Recently, I had the pleasure of screening a film at the Tribeca Film Festival called Low and Behold (see review: The Big Un-Easy). The film puts the Hurricane Katrina tragedy squarely in your face—as it should—but it is also a strongly character-driven sojourn through the damaged wards of New Orleans. It pulls us in among the stalwart denizens who keep on living after all that has happened, and somehow never lose their spark. It also follows Turner and Nixon, an unlikely duo. Turner, a novice claims adjuster, tries to interact with these residents who have waited far too long for too little help. Nixon and Turner’s growing camaraderie bring warmth, charm, and humor into a dour landscape. It’s a film every American should see, and will feel glad that they did.
Q: When did you get the idea to tell a fictional story set in the aftermath of Katrina, and what influenced you to write a narrative film as opposed to a straight documentary?
A: I recently heard a psychiatrist that lives in New Orleans and specializes in posttraumatic stress syndrome say that he believed the reality of what Katrina has done to the people of New Orleans could only truthfully be told through fiction. This is what Zack Godshall and I felt watching the unbelievable events unfold after Katrina. When you write a script, you are in total control of where the story goes. In a documentary, the subject you are filming is in total control of where the story goes. Zack and I believed that if we could combined both narrative and documentary elements, creating a hybrid film, it would be the most effective way to deal with the specific issues we wanted to wrestle with in a realistic and honest way. I think James Agee provided the perfect definition for our vision when he said, “The films I most eagerly look forward to will not be documentaries but works of pure fiction, played against, and into, and in collaboration with unrehearsed and uninvented reality.”
