A lot of friends and family turned their backs on me for moving on after my wife left. Everything I recognized from my life before this project has disappeared. This isn't just a bunch of footage of a guy running after pigs and geese. You are watching the total disintegration of one life and the construction of another.
It has been almost two years since I set out full-time on this mission to hunt and promote the eating of invasive species. Creatively, the record of this now lies in the book and in Helenah's film. There's lots of hunting, shooting, cooking, bad singing, road trips, forgetting that the mic was on, and terrifying chases in the darkness. Comedy, romance and a bit of horror. Everything you could possibly want from a movie -- and all of it really happened.
All of the footage is in the can and editing is underway, but Helenah is trying to raise some more money to pay for editing and a better soundtrack through her fund-raising campaign with Indie Go-Go (like Kickstarter, only for films). She's shooting for a premiere some time in September to coincide with the launch of 'Eating Aliens.' If you want to help support 'Close to the Bone,' please donate (not a penny of this money goes to me, by the way. I have no rights to the film whatsoever).
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