5 Questions with Brett Hanover
An avant-garde anthropological study about a furry artist named Rukus and the filmmaker Brett Hanover attempting to make a film about him, “Rukus” unspools in many directions, perhaps the most profound of which is the director’s own self-examination. We asked Hanover how the project started, when he knew it was complete, and what comes next for him…
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I used to play around with my parents' camcorder when I was a kid, making trick videos where my sister disappeared, or stop-motion movies with toy dinosaurs. (And, by the way, the history of children making movies like this is fascinating, going back through video diaries, special effects fandom and "monster kids," and people like Robbins Barstow in the 30s. Of course, now this is a part of just about everyone's childhood.) When I was in high school, I got involved with a group of filmmakers in Memphis who had started a film co-op, the Memphis Digital Arts Cooperative. These filmmakers (Morgan Jon Fox, Kentucker Audley, Tim Morton, Ben Siler, Brandon Hutchison, Eliza Touzeau) were making really interesting, personal work - almost diaristic narrative films, very raw documentaries, and experimental shorts. I was the younger kid who hung around and acted like a little shit. Kentucker will remember this... I was very influenced by this way of working, even though at the time I was more interested in making traditional documentaries. Later, party from art school, and partly from the influence of two of the other young co-op filmmakers, Alanna Stewart and Katherine Dohan, I started branching out.
2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?
I met Rukus when I was a senior in high school, and kept working with him on little never-finished projects over the years. We had just started talking about collaborating again when he took his own life, in late 2008. I was very affected by his death, especially because I had such a large archive of all our unfinished work - video tapes, chat logs, photos, etc. After going through that material, and reflecting on the previous few years of my own life (an difficult time for me, in terms of mental health), I started putting together an outline of a film that would tell the story of our friendship. As the film developed, the outline kept branching in new directions, until Rukus and I became the through-line for an interconnected exploration of broader themes - mental health and intimacy, intersubjectivity and touch, trauma and memory. I abandoned the idea of it being a documentary, and decided the project had to be in service of these themes, and of a bigger story I wanted to tell. But I wanted to do that without it becoming a puzzle film, or a film that is too clever about how it fictionalizes things. I wanted to make it intricate, but still film it around the house - done well enough, but still rough around the edges. There was never a complete script, and I kept writing and rewriting and shooting and reshooting for years. I'd film a scene, and then talk more with someone who knew Rukus and realize I'd done it wrong, and rewrite it. Or Alanna (my main collaborator and co-writer, who plays Robin in the film) and I would get a little older, and have some perspective on the relationship we were depicting, and we'd have to re-write the script. I kept the whole thing in my head, but i don't think anyone knew how the scenes fit together until I had an edit. And even then, Alanna and Katherine and I had to play around with notecards for a few days.
3) I know this project was in the works for a long time… when you first began it, did you have a sense how long it would take? And how did you know when it was finally complete - were you confident it had reached its final form, or were you tempted to keep tinkering with it?
When I looked over my first outline of the film, I knew it would take a couple of years. Maybe not 8 years, but I expected that it would be a long, slow project. Every time I'd shoot a scene, I'd mark it finished on a spreadsheet, and I'd think - if I just keep doing this, eventually the film will exist. I never thought I'd quit - the movie has always already existed in the future. Also, if it isn't clear from the scenes about OCD and my related anxieties, I can be perfectionist. I only finished it when I decided it was exactly what I set out to do, and now, there isn't anything about it that I want to change. Otherwise I would still be obsessing over it. Even the parts that are rough or don't quite work - they fail in the way I want them too. (I mean, that's partly a lie. Sometimes a bad line is just a bad line and you have to live with it.)
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
Hmmm. I am going to have to say more than one thing. When I was taking Rukus to festivals in 2018, the best thing I saw was Annika Berg's movie Team Hurricane. The filmmaker found a bunch of teenage girls who were semi-famous Youtubers in Denmark, and had them act like they were a naturally occurring group of friends trying to save their youth center. It sometimes feels like a documentary, with the girls talking about (real?) personal experiences, and it sometimes is a fast-paced candy-colored comedy about teens trying to pull off one last big art show to save the day. More recently, I watched a couple of George Kuchar's Weather Diaries films for the first time - Kuchar has an eye for tiny details, and a lack of pretension, that reminds me of Ben Siler... I also watched two good documentaries from the "seniors reminisce about what it was like to be cool when no one else was" genre - Greta Schiller's Before Stonewall and Julia Reichert's Seeing Red. Oh, and I just saw Funeral Parade of Roses. Not perfect, and sometimes the meta-moments are a little clever, but wow - what an amazing encapsulation of a moment in time, a group of friends, and a very specific tiny and fleeting artistic world. It's one of those movies that feels like a one-off - inspired by other underground films of the time, but clearly tuned into something that was only happening at a local, personal level.
5) What’s next for you?
I dunno what's next. I haven't jumped into a new personal project yet. Getting grounded after grad school, working at a non-profit in Memphis, enjoying taking Rukus around. I am working on a new short film that Alanna and Katherine are directing, though - Space Submarine Commander, a sci-fi western musical comedy about access to abortion in the south. Currently, I'm building a spaceship cockpit in my garage. Also, about a year ago I bought an old moped, and it's just great.
Contact Info:
Website: http://www.bretthanover.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rukusmovie/