Peter and the Farm INTERVIEW

Tony Stone is the director of documentary Peter and the Farm, a beautiful, savage portrait of an alcoholic organic farmer in Vermont. I initially got to watch the film when it premiered to a packed house at the True/False Film Fest this spring in Columbia, Missouri. Tony and his Producer/partner Melissa Auf der Maur also run Basilica in Hudson, NY, a multidisciplinary arts center that includes film and music events.

Watch the trailer and see where it’s playing here: http://www.magpictures.com/peterandthefarm/

Dawn:  When Peter is talking about his co-worker throwing up at the sight of his hand being cut up, I was thinking about how that relates to people passing out and throwing up in the theatre just watching images of Peter’s daily life. (Yes this happened in the theatre while I was watching.) Like butchering up animals and having to kill them, getting vets to put their arms in cow butts. And for Peter this is just his daily life, and people’s reactions to these moments support his “tough guy” persona. Well, punk rock as you said.

Tony: [There’s] something about him being a farmer that is so daily visceral. You’re dealing with fluids of different degrees; from blood to cow fecal matter, whatever it is, it’s a really different daily existence. If you were to exclude that, you’d basically be lying about what the experience of a farmer is.

 Dawn: I’m interested in how people have been reacting to the roughness of the film and his persistent mention of suicide? In my theatre, people kept laughing at the mention of suicide and I’m curious if they were just uncomfortable? I feel like there are a lot of things in his life that people are uncomfortable with. Is that how you felt shooting it and is that how people have been responding in general?

Tony: People have been reacting to it more calmly than I initially expected, which I’m happy about. No one’s been really truly upset about butchering the animal in the beginning. There’s a reason it’s there that everybody understands. I think people are kind of transported into this other person’s world, and the weight to that is what many people have been reacting to. It’s not toned down; it just is what it is.

People do laugh at that [suicide talk] sometimes. When you’re removed and it’s onscreen, it seems more absurd. It seems more absurd, and it should. As dark as suicide is, it is an absurd act to go into non-existent eternity.

Dawn: It must’ve been tough at the time to have these kind of casual conversations about suicide.

Tony: Peter is such a passionate person and lover of life. We know he’s still too attached to the farm, and even the struggle. He’s a real sort of lover underneath it all. The more you understand Peter, the more you realize he’s too attached to call it quits.

Dawn: I remember you talking about how you guys met at the farmer’s market in your town. Did that project start because he asked you to document his suicide?

Tony: We did. He called me on the phone and said you should make a documentary of my suicide.

Dawn: So that was your first official conversation about filming?

Tony: Yeah. I think he was into the challenge of us. Peter at the market was a pretty amazing sight. That was his stage. He had this provocative nature that sometimes made people uncomfortable. He didn’t want to hold back and wanted to see if we were tough enough to go there with him. It was a real test that I kind of appreciate in a sense.

Dawn: Who and what are your influences for your shooting style? At least from what we can see in the film, we don’t really hear you talking or asking questions. It doesn’t feel like you had a structured, formal way of shooting a documentary. How did you go into shooting? What was that whole process like?

Tony: I had actually just seen Al Maysles speak. He came up as a guest and spoke at our space. We were super blown away by his talk and just kind of got us talking about documentaries. When we visited Peter at the farm, Dylan, who was living with us at the time, and Melissa were all sort of re-invigorated and excited by the medium. Seeing so many of Maysles’ outtakes and obviously his body of work…the honesty and love of the characters he was documenting was definitely an influence.

I think when we first visited Peter on the farm, we hung out with him for a whole day there, and that’s something we wanted to translate. Peter isn’t someone you immediately understand and can just ask deep personal questions. He’s very unruly and rebellious and that just wouldn’t happen.

We wanted to really be in the earth with him - following him around and letting him dictate what came out, and what setting reminded him of some event in his life. And having this sort of naturalism of his storytelling and image. We avoided the sterilization that can happen when you try to do a profile on somebody that uses a stiff formula. We wanted to keep it more cinematic in the sense of allowing images to be representative of the subject and the subject storyline.

Dawn: I’ve done several projects with family members that I’m close with, and I’ve always started with doing interviews, but found that just shooting people in their daily life says everything they could’ve said in an interview, and much better.

Tony: Absolutely! Taking a cinematic approach, like Bresson. You don’t necessarily know who these people are, but you learn who they are through physical mannerisms. There’s no close-up until a half hour into the film. I feel that’s also a narrative influence of Cassavetes. You don’t know who these people are. It may take you 45 minutes to know somebody is a prostitute or whatever it is, and that’s fairness to the character. It’s not just regurgitating information, it's life. You learn more about Peter the way he goes and gives hay to his animals. The physicality is far more educating than just endless verbal information.

Dawn: What are the most impactful things that you took away from spending time with him? I mean, he’s constantly spouting out life lessons. Personally, being with my Dad, it’s like non-stop all day. It’s not the same things, but it’s constant stories and life lessons. Like he’s going on a power walk right now, which he does for an hour every day. He’s focused and I feel like I get so much out of hanging out with him. He does the things that he thinks are important in life, and it’s good to be around someone like that.

Tony: Definitely. That even ties into the generational gap of technology. Like having downtime, or even when you’re doing something physical, just to think has become sort of a luxury. Doing a walk with nothing and no device, not tethered to the system has become more and more luxurious even if it’s work. There’s a bit of that with Peter - the appreciation of the physical and obviously the sisyphean that we’re talking about a lot. But then also how fragile it is. You know, Peter with his recent accident when he fell and hit his head. One minute he’s so engaged and self-sufficient and suddenly he needs extreme care. Things can collapse and fall apart at the drop of a hat.

There are so many things to take away, I couldn’t say that there’s one. There’s a dying breed of the character. He comes from specific, unusual circumstances and he ended up his own being. [He’s] not really affected by others or pop culture or whatever it is. He’s his own force. That something I think we all should be aware of and sort of channel to some degree.

Dawn: We were talking about Chloe Zhao’s process of getting close to her story and actors for Songs My Brothers Taught Me. She said she basically became these people’s family and lived with them. I think it does a lot, when you get close with people. Maybe it’s shitty to say that it gives you this access, but you see them in a totally different way than if you were just going to set up an interview with lights and a camera.

Tony: It was wanting to understand somebody more - seeing the depth. Like anything, it takes a lot of time and effort to go there. So whether you’re making a narrative with non-professional actors or making a documentary, it takes the time and care to be able to make the correct product. I think the best part of it is you kind of pick these things you’re drawn to, to have life experience and learn something that will stay with you. The privilege of being a filmmaker is you get to go deep into these worlds that you’re interested in. That’s where I feel like we’re the luckiest people to be. It’s almost like a simple formula - find something you like and figure out how to go shoot it.

Dawn: Have his kids seen it yet?

Tony: They did. I think for them it was interesting because they hadn’t known their father for 20 years and they got to see where he’s at. They got to be compassionate but also see the parts that drove them away are still there.