I’m curious about the genesis of your film ideas. Well, it can sometimes be a very simple idea. With Time Indefinite, I just assumed I would be making a lighthearted film about getting married in the nineties from my own particular, fairly committed bachelor’s point of view. And it would basically be advice given to me by relatives and friends, and people willing to share their experiences about weddings and marriage. And the preparations for the marriage my wife and I would be making, and then the wedding itself would be the conclusion of the film. And maybe it might include the honeymoon; maybe not, I didn’t know. That was the general idea. Of course, what happens in Time Indefinite is, my father dies suddenly and my wife has a miscarriage, which was totally unexpected. My father’s death was totally unexpected because he had never had any health problems. And my grandmother died suddenly. So I had this triad of deaths occur in a very short period of time and I passed into a very dark mood, and that mood leads me on a journey. I realized I couldn’t make a lighthearted film about marriage. Somehow, I needed to deal with these events. I went back down to North Carolina, and I filmed people and events and places that somehow obliquely dealt with my father’s absence, my grandmother’s absence, and the fact that we’d lost our first child. And I came back with the footage I had and then realized, well, maybe it’s not two separate films, maybe it’s one film and it’s gotta work. It took me another four years to finish it. You asked me what my mission was. My mission was to make a fairly entertaining lighthearted sequel to Sherman’s March. While Sherman’s March had some serious themes, overall, it was a pretty lighthearted film, and that’s what I think people really liked about it. I thought this would be the sequel to Sherman’s March. But it became something altogether different. I guess my mission is to make a film that is interesting to me, but also, it has to be interesting to at least some other people. extract from Documentary Filmmakers Speak book by Liz Stubbs
