NEW YORK - TRENT HARRIS IS SICK OF BEAVER AND SEAN PENN'S BIG, FAT STUPID FUCKING FACE BUT HE'LL TALK ABOUT THEM ANYWAY, AND OTHER THINGS TOO

In the late 70s, while testing a video camera for Salt Lake City TV station, Trent Harris shot a piece of footage that would define his entire film career. In the video, "Groovin' Gary"—a bell-bottomed teen from the truck stop town of Beaver, Utah—is photographing the station's helicopter. When he realizes Harris is filming him, he unleashes a flurry of celebrity impersonations, hamming it up as Sylvester Stallone, John Wayne, and Barry Manilow. There's nothing extraordinary about the impressions, but the kid's gusto and desire for fame make it engrossing even in an era of narcissistic video blogging. When Gary invited Harris to shoot a Beaver community talent show where Gary was to perform a Olivia Newton-John's "Please Don't Keep Me Waiting" in full drag, Harris couldn't refuse. He edited the pieces of footage together and called it The Beaver Kid. You've probably seen or at least heard about this masterpiece.

The Beaver Kid proved so compelling that Harris spent the next six years trying to recreate it, once in 1981 with pre-retarded Sean Penn, and again in 1985 with Crispin Glover (a role he still credits as being one of his favorites). Despite increased production values, the recreations never got Groovin' Gary right, so Harris gave up and shelved all Beaver-related videos.

After making a string of cult-ready movies—Rubin and Ed (again starring Crispin Glover, in his Letterman-kicking platforms), and the Mormon-ripping Plan 10 from Outer Space—Harris took the Beaver videos off the shelf and edited them together. The resulting Beaver Trilogy ended up playing at Sundance and won Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Independent/Experimental Film and Video Award. This American Life went apeshit over the movie too.

He's done stuff since then, like three other feature films (including last year's political This Delightful Water Universe) and documentary work from the most dangerous places on Earth—Cambodia and Sierra Leone, among others. But The Beaver Trilogy has cemented Harris' role as one of America's finest, underappreciated filmmakers.

Vice: Thirty years later, how do you feel about The Beaver Trilogy?
Trent Harris: I got to admit, I'm sick and tired of talking about The Beaver Trilogy, but it's what most people want to talk about. I assume you do too, but that's all right. It's just… I'm so far past that. It was such a huge part of my life for so long, but after awhile it just becomes too much.That guy ["Groovin' Gary", real name Richard LaVon Griffiths] just died a couple of months ago.

Yeah, I saw that obituary. Does that affect how you approach how or when you show the movie now?
No, I mean, I'll show it. I won't go to it. I can't stand watching it again. You know, there's just no way that I could watch that thing again. All of it. I can still watch the first one, with the real Kid. That never gets old.

That was my favorite part.
By far! That really is a remarkable piece of documentary footage. I mean, I've shot hundreds of documentaries, and maybe once or twice have I ever got footage that is that real and that immediate.

Did it instantly click when you saw him out there by the helicopter? Were you like, "This is going to be a documentary"?
What clicked is when he came up and started talking and I could see right away that he was and having a great time. It was the wildest footage I'd ever filmed. I thought it was remarkable—a really funny, really wonderful little section. Then he began to follow up with the letters, asking me to come south. I thought "Sure, he's from Beaver, Utah. Let's go!"

When he started inviting you to his talent shows, were you genuinely interested or was it more like "this could be funny"?
I don't go out to make fun of people, ever. Ever, ever. I just thought it would be interesting. When he said I was going to meet him at the mortuary, putting on his makeup, I couldn't miss that. Not for anything.

The reason that I ask is because in the Beaver Kid 2 and then The Orkly Kid you have that actor, who I assume is playing you, kind of as a sleazeball.
That's partly for dramatic reasons. It helps with set-up a little bit. A lot of people originally accused me of being exploitive, which is not the case. If anybody was being exploited, it was me. He was actually exploiting me. He was the one that begged me to film, and I think in the back of his mind, he had reasons for doing that which would hopefully come out in the film. It would legitimize what he was doing, to himself and the people he lived with and the people around him. If it's on TV, it's OK.

He called you with second thoughts, right? In the second parts of The Beaver Trilogy, the character contemplates suicide. Is that also for drama?
He called me up and said, "I feel very nervous about what I've done and I don't think it should go on TV." I actually get that fairly often. When you do a documentary, the next day the person will call you up and say, "You know, I'm a little uncomfortable about what I said," and that's pretty standard. I didn't make a big deal out of it. I said, "It's great! Don't worry about it," and I actually meant that. I never thought he'd take it as far as he did.

You're referring to him…
Shooting himself. Which I really didn't talk about much until recently because he's died. I mean, I've tried to protect this whole thing. Protect him. I didn't show this movie or talk about it for years and years and years and years. It just sat in my closet. You know for 20 years, practically.

Because he shot himself, that's why you didn't want to show it?
Yeah, it was a certain amount of obligation. I had a hard time dealing with it. It's a very strange thing to happen to you. Do an interview and then have somebody shoot themselves afterward—it was very awkward and odd, makes you go through strange changes.

A couple years ago, This American Life did a story about you and that movie. I think when they talk about The Beaver Trilogy, as with other topics, they try to generalize content to fit it into an overarching theme. The theme on that particular show was "Reruns." Do you agree with that?
It was certainly a theme that kept playing itself out over and over again. I mean, it really did. From the very first time I met him to the documentary to Sean Penn version to the Crispin Glover version—and I wasn't happy with any of those films. I like the first one, the first documentary. I was actually considering getting enough money to do it again at one point, because I wanted to get it right. I never got it right.

