5 Questions with Matthew Salton ("Patty Are You Bringing Weed in from Jamaica?")

1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

I grew up outside Seattle and went to university there. I got degrees in history and experimental art. In school I started making abstract super8 films in a video class and became friends with other film nerds who liked to spend their weekend going to the video store and renting tons of films. I really got into Werner Herzog films and his whole ethos and style of filmmaking. I ended up focusing on video and filmmaking within the experimental art department there. In terms of documentaries, I ended up spending a weekend at Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School in LA and I made this short My Raccoon after this time, which was about these two brothers who live in a dilapidated apartment and have a “pet raccoon”. That experience spending time with them and filming them, opened up my world and encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone and embrace the thrill of throwing yourself into a situation and to try to wrestle some meaning out of it. 

2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?

A friend of mine was working on a weed farm in California and she was telling me about her experience there. She said she met the ‘first woman weed smuggler in the US’ and that this woman was one of the highlights of her trip and they had become friends.  My ears perked and thought maybe this would be a good subject for a project. I also just wanted to meet her. My friend put Patty and I in touch and I flew out to meet her and I conducted the interview that’s featured in the film. I loved her story and her attitude and brazenness of what she did in the 1960s. I had illustrated my last couple short films so it felt natural that this story would also feature animation in it too. 

3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?

To be honest, figuring out how to tell the story was the hardest part. And it took a few years of working on the project in fits and starts. Patty had so many stories to tell, but I decided to focus on her first couple trips to Jamaica. When asking Patty what she learned from her experience or what drove her, she said: “I just knew I could do it, so I did it.” Which is a bad-ass answer, haha, and fine but also hard to end the story solely on that note. So I knew placing her story into a larger context was important. It wasn’t until I remembered her telling me about how she was friends with the founder of Woodstock and how she supplied some of her weed to the musicians there, including Jimi Hendrix, that it made sense. In some ways I see Patty as a messenger, someone who had the courage to transport  this plant beyond borders. She was playing a pivotal role in the counterculture of the time. It’s part of the story of this decade. 

I don’t know if there was an easy part for this film to be honest, haha. But I would say the drawing and illustrating. It’s easy to get into a flow of drawing and coloring, listening to music, it just takes time. I did it mainly