¡Colores!; 1943; Native American Filmmaker Chris Eyre, Photographer JoAnn Verburg, Artist Gary Myers

>>THIS TIME, ON COLORES! >>Eyre: That's what we'd have to do if we wanted to make our own native kind of, ya know, period piece is, like, really re-examine what's true and what's not true. >>IN THE SECOND OF THE TWO PART INTERVIEW NATIVE AMERICAN FILMMAKER CHRIS EYRE SHARES HIS VISION OF WHAT GOES INTO CREATING CHARACTERS AND STORIES FOR THE CINEMA. >>PHOTOGRAPHER JOANN VERBURG CAPTURES MULTIPLE FOCUS POINTS TO SEE THE SUBJECTS FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE EVERY TIME. >>Verburg: And I think art does that, art takes you places you didn't mean to go. >>SURVIVING A CONSTRUCTION ACCIDENT GAVE GARY MYERS A NEW SENSABILITY FOR COLOR. HE CREATES LANDSCAPES NOT FROM PLACES HE HAS SEEN, BUT FROM HIS IMAGINATION. >>Myers: The red tree is merely an invitation for people to come into the painting. >>IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES! FILMMAKER CHRIS EYRE SHARES

HOW THE TIMING OF MOMENTS MAKES FOR IMPACTFUL FILMMAKING. >>Eyre: When I'm looking at a script, what I'm looking for has changed over the years. What I'm looking for now in a script is good screenplay, which I can't always say that was the case. Because, as you're growing up, you know, and you're evolving, I'm not sure I knew what a good screenplay was fora lot of years. In most cases, it's narrative and it's narrative through lines. Then on top of that, you know, you put comedy, you put dialogue, directions. But really you have to identify right away what's going on and be able to track that narrative through lines. And, you know, I've read a lot of scripts over the years. The thing

about Native subject matter was that it would have a good through line but at the end of the script the Indian's always die. I'm like "why in the hell?" You know, you get another script and it's a period piece from a Hollywood writer and the Indians die at the end. I finally got to the point where I'm like "I know what happens here, I don't have to read the whole script because at the end the Indians die." It's romanticized. Oh how romantic, the Native people died in this noble way. For me it was always about "well show me something different." I think that with Hollywood writers, they don't have a pulse on places like New Mexico. They don't have a pulse on places like the big res here. They don't have a pulse on the Pueblos here. They don't have a pulse on middle America, so to speak, besides just the kind of, you know, the kind of generalization

of those places. >>How do to that when you're directing? >>Eyre: We have to break ourselves out of paradigms. There are so many great Native actors and if they get a period piece of work, they will embellish what audiences want out of that persona. And so we have to break ourselves out of that too. Which is, you know what, where is this, where is this coming from? What's the derivation of, you know, Jay Silver Heels and Will Sampson and Chief Dan George, and the evolution of these Native actors that became Dances With Wolves, and you know what became the sensibilities of that genre and break ourselves out of that thinking and that's what we have to really reexamine what's true and not true. We've gone down the road

so far in terms of Native peoplein a specific time or place in movies that it is perfect to be flipped upside down and shaken out and my next movie is an effort to do that. I call it a cross between Blazing Saddles meets Dances With Wolves. It's called Up the River. It's almost like a slapstick comedy but most of all I hope it offends Indians and non-Indians alike. Erase everything you know and let's do it artistically in a waythat we think might've happened and let's make fun of what we don't know. >>How are you going to instruct the actors to do that? What kind of direction would you give them tosay this is what it's about? >>Eyre: We just did a reading at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival of Up the River at the Jean Cocteau theatre

where we had 20 actors, among them Wes Studi, David Midthunder, and had an audience of 130 people and it was the first time I had heard the screenplay out loud and I was happy that people laughed at certain places. But I mean, as far as the subject matter goes I didn't instruct the actors at all. It's more of a case where you let them absorb it and as an artist see what they want to bring to it. Readings are an important part for a director and filmmaker in the process because like you said it was the first time you got to hear it outside of you. And you know you cringe the whole time. Like oh that didn't work, that did work. It is really difficult to put yourself out there. >>The film that a lot of people know Chris Eyre for is Smoke Signals. Does that still hold up to your vision as a director and filmmaker? >>Eyre: The thing about Smoke Signals that gave it some staying power its message

of forgiveness. And that message of forgiveness is boy misses father and has nothing else to do but try and forgive his father. The end of the movie is how do we forgive our fathers, maybe in a dream. Do we forgive ourfathers for marrying or not marrying our mothers, or divorcing or not divorcing our mothers? Do we forgive the excesses of warmth or their coldness? How do we forgive them for pushing or leaning, or shutting doors, speaking through walls or never speaking, or being silent? If we forgive our fatherswhat is left? That poem was written by Dick Lori not Sherman Alexie. Sherman wrote and incredible screen play and put it at the end of the screenplay as like an epilogue. It was that universal message of forgiving

