The unlikely, life-changing, story of an aspiring filmmaker breaking into the documentary business, and the subsequent consequential tales he brought to life…
by: Alan Swyer
One of the great ironies in filmmaking is that dream projects, those that directors would be willing to make for free, always seem next to impossible to get made. Unlike writing poetry, making movies is expensive, which means that when not actually prepping, producing, or in post-production, filmmakers spend much of their time and energy in search of financing. The result is meetings, meetings, and more meetings, too many of which prove to be fishing expeditions, wheel-spinning, or complete wastes of time.
Balancing that to some degree are films that seem to materialize out of nowhere. That happened to me when my son’s Little League coach asked me to take a look at a script he was hoping to produce, which in his words was a psychological thriller. As though watching via Google Earth, he called the very moment I finished reading, begging me to be frank. After stating that it was neither psychological nor thrilling, I rattled off some changes that might help. First and foremost, I suggested that instead of the bad guy he had envisioned, the protagonist should be the father of a dead girl, since that would allow the audience to focus on someone who was not merely sympathetic, but also had a powerful motivation to stop the serial killer. Next, I proposed turning a local cop into a female FBI agent, which in addition to adding an outsider’s point of view, would also create the possibility of a romance.
“I love it!” gushed the would-be-producer. “When can you start a rewrite?”
When I explained that I was busy working on a script that was largely autobiographical, he became even more determined. “What’ll it take to get you to say yes?”
“I’ll coin a phrase,” I responded.
“Okay —”
“Let me direct.”
“Why you?” he asked.
“Because I suspect your budget is low, which means that someone who does that kind of work will spend half his time searching for his next gig.”
“Whereas you —”
“Would try to make it my calling card.”
Not only did he ultimately capitulate, but the finished film helped me find a home — as writer-director — for the original screenplay I’d been working on, which dealt with a white kid growing up in a largely Black neighborhood.
Deus ex machina (a literary device that refers to an unlikely or unnatural ending to a story or event) is a derogatory term when dealing with drama. It’s an even more pejorative when something out of nowhere suddenly impacts real life. As we were about to start pre-production on what would have been my first truly personal effort, the Writers Guild of America called a strike, shutting down the entire movie business.
Like everyone else in the Industry, I was grounded. With no revenue coming in, I figured the only way to be productive was to work on another original screenplay. The problem was that not a single idea was growing either on a nearby tree or in my mind.
Between walking the picket line and watching my bank account dwindle, I was becoming increasingly frustrated when the producer I’d been working with set up a lunch. “I’m going fucking bonkers,” he griped. “What can we film that’s cheap and won’t get us in trouble?”
“A documentary.”
“About?”
“The Latinization of baseball,” I blurted, thanks to a sudden inspiration.
“Legal?”
“If we don’t use a narrator, no writing.”
He pondered for a moment before speaking. “How much?”
“What did the architect say to a couple who wanted a house designed?”
“I give up.”
“How much you got?”
Hollywood generally breaks films down into three categories: High Budget, Medium Budget, and Low Budget. My film, which I titled Beisbol (Spanish for baseball), was closer to No Budget. With the producer picking up airfare and some lodging, I traveled with a cameraman to Puerto Rico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and, less than legally, Cuba, followed by stops at Spring Training in both Florida and Arizona. I interviewed heroes from my childhood — Orlando Cepeda, Tony Perez, Juan Marichal, and Vic Power — plus younger players, managers, executives, historians, and even announcers.
Then came the task of narrowing down almost sixty hours of footage into 120 minutes.
Lo and behold, the finished product won the Imagen Award for best Latino-focused documentary.
With two semi-miracles back-to-back, I had no right to hope for another. But a third arrived in an even more unexpected way. Thanks to reading Kerouac and Gary Snyder in my teenage years, I’d developed an interest in Eastern spirituality. That led to an experience with an Indian guru named Swami Muktananda, followed by a flirtation with Zen. Finally I turned to what I considered to be the lazy man’s path to enlightenment: guided meditations using headphones. Created by an American who called himself Master Charles, the program came with weekly phone calls with a facilitator. I was assigned to a lovely guy named Alan Scherr, who thought it was nothing short of a miracle that I’d once done a weekend retreat with Master Charles’ own guru, Muktananda. Learning that I had just finished a documentary, he asked if he could see Beisbol. Instead of giving him the full film, I emailed the ten-minute promo that we edited to attract distributors.
“It’s incredible!” Alan Scherr gushed after watching it. “Master Charles wants to know if you can do the same thing for our program?”
“I made a two-hour documentary,” I explained, “then from it edited the promo you saw.”
A series of calls ensued, followed by face-to face meetings, first with Alan, then with Master Charles, each of whom flew to LA. Though flattered by their interest, I made it clear that I had no desire to film either an infomercial or a puff piece.