Was that the link between filming in Beaver and then moving to Hollywood—that you had this footage and you wanted to remake it?
No, what happened was, I was very upset when I found out he shot himself and I basically quit television. It was partially because I knew how good that first little documentary was and I knew that it would never run on television. I thought "Well, I'm going to move to Hollywood and try to make it into a movie and try to learn how to be a director."

How long did it take for you, from getting to Hollywood to become disillusioned with it?
Thirteen years. When I left that place, I was so angry, my ears were bleeding. I think it's one of the most hellish places on the planet. I just hate it.

Were there any sort of catalysts, or specific events that…
Oh my God, it was one night after another. You know, the whole place operates on lies and greed and ego. That gets really old after awhile. I came from Utah and Idaho, and people, they don't lie to you as a general business practice. They really don't or they'd be out of business. In Hollywood, it's the modus operandi. It's very strange. Then I committed the worse sin possible: I made a movie that didn't make any money [laughs]. Suddenly people stopped talking to me, people that were my friends read the reviews and they became very standoffish afterwards. After quote, the "failure of Rubin and Ed" it was like, "We're not sure if we want to be associated with that guy."

Have you been back to LA since moving here?
I went back once, to get the LA Critic's Award for the best movie of 2001, which was kind of… strange. Being in a room with all these people who had previously trashed anything I did and all of a sudden I'm getting some award.

How do you feel about being considered a cult filmmaker?
I don't know, am I? Am I considered a cult filmmaker? I'm not even sure.

I think Rubin and Ed had definitely found its audience.
Well, I do make movies that not very many people like. I think that's my calling in life: to make movies that people don't like. But then there's this small group of people that do, and that is encouraging.

I think I heard someone once describe a regular movie as a movie a million people will see one time, and a cult movie is one where a couple people will see it a million times.
I still get a lot of emails, particularly about Rubin and Ed, that say "I met my wife watching Rubin and Ed. " Or, "I was going out with this guy and decided to give him the test. So I showed him Rubin and Ed to see if he liked it or not. He liked it so I went with him." I've probably had 200 of those emails. People do watch it over and over and over again. [Laughs] Poor bastards.

When it came out and got trashed with reviews, did you look at it differently?
I maintained the love for it. I think it's a neat, little film. I never could understand why people were so negative toward it. It wasn't that they didn't like the movie, it was that they hated the movie. It was almost anger: "The kind of person that made this movie should have his driver's license revoked," "This is the worst movie of the decade." Those are kind of reviews it was getting.

That's pretty strong. It's a very light movie. Same kind of reaction with Plan 10 from Outer Space?
I love that movie.

You were raised Mormon, right?
Yep. I mean, talk about a movie with no commercial potential.

I was raised Mormon, up until I was 12 years old so I know a little about it. You can definitely tell that Plan 10 is very thoroughly researched.
Oh yeah. It's historically far more correct than what the Mormon church shows in its visitor center. Those things are not historically correct. In fact, some of them are just a downright misrepresentation. Mine's far more correct. People think I made that stuff up. They don't understand Kolob—that God lives on a planet called Kolob or the Deseret Alphabet or the secret Masonic hand signals or the significance of the Beehive. Or the fact that Brigham Young did try to secede from the country and almost started his own country out here. You know, people don't know any of that, really. They think I made it up.

So you probably still have relationships with Mormon family members?
Oh sure! I actually have no problem with Mormons at all, actually. I have trouble with the church sometimes, but my uncles are bishops and my nephews have gone on missions. I don't see Plan 10 as anti-Mormon at all.

Did you experience any static from close people?
My sister hated it. She thought it made fun of the Mormons. I got static from places like Pocatello [Idaho]. I showed it in Pocatello and people were so angry, you couldn't believe it. They tried to accuse me of all kinds of crimes.

After Plan 10, you started making personal documentaries. Was it due to a loss of direction?
What I was trying to do was film what was happening to me. Sort of film what I was going through at the time, which was being broke, being dumped by girl after girl—actually, none of this has changed [laughs]. I was trying to document that because I believe you can find a drama in anybody's life if you just pay attention to it long enough, whether it's their love life, health, money, whatever. There's a lot going on in there, and if you're clever, you can pick it out. You can make an interesting, dramatic documentary about anybody. I was like, "Well, shit, I'll just try and do that about myself and see what happens." So I went through a period, an experimental period, where I was going to be absolutely honest on camera and the more embarrassing it got, the better it got.

Honestly, I think watching your documentaries makes This Delightful Water better because there's this whole redemption subtext.
You look at the character, and what is he? He's a womanizer, not doing well at his job, copped out. He's basically a failure. I think failure goes through a lot of this and I draw from my own experience. So basically, I feel like a failure most of the time.

But after The Beaver Trilogy came out in 2001 at Sundance you experienced a surge of popularity, right?
[Laughs] No, I've never experienced a surge of popularity. No, I'm always amazed that anybody found any of my stuff. That NPR piece certainly drummed up a lot of attention. It's too bad though—just more Hollywood bullshit I went through trying to get The Beaver Trilogy distributed after that. We finally got a deal set up and Sean Penn came in and stuck his big, fat fucking stupid face in it and killed the whole deal.

I want that to be the title of the article.
God, I don't know what happened to those guys. They all went insane. [Laughs] It's funny because Sean Penn actually ended up buying Olivia Newton-John's house, and then it burned down. It was in Malibu—one of those fires burned it down. It's just weird serendipity, it never stops. It just never stops with that story and that guy.

RYAN BRADFORD

Portrait by Scott Peterson