Documenting New England

With experience on both coasts, Steven Alves has chosen a winning location for his production company, but the location may surprise you: it’s neither New York nor LA. Choosing to run Hometown Productions in Massachusetts, his latest documentary is winning rave reviews as it covers the battle between the little guy and big business. Alves shares his perspective and motives for making it in the industry.

AG: How did you choose filmmaking as a career?

Alves: I never thought of it as a career. I just pursued it as an art form, blindly, without reservation. Growing up working class on Long Island, I never knew anyone who even thought of making movies. Before it became a consuming passion, I was interested in surfing and girls and thought I might eventually become a bricklayer or a fisherman. Then in order to keep me out of the military, my mother enrolled me in a technical school. During my second semester I took a media survey class called Communication Arts and that’s when I literally fell in love with the language and art of filmmaking. I bought an 8mm movie camera and shot footage of what was happening around me and started making little story films casting my kid brother in the lead. After a year at a Community College I went to USC film school. USC was like a mini studio, with equipment, labs, sfx library, a mixing studio, animation stands, etc... It had everything you needed to make movies. I got a lot out of it and saw a lot of fantastic films.

AG: How did you get your first job in filmmaking?

Alves: Luck. After I’d finished film school, Dan Seeger, son of Pete, the folksinger, asked me to work with him on a B-movie action picture which he was directing. I shot second unit camera, organized all the dailies, and ended up editing the film. Somehow I had acquired enough skill working on my own student films that I was able to pull it off. It was a complicated movie to edit with lots of action scenes, and dialogue scenes intercut with music performances. I worked 12 plus hours a day, six days a week for many months, and thought I did a great job. Then I showed a reel to the brother of a friend who was visiting from Germany. He turned to me and said, "Dis is da stupidest thing I haf ever seen." He had a point. It helped me realize that simply making films would be a waste. Hollywood is filled with people who spend their lives making derivative nonsense. I didn’t want to do that.

AG: Why did you decide to move to Western Massachusetts to continue your film career?

Alves: After working on horror films and editing trailers for a few years, I realized I needed a balanced life: friends, community, family, not just career obsession. I also realized that I needed to feel connected to the place where I live. If I wake up in the homogenized commercially cluttered American landscape for too many days in a row, I get depressed. Living in L.A. for six years was unsettling for this reason. So the first chance I had, I moved back to New York. I was working as a freelance editor when a Northampton-based film company hired me to edit a nature documentary. As soon as I arrived in western Massachusetts, I felt at peace. It’s an exceptionally beautiful part of the country. Within a year I was married and began to wean myself from New York City, which meant starting my own production company.

AG: What determines your choice of subject matter?

Alves: Money. My company motto is: never turn down work. During the past five years, I’ve been fortunate to be hired by different organizations to produce several films on quintessential New England subjects like maple sugaring, contra dance music, and the Connecticut River. These subjects embody themes that are at the core of what matters to me: people and their connection to the land and to each other. My new film about Wal-Mart may seem to some like an aberration, but it’s really a direct extension of these same values. I see Wal-Mart as direct threat to the viability of community life and a blight on the landscape. Unfortunately, there were no angels to fund "Talking to the Wall" so I had to go out and raise the money myself. The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and ITVS were the major sources, combined with 18 smaller contributors.

AG: Why did you pursue documentary filmmaking, particularly activist subjects?

Director Steve Alves and Cameraman Rawn Fulton shooting "Talking to the Wall."
[Click to enlarge]

Alves: A good documentary is a real challenge to make, particularly if you want to give an audience the same emotional storytelling experience that they’re used to from a good fiction movie. But logistically, documentaries are easier and cheaper to make than fiction films, and I couldn’t see managing to produce dramatic features from western Mass. I also enjoy doing research and I’m skilled at editing, which is where documentaries are made. So it was a combination of practicality and natural inclination. Activist subjects are great because the topics are already loaded with controversy and conflict; audiences know this are primed to hear what the filmmaker has to say. The challenge then is to "tell it slant" as Emily Dickinson said, and not play too squarely to expectations. Combining humor with serious issues is one way to do this.

AG: How do you finance your films?

Alves: I sniff out potential funding sources and pursue them like a dog on a bone. When I’m hired by an organization to produce a film that is already funded, then the job is easier.

AG: How did you get interested in American consumer culture?

Alves: I’ve always had a fascination with the mundane and obvious aspects of American culture in the tradition of Andy Warhol and Sinclair Lewis. So I think it was just a matter of time before this subject found me. Also, I spent many years of my life fleeing from the ravages of sprawl development. It was like a hellhound on my trail. Wal-Mart’s attempted entry in my hometown just brought it to a head -- it’s like the gods saying, "Confront thy nemesis or be destroyed!" American consumer culture was made both vivid and unavoidable by my encounter with the world’s largest retailer. Once I started doing the research I discovered that Wal-Mart was the colossal result of the failed attempt by our government to protect citizens from the interests of big business. Consumerism was a direct outgrowth of the 1930s chain store lobby. It was a concerted effort on the part of the business elite to engender what they called "the artificial stimulation of desire" in the American public.

AG: What’s your next move in your examination of American consumer culture?

Alves: I’ve been shooting footage for "Talking to the Wall Part 2: Buy Now, Pay Later." I plan to continue the story, expand to more global issues, and keep the humor going.

AG: What is your ultimate goal for "Talking to the Wall"?

Alves: Beyond wanting people to see my movie, I would like to see the revival of 60-year old anti-chain store laws that were written to regulate big business and protect democracy. Like most Americans, I hate to be tricked into thinking I’m getting a bargain when I’m actually getting screwed. I would also like to spread the notion that we create the places in which we live by the way we choose to spend our money. Shopping, as it turns out, is like voting.