“What would you do?” I was asked.
“A look at Eastern spirituality in the Western world.” It would be exciting, I elaborated, to see the ways in which Hinduism and Buddhism change once they hit American shores, as in the creation of Master Charles’ own meditation CD’s. My goal, I continued, would be to interview all sorts of people: Swamis, Zen Masters, and Rinpoches, as well as academicians, historians, and, hopefully, scientists and psychiatrists.”
“Where would I fit in?” asked Master Charles.
“You’d be in amazing company,” I answered. “Plus, I’d love to see meditation put into action in unexpected ways.”
“I’ve done workshops in New York with recovering addicts,” he stated proudly.
“Perfect!” I said.
Before an agreement was reached, MC, as he at times referred to himself, asked additional questions. “How much say do I have in the making of the film?” he asked.
“Zero.”
“And in the editing?”
“None.”
“Since I’ll be the money source, is that fair?”
“Alan Scherr mentioned that you’ve tried producing something twice before. Correct?”
Unhappily, MC nodded.
“And both went belly-up?”
Another unhappy nod.
“If I’m to do it — and it’s still if — I get final cut.”
“Well —”
“In writing —”
“But—”
“Through the Directors Guild.”
A week later, I received signed paperwork and a check.
A whirlwind of travel ensued as I crisscrossed the country with a cameraman. First came stops in Virginia, where Master Charles had his domain, then a stint at Harvard, where in addition to a Center for Mindfulness and Meditation, there were cutting edge scientists — Sara Lazar and Sat Bir Singh Khalsa — studying the effects of meditation on the brain. Next I spent time with Amma, the hugging saint of India, followed by a Who’s-Who of the Americans in the spiritual realm, including Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman, plus Bob Thurman, who was the first westerner Tibetan Buddhist monk ordained by the Dalai Lama, as well as the father of Uma. After them were Zen masters, Rinpoches, and yoga teachers, plus two key psychiatrists. In New York, Mark Epstein, the author of several books on points of convergence between Buddhism and Freud. In LA, Dan Siegel, whose work with children emphasized meditation rather than medication. Then came the biggest surprise for viewers, Baseball Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, who during a tough period of his life embraced Buddhism.
As lively as those interviews proved to be, even more exciting were two workshops that made the film come to life in a totally different way. In Manhattan, Master Charles brought much-needed serenity to a roomful of people with addiction problems. In West Los Angeles, a class of hyper-kinetic fourth-graders found stillness through guided mindfulness.
Once the documentary was finished, Alan Scherr set up a screening at the Virginia retreat. It was then that MC surprised me by announcing that when it came to filming, I, not he, should be deemed the Master.
Spiritual Revolution was immediately offered a spot by the Nashville Film Festival. Since Nashville is known as both “The City of Steeples” and “The Buckle of The Bible Belt,” I was a bit apprehensive, particularly since the screening was to take place on a Sunday, shortly after church services.
I flew in the day before, then on Sunday morning entered a restaurant filled with people in their church finery. Immediately I called my wife and said, only half in jest, that I wasn’t sure I’d make it through the screening alive.
Lo and behold, not only did Spiritual Revolution get a standing ovation, but everyone remained for a Q&A with Master Charles, a moderator, and me.
That evening I had dinner with MC, who was jubilant thanks to the film’s reception.
At the request of the festival director, I extended my stay for two days so as to participate in a panel of filmmakers, then to be present for what the festival called a By acclaim second screening, which drew another capacity crowd.
Instead of being a guy who happened to make a documentary, with two productions under my belt I was now viewed as a full-fledged documentarian. For a couple of reasons, my timing was excellent. First, the kinds of scripted films that interested me were rapidly disappearing in a world craving superheroes. Second, thanks to the every-increasing world of streaming, there was more of a market than ever before for the kind of documentaries I was making.
The irony was that I had never really envisioned myself working on docs. Nor, frankly, did I have much interest in making what might be termed “well-made documentaries,” which to me were far too conventional. I was determined to make the kinds of films I wanted to make.
Even more ironic was that while many filmmakers use documentaries as a springboard to propel themselves into scripted films, I was moving happily in the opposite direction. Somehow that seemed fitting, given that little in my life was conventional. I had a troubled childhood, was at two different points thrown out of college, and often joked about being not merely ad hoc, but genuinely in hock.
The nicest fringe benefit of my transition into making documentaries was that after years of toiling as a screenwriter — being merely the writer, only the writer, and often no longer the writer — for the first time there was a measure of cause-and-effect in my professional life. More often than not, my documentaries got made, instead of languishing in what’s known in Hollywood as “development hell.”
Another huge plus was that instead of sitting alone in front of a computer, I was part of the world, with access to fascinating people in many different realms.