that everybody can relate to because everybody had or has a father, or a mother. I think that was the staying power of the movie. When I look back at that movie its kind of like a piece of music. Where the breakdown happens and the guitar solo starts the thing levitates for a minute.There is something about that poem at the end of the movie that really levitates for me personally.As a filmmaker I have been looking for that moment ever since. My teaching and my doctrine you know, trying to get my films to levitate. >>How are you going to search for it? >>Eyre: Finding that moment is the magic in the bottle. Which is why I love doing it, which is why you write. Literally you write all of a sudden you find something, you find

those little teeny; thoselittle teeny things. Somebody said to me recently the stories are there so we can live, and for some reason that hit me; which is that we don't create the stories, the stories are there so we can live. And it's sort of that man fishing on the whale's tail thing. You know, it's all kind of circular. So I mean all the time when I'm making work I'm trying to make that thing that levitates. Nine times out of ten you know you're just shooting at something. It's one of those things that you can't necessarily put into words, 'cause it is art. >>With projects now like Friday Night Lights, what's that experience been like for you? >>Eyre: Um, Friday Night Lights was an incredible experience for me, and it was because, um, I got alot of feedback from people that you make interesting work,

but it's not mainstream. And I said I know I can make mainstream work, and I felt like I had to prove it. So at a certain place, and it wasat the same time that I was doing the 'We Shall Remain' series, you know I would like to do something on network television. And you know try it out. Friday Night Lights was the best show to examinethat because it was a home drama. It's a story about family. It's a story about community, and their losses together, with the football team. It's a story about their tribalism. It's about society. So I really identified with that show. It was great writing and then it was an experience you know with the studio in which the network. You know you shoot six cameras at a time, film cameras shooting thirty five and that was new to me. There was a method to the whole thing and you know I'd have to sit

down and say OK, so how do you guys cover this football scene? With five hundred extras, and twelve speaking parts, two football teams at 22 each, and plays on the field. I mean there's a method, so I had to learn method, which is how do you direct six cameras? So it was really not something that I thought I couldn't do. It was something that I knew I could do. And I still feel the same way. It's a matter of the different forms and different genres, but it came at a great time because I really wanted to do something different, and whenever I got an opportunity to be part of that. It was really great, and it was a great departure from native subject matter. >>What do you feel is most >>Eyre: That I just get it expressed; that I get it off my plate. I mean I can feel

when I'm needingto get something out and it's just because you get that anxiety, that like emotional duress where you want to say something, you know. And after a few years it's a matter of I would like to have a voice, which is, in this case it would be for comedy, With Wolves. Where we really rattle the cage and make people go you can't do that. Well why can't you do that? Because it wouldbe sacrilegious to native spirituality.' Well what does that mean? Why can't you do that? Why can't you make fun of native spirituality? You know, in the case of skins, why can't you show us like that? Why did you show us like that? Because skins is a very harsh portrayal of Pine Ridge. And yet you have the audacity to go 'you know what? I'm gonna own that.' I'm gonna say this is Mogie, he's this chronic alcoholic. Which

isn't all Indians, but he's a fabric of our societies and if he is, my movie is a dedication to that character. People said, well, we've already seen that character in movies. I said you show me the movie in cinema history where you humanize a native person with this affliction, nobody could ever tell me that movie, because most of those portrayals are one dimensional characters. They're not the humanizing of this person who Mogie was a father, and a brother and he was somebody's family member. And that's what was important to me about that character. I can sense it's getting time, but I want to say something about native comedy, about all these political correctness's that I'm really tired of like a lot of people and really

dispel the noble and the savage. Anduh, throw away a lot of things that we've accepted. I guess. PHOTOGRAPHER JOANN VERBURG USES UNCONVENTIONAL TECHNIQUES TO GIVE A MOMENT IN TIME A LIVING, BREATHING QUALITY. >>Joann Verburg: When you're born you pop out as a unique individual. No one looks at the world the way you do. You go through life, you learn your skills, you're challenged. It's really hard sometimes and you're not alone, we're all in it together. And yet at the same

time, you're the only one thatlooks at it that way and I think that everything else I'm doing sort of comes out of that: the factthat we're alone and were not alone. When I was 6, Santa gave me a camera. We visited my grandmother in Baltimore for Christmas and I photographed Splash the big polar bear at the Baltimore Zoo. That was my first roll of film. It was a lot of fun of experience into this little rectangle and it still is.

