Chepachet and Points North 1.14.2009

Thank god the weather was clear and the roads were dry for the spin up to Chepachet to talk with the local historian, Edna Kent. We were meeting at her house for a confab to see how we could mutually benefit each other and the village of Chepachet, township of Glocester, and state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations with whatever information we had.

Edna Kent is a charmer. She's devoted her life to getting it right, history-wise, for the village where she grew up. She had mounds of stuff around the house, including her books, and Betty the Elephant and Dorr Rebellion artifacts. These last are, after all, the village's main claim to fame (aside from Chepachet's little people- but that's quite another story). It drives her crazy that's so much stuff has been given away and lost.

But to get down to brass, as they say, buttons. Edna told me that most of the town's history is in her head. She's dug up much over her life and, though she's written three books on the village, it's only a beginning. There's still a lot of oral/aural history to be transcribed. There was, for example, the story of why Scituate's farmer became involved in Betty's murder. Edna's theory has to do with damaged fruit trees and revenge. He was, she confided, "the injured party" among the conspirators in all of this. Unfortunately, we have no written or tangible proof of her theory- yet. But things do have a way of surfacing.

She also told me that the townspeople are private about the event. There's a haunting feeling that it could happen again floating around. There are elephant-related superstitions.

Edna graciously allowed me to take some pix of some of her pertinent artifacts, which she has been keeping for her forthcoming children's book on the Betty event. Perhaps we could tie all of these things in. We made informal plans for me to present my initial public program on the research sometime this summer.

I told her I intended to post an ad in the local paper asking for information about the 1826 event, just in case there's someone who knows something who would be willing to share it with the public. Someone may have a diary or know where there's a newspaper article hidden away. I live in hope. Maybe if I called the local newspaper and offered them my story, it would get me farther...

We parted after making a tentative date a few months hence to meet again and go through the materials that are in her trunk. I drove around some of the sites that were connected with both the original event and the centennial and a half celebrations trying to get a sense of what to film. It is winter in Rhode Island, of course, and the land was covered with snow, but I did spy a couple of spots that might lend themselves to the story.

Although I know there were probably not any transcripts as such kept of trials of the 1820's in RI, there may be bits and scraps, and I intend to find their natural resting places....

Moving through the ice

It's always tempting when making a documentary to grab the camera and run, shooting everything and everyone in your rolodex so you end up with a lot of footage in a short time. It gives you the feeling that you're making progress. It yields footage. It revs up your editing engine.

But this, after all, is Rhode Island in winter and there's ice on the ground, the sun is not to be trusted and there's snow in the forecast. Every appointment needs a snow date..... Even research appointments.

There's a bright side to the corral, though. When the sky is dark and flakes are falling, there's no question of divided attention. It's time for online reseach, plowing through books and data bases, or a quick scuttle to the neighborhood library (if you're lucky enough to have one, as I am). When you're stuck at the keyboard you come up with mighty interesting things that may be useful later on.

I had a meeting with Ray, my DP/cameraman/sound guy this AM. We worked on an outline for field trips, got our communication plan in line and, in general talked about our plans for the Elephants. He's an easy going guy who seems to have his head on straight and his eyes sqarely in their sockets and he understands the lingo. I'll have his actual CV to attach to the program ASAP. Anyway, this was all very encouraging, because the volunteer PA didn't work out and we're now down to a two man crew. I must network!!! (Note to self- contact RI Film Collaborative ASAP.)

I ran across a reference to the Fanny affair (there may be a better way of phrasing that....) in a North Carolina newspaper the other day. The article mentioned that not only was actress Loretta Swit going to bat for the forlorn pachyderm, which I knew, but that Tippi Hedren, of The Birds fame, was involved as well. I'm going to have to hunt this down.

More as work progresses...

Back in Gear

After a brief hiatus for the holidays, I'm back on the project at hand...

I received a call (several, actually) from an actor in Chicago whose agent, he said, had sent him the info on the project from NEFilm.com. He was a real mover, this one, and strove to assure me that he had whatever it took to be in my movie. He was missing a prime ingredient, though. Tact. During the course of a five minute conversation, he twice told me what a loser place RI was. "There's nothing going on there."
"Have you ever been here?"
"Well, no. But I've seen it on the map and it's no bigger than a shoe."
When I finally convinced him that he and Elephants were not made for one another, he promoted a friend of his who was an amazing editor and would be super for this movie.
"Has he ever done documentaries?" I asked- reasonably.
"No. But I'm sure he'd be great. He's such a cool editor."
I finally told him to have him call me and we'd talk. I felt like Hollywood and suddenly I knew where those phrases came from and what they were used for. He had one more question, though.
"Would you pay his airfare out there?"
Good luck in your career, dude.

I received my interim business cards for the project around Christmas and have been leaving them off in libraries, train stations, etc. ever since. They have this blog's URL on them and I'm hoping that more and more people will become aware of and maybe even contribute to the project. I want to hear stories!

And speaking of contributing, I'm now in the process of finding a fiscal agent for the project so that I can apply for more funding. That in itself is a project, since I can't just walk up to any old non-profit and ask them to handle my money for me. I have to prove, actually, that I have a viable project and a reasonable track record, so that they're not tying themselves up for nothing. So it's the paperwork game again.

There are some slick fundraising websites that I've explored, like indiegogo.com and fundable.com, but they make me a little nervous. I don't see any accountability factor, like fiscal agents, etc. These sites are, in essence, electronic house parties where people can go to donate cash to projects that suit them. More on this as things progress. I've registered with both, but am not sure how I'll use them yet.