As was the case with Spiritual Revolution, every so often a documentary was commissioned. First came an insider’s look at an experiment in San Diego that treated chronic criminality like a disease, which meant that remediation, not incarceration, was the focus. That put me together with the people who designed the program — a psychiatrist and a psychologist, plus the District Attorney and the Chief Probation Office — as well as several ex-inmates who graduated and became productive members of their community.
Next was a deep dive into the breakthroughs in the treatment of diabetes, which put me together with scientists and physicians, as well as experts on the epidemic of childhood obesity.
Each and every film, whether commissioned or initiated by me, provided access to remarkable people I never otherwise would have otherwise encountered.
Still, every so often, a project with great promise failed to get funding. The one that hurt most dealt with a women’s prison, where inmates vied for the opportunity to learn a job skill — and a way of building self-esteem — by training service dogs to help with the disabled and/or veterans with PTSD.
Undaunted, I continued to delve into subject matter that fascinated me far more than the so-called psychological thriller I rewrote and directed. Voices of Leimert explored a Black cultural mecca in Los Angeles. Hollywood To Harlem focused on ‘The Most Famous Person Most People Have Never Heard Of’, singer-songwriter Billy Vera, the first white guy to play Harlem’s fabled Apollo as part of a duo with a Black woman, Judy Clay. That film, happily, allowed me to interview Dolly Parton and Dionne Warwick, plus one of my songwriting heroes, Mike Stoller, of Leiber & Stoller.
Subsequently, I did for boxing what I’d done for baseball in a film called El Boxeo. That one, together with a scripted film for HBO called Rebound about a Harlem basketball legend, completed my goal of making films about all three sports I’d participated in while growing up: baseball, basketball, and boxing.
When, during an interview about the Leimert Park film, I was asked me how a white guy like me came to focus so much on people of color — including my professional involvement with Ray Charles, Solomon Burke, and even Ike Turner — I responded that I had the good fortune of growing up poor, which, as demonstrated by my unproduced screenplay of years before, meant that my formative years were spent in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
That interest came into play when a young producer named Drew Barnett-Hamilton asked if I’d heard of a place in Houston called the El Dorado Ballroom and did I think there was a documentary in it? My response was that it would be a great springboard into an in-depth look at Houston’s amazing but largely unheralded Black music scene: Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Mama Thornton, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Clifton Chenier, plus the astonishing pre-Motown Black-owned Duke and Peacock record labels.
Out of that initial conversation came When Houston Had The Blues, which I like to describe as a film about race, culture, politics, economics, and some of the greatest music ever produced.
Though not without problems — shooting was suspended for two years because of the pandemic, Drew had back surgery, I had an operation on my knee, and we lost five interviewees who passed away — making the film was such a great experience that Drew and I chose to do a follow-up, albeit without air travel. Featuring Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Etta James, and other artists, both known and less well known — plus interviews with Robbie Krieger and John Densmore of the Doors, Willie Chambers of the Chambers Brothers, Eric Burdon of the Animals, and Dave Alvin of the Blasters — the forthcoming When LA Got the Blues makes the claim that R&B was born not in New Orleans or Memphis, but in a city better known for the Beach Boys and the Mamas & the Papas.
Unlike my scripted work, my relationship with the people in my documentaries has continued long after screenings, festivals, and streaming. The result is long-term friendships with ballplayers, boxers, and quite a few people in the world of music, all of which brings me great joy.
The one exception is Spiritual Revolution. Due to the film’s success, Alan Scherr invited me to join a group accompanying Master Charles to a conference in India. My plans were upended when my car was sideswiped on the Pasadena Freeway. The result was that I was not together with Alan and his daughter when they were murdered in a hotel dining room during what became known as the Mumbai Massacre.
Two years after that, I was informed that Master Charles had developed a case of buyer’s remorse.
Proving that what he’d really hoped for was hagiography — a puff piece — I received a letter stating that I was in breach.
Attorneys at the Directors Guild promptly sent copies of the documents granting me final cut. Additionally, they promised to fight not merely in a court of law, but also in the court of public opinion, making it clear that MC was not only reneging, but also infringing on their member’s artistic vision for what became an award-winning film. Fearing negative press, the threats vanished. Happily, Spiritual Revolution continues to find new viewers on multiple streaming platforms.
Though I’ve been fortunate to make scripted films, music videos, and commercials — as well as having a novel published, plus several short stories and pieces of nonfiction — when asked what I do, I generally overlook much of my past. Instead my response is usually short and sweet: “I make documentaries.”
Alan Swyer is an award-winning filmmaker whose recent documentaries have dealt with Eastern spirituality in the Western world, the criminal justice system, diabetes, boxing, and singer Billy Vera, plus a new one, When Houston Had The Blues. In the realm of music, among his productions is an album of Ray Charles love songs. His novel The Beard was recently published by Harvard Square Editions.