The first pictures that I did that felt like they were kind of justifying using all of the materialsand the time and everything else were pictures that I was doing underwater with an underwater camera. And then I made blueprints which were done by taking a piece of watercolor paper, coating it withemotion and exposing it to sunlight. How I turned a corner with this work was that I realized that I was not just trying to describe reality but that photography creates an alternate reality. This isn't stuff I was thinking about when I was underwater with the camera, but afterwards looking at these pictures there was something I saw in them that I think I would say was smarter than me. And I think art does that, art takes you places you didn't mean to go. I don't think we need two of everything. I don't think we need to have the woods and the picture of the woods that to me is

totally boring. But if you let your materials lead you into something you don't know oftentimes what will happen is you'll be dealing with things differently than what you could experience walking through the woods. And it's that transformation that art can create that is sort of the why bother factor. When I was in graduate school I had the opportunity to buy a 5 by 7 camera. It was big enough for meto be able to see really well what I was shooting and use what are the called the swings and tilts of the camera that throw certain things in focus and certain things out of focus. You know the very,very narrow range of focus on just his eye and a little bit on his fingertips and then

this centralpart of the trees behind him. I don't want you to look at this and think about the techniques. I don't want you to know any of that consciously. It's all about seducing the viewer into um I want to say an inappropriately intimate relationship to the person that you're imagining. >>Because she almost always frames things in a way with multiple focus and puts us in an unconventional space our perspective is, the works have this living breathing quality, her work is much more comparable to the way we live in a space in the world and so somehow through photography that tends to capture the moment, she keeps that moment alive and organic. >>Verburg:

If the picture feels like everything kind of makes sense then it's not interesting. Rightnow I'm photographing The City of Spoleto which is a very old hill town in Perugia, in Italy. There's a way in which in Italy I feel like I will never understand how to do it correctly and that's very freeing. As an artist If I think I can do it correctly that's in my way where in Italy I know everything I am doing is incorrect...The way I speak Italian is dreadful so I can be incorrect and not worry about it. What it means as an artist is there's no right way and I can keep trying different things and that's what I need to be able to do. >>Verburg: I would love to find another way

to work other than photography and I keep coming back toit. It has to do with the relationship to reality that a photograph implies, it seems to be scientific, it seems to be real, it seems to be authentic, it seems to be repeatable and yet it's so ephemeral. It's just light, it's nothing. And I think these things really to me Speak to the human condition, there's a corporeal side but what's a person without a spirit, without the personality, without all the things that are so ephemeral. It feels a little like that on the one hand it's this object there's this lens this is the way it is right now, period. And yet the imagination makes it an infinite number of things.

It's magical. GARY MYERS CONVEYS HUMAN EMOTION THROUGH COLORS. >>Meyers: My name is Gary Myers, I paint as GC Myers and I am a contemporary painter. I started painting in the fall of 93, I was working on a house that's next door to this studio and I had an accident where I had a ladder collapse under me. I fell about 16 foot, knocked out my teeth, broke my wrist ...I was pretty banged up for a few months. I pulled out some paintbrushes and some old airbrush paints that were

a result of a failed experiment from a few years before. I jammed the brushes into my cast and started doodling and I don't know if it was the knock on the head or what but for some reason it just suddenly made sense. I was able to see color harmony I was able to really see form even better. I became really obsessed and began painting on a daily basis several hours a day in between my job and completing the house. Within three years I became a full time painter and I've been a full time painter for the last, thisis my fifteenth year, I'm going into my sixteenth year. It's all intuitive. I like bold color but I also like color that has a lot of depth to it. Very seldom are you going

to look at something of mine and just see blue. You are going to see bits of yellow, green, maybe even a little bit of red in there. The paintings are really equally about texture and color; both are really vital I think for my work.Color really conveys the emotion and the texture just gives it greater depth. And I think that is one of the important aspects of it I think that differentiates the work.

The red tree is merely an invitation for people to come into the painting, and then they get to see the color, the texture, the forms behind it. I like to have complex colors. It makes it more interesting for the viewer and it gives them greater depth into the picture. And that's what you are reallylooking for is something that connects and keeps the eye interested. I'm expressing human emotion through the landscape; they are not scenes of local landscape. I want to just be able to express something on the surface that expresses what I'm feeling. Painting is the one thing that I feel

completely confident on in my life and I think that's probably the real driving force. >>NEXT TIME ON COLORES! >>PUEBLO STORYTELLER LARRY LITTLEBIRD SHARES THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING TO LISTEN. >>Listening to what's within is what the stories are really, truly about. >>JULIE SELTZER IS WRITING OUT AN ENTIRE TORAH, A SACRED JEWISH TEXT, ONLY THE SECOND WRITEN BY A WOMAN. >>Seltzer: I don't think of joy and hard work as being separated, it's also an opportunity to be more quiet in a world that often feels very rushed and loud

and overwhelming. >>INTERSECTING POLITICS, GRAPHIC DESIGN AND PAINTING, DON HARVEY HAS BEEN MAKING ART IN SPACES WHEREOPPOSITE WORLDS COLLIDE. >>Harvey: If I connected it to sort of activism, it was an attitude about what the city looked like or could look like and what design meant. >>PIXAR FILMS ANIMATOR SANJAY PATEL HAS A UNIQUE PERSONAL PORTFOLIO, DRAWING ON HIS EAST INDIAN HERITAGE TO ILLUSTRATE ANCIENT HINDU EPICS. >>Patel: There's magic, there's fighting and animals, gods, demons and I just thought, I really wantto tell this story in the most modern and graphic way as possible. >>UNTIL NEXT TIME, THANK