Fundraising, is, obviously, the part of the project I feel least comfortable with. But it is the name of the game if I want to make a decent product and get it seen...

Amazing news- or lack of it

I was astonished to learn from the zoo public relations officer that no one had contacted them about the hottest elephant story to hit the wires in quite some time. Not a single news source inquired at elephant headquarters for a quote, a view, or even a comment, on the article that ran this month in Science magazine and then was picked up by the worldwide press that zoo elephants don't live as long as their counterparts in the wild do. Their lives are, according to the info, up to 2/3 shorter than their wild brethern.

So whilst I was outlining my project to her and trying to set up some interviews with those in the know, I said, off-handedly, "I guess you must be flooded with calls about the elephant research that was just published." That's when she dropped the bomb that Roger Williams Park Zoo was apparently off the radar for any local news sources. And she appeared steamed.

"Those studies were based on 50 year old data from European zoos with outdated practices. We don't follow them any more. And they ignored the poaching factor." I could sympathise. I had read several news accounts that were forwarded to me by friends who ran across the info. I followed the hearings in LA about the controversial Asian elephant breeding program there. It seemed as though zoos were getting an unecessarily raw deal if the data was that skewed.

So I went to a few websites, and am hunting down the original to see what they really said.

In the meantime, I've been setting up interviews with more folks and getting a skeleton crew together for the project. I believe I have a shooter who will work for what I can afford to pay at this point, and a volunteer PA. Sweet. If we can work well together this will be the most satifying thing I've done yet.

More as life develops...

A Passion for Pachyderms

The one thing that strikes me every time I talk to anyone about this project is their obvious passion about protecting elephants. The most unlikely suspects jump when I say- "Elephants in Rhode Island".

Take today for example. I ran across a reference to a former student (now professional cinematographer) from RISD who had done a student film project on Pawtucket's Fanny the Elephant. Frustrated by the lack of contact info on said movie-maker (Tsuyoshi Kimoto), I called his former English teacher who'd written the original article that led me to him. Michael Fink turned out to be a treasure trove. He pointed me to possible sources for the film and others who were involved in the whole Brouhaha in the early 1990s. Then he riffed on his own fascination with elephants in Rhode Island.

He had, it seems, grown up next to the stadium where the pachyderms were unloaded at circus time. They were (it seems) much less tightly guarded then than they are now, because they would lumber occasionally into his and his neighbors' yards. He got to pet them and shoot (photograph) them at will. And I'll get to see his pix someday soon. After talking elephant philosophy for a while, we agreed to meet soon and he'll reveal all on camera for me.

In the meantime, I plow through newspapers, books and films. And am inquiring into additional funding. I know I should be more aggressive and inventive here, but for some reason, I'm stuck on that end of it.

More as life and film progress.

Laws and such

I talked to RI Representative Raymond Gallison today. He wrote and sponsored two bills in the legislature "Relating to Cruelty to Animals". It was a revelation.

The first bill, in 2005 aimed to ban animal circuses in the state because of their dreadful record of cruelty to their charges- specifically elephants. Gallison said he was spurred to present the bills because he had worked at the Civic Center and watched circus people mistreat the pachyderms by whipping them in the joints and dragging them with bullhooks in their mouths. That stuck in his craw for a long time, and then, when a "petting zoo" came to Warwick in 2004 and the people who went to it were pretty universally appalled at the bad treatment the riding elephant received and he saw the same folks set up the next day in Warren, he decided he had to do something to relieve the elephant's plight. There was a lot of action on the 2005 bill, with a lot of resistance from other reps who didn't want to stand against such a kid-centered activity as the circus coming to town. By the time Gallison and his co-sponsor, Charlene Lima, presented a similar, but less specific, bill to committee in 2006, the issue was basically dead. It sat until the end of session and demised in a drawer. We talked about upcoming options in 2009.

So far, I've found that these weren't the first anti-cruelty laws on the books in the state. The first I could dig up was in effect from 1857-72. It was pretty specific as to who deserved the thumbs down for various crimes against animals, and their punishement was clear, too. "for every such offense," the law read "[law breakers] shall be punsihed by imprisonment in jail or State work house, or house of correction, not exceeding one year, or by fine not exceeding two hundred and fifity dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment". An updating of the statues in 1956 were much more extensive, but held a lot of the same provissions.

I also talked to a friend who'd spent her Peace Corps years in Africa. She said she loved going to the game reserves and watching the elephants in their natural habitat. "Majestic. Awe-inspiring. But when I came back to the states and saw them in their tiny zoo enclosures and took my kids to the circus, it broke my heart," she said.

More as things progress...

A grant and some questions

So the RI Council on the Humanities has given the nod to a research grant for Elephants! I'm really energized, because this means that others see the value behind the project and it's not just my own personal quirk that keeps it going. So after a month of holding my breath, I now feel ready to plunge into the world of elephants, their keepers and those who love them.

I have to admit, though, that after watching plenty of footage on the mistreatment of elephants in circuses on Youtube, etc., I am a little anxious about what this whole thing is going to do to me. Will I find it so painful I won't be able to continue? Unlikely. After all- this is about the elephants, and about our relationship to them in the microcosm that is Rhode Island. If by making this doc I can increase awareness of the elephants' plight, fab. If not- at least I can keep them on the radar. That's my job. I'm not making a "save the elephants" doc. I'm telling/showing history.

A few driving questions at this point:

Where is Betty buried?
Has anyone ever found the burial place of Tarza- a famous elephant that died of cancer in Providence?
Is AI good for elephants?
Why do we love elephants so?
And, by the bye- why didn't mastodons and mammoths hang around Rhode Island in the first place?

More as things progress....