2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with ONE MINUTE TO NINE's Tommy Davis

#12 in a series.

Tommy Davis' ONE MINUTE TO NINE - the story of Wendy Maldonado's last days before reporting to prison for killing her abusive husband - had its premiere at the 2007 Locarno Film Festival, but it made its mark stateside with a much talked about US premiere at SXSW last March.  From there, Davis' film attracted the attention of HBO, which will release the film later this year.  It was one of my favorite films of 2008 as noted yesterday in our recap of the year's best films.

In this exchange, Davis talks about discovering his subject and racing the clock to film in a scant five days, how he tackled the film's revelations as well as its centerpiece 911 phone call.

ATWT: Let me say first off that I don't think I was as emotionally drained after watching a movie this year as I was with ONE MINUTE TO NINE.  When the film finished, I just sat silently for a while because it was such a moving and wrenching experience.  Much of that is not just from the events that took place but by how you chose to unfold this for the audience.  A lot of the key facts of this story are laid on the table at the very beginning of the film, yet you keep surprising the audience - not in gimmicky ways - by the way you play with chronology and memory.  How much of your process did you have from the start and how much of it came during the post process with your editor Luis de Leon?

Tommy Davis: I was visiting with my Uncle Ferdinand and he was asking how the shoot in Oregon had gone.  I told him how over 5 days I had to earn Wendy's trust in order to find out about the crime, etc.  Then a friend of his, Jimmy, came over and sat down beside us.  Jimmy, had heard parts of the conversation and wanted to know what we were talking about.  Ferdinand started to fill him in.  Hearing the story retold was a minor miracle.  Ferdinand told Jimmy that as I was filming, Wendy slowly doled out the information and it created a totally natural state of suspense.

That gradual process of hearing their story was pitch perfect.  In some ways it made editing pretty seamless, because we just had to filter out things, the story was there, in the proper chronology, all we had to do was keep our eyes and ears open.

How did you find Wendy and how soon did you meet her before she is scheduled to go to prison?

I read about her story on google about a week or so before she was set to go to jail.  I got up to Oregon ASAP and went to her attorney's office.  I told him I wanted to film Wendy and he said, "She only has five days...."  A couple hours later I met Wendy and her family at a diner in Grants Pass.  They were all incredibly gracious and twelve hours later the camera was rolling.

The family was always wanting to turn on lights for me or turn down the TV and I'd say, "no, just keep doing things like you're doing".  A month or two later I was shown all of their home videos and I realized that their father had always staged scenes to make sure they looked happy and the lighting was okay.  Had I known about that when I was filming I probably would have let them turn on a light or two.

I'm very into this idea of filming a nonfiction feature in a short period of time.  What was the total number of filming days and were you ever worried that you'd get into the edit and find that you didn't have enough material?

My first film, MOJADOS, was shot in 10 days.  Someone had dared me to make a film that had to be shot in exactly half the amount of time of MOJADOS.

I was lucky to have had a great producer on board because he supported the best story - regardless of runtime.  He and I liked the final film so we both came out okay.

In my mind, having a finite amount of time is a pretty healthy race and you only get one shot.

There's a 911 call that is particularly devastating.  At what point in the process did you hear that call and how did you make your creative decisions about what imagery we'd be looking at when we listened to that?

I got a hold of the 911 call a month after filming.  It obviously knocked me off my feet.  It wasn't the typical sound byte - it was immediate and maddening.

I knew we had to use it and keep it simple.  I had wanted to use one intense shot that demanded the use of a helicopter, but the required insurance cost more than the actual helicopter's rental price.  So, instead, Luis de Leon and I decided to go in for some radical close ups.  Hats off to Luis, he played with the images and came up with the rhythm of the edit.  The goal was to keep it long, intense and naked.

Let's talk about your festival experiences.  You premiered at Locarno in 2007 and played a number of international festivals before you had your US premiere in March of last year.  First, what was Locarno like and second, how did you make the choice to go that route?

We finally got the score onto the picture during the summer of 2007.  The sales teams wanted us to sit tight and try for the 2008 fests, but we were in no mood to wait around.  Locarno called and said they loved the film so that was that.

Locarno was pretty insane.  We loved it.  The audiences were amazing and they seemed to get what we're trying to do with the film.

Tell me about SXSW and your US festival run.  What was SXSW like for you and your film and what were some of the highlights of your tour?

While at Locarno, Matt at SXSW emailed asking to see the film.  Minus a couple agents and our sales rep, no one in the US realized we had made a film, so it was great to hear from him. 

Luckily for the screening at SXSW one of Wendy's son's, Tyler, flew down to Austin to help out with the Q&A's.  Tyler's ability to stand up there and represent his family left us all in awe.  He is an incredibly intelligent and brave kid.

Also, getting the film to SXSW meant getting seen by distributors.   We caught a break and after the first screening we started to work out a deal with HBO.  More US festival screenings would have been great, but with a deal in place we stopped US screenings until the fall of 2009 when HBO puts the film in a few theaters and then on TV/DVD.

In terms of audience response - the best were in Austin, Warsaw and the south side of Mexico City.

What nonfiction films or moments from 2008 are you still thinking about?

Off the top of my head - LIGNES (by Elias Grootaers), IT HAPPENED JUST BEFORE, EL HOMBRE ROBADO, NOW SHOWING, GEGENUBER, 200,000 PHANTOMS (must be viewed on the bid screen), MAN ON WIRE, CLOSE UP, THE WIRE, TICKETS and UP THE YANGTZE.

Previous interviews:

James Marsh (MAN ON WIRE)
Carl Deal and Tia Lessin (TROUBLE THE WATER)
Jeremiah Zagar (IN A DREAM)
Yung Chang (UP THE YANGTZE)
Patrick Creadon (I.O.U.S.A.)
Margaret Brown (THE ORDER OF MYTHS)
Marina Zenovich (ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED)
Ellen Kuras (THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON))
Darius Marder (LOOT)
Scott Kennedy (THE GARDEN)
Daniel Junge (THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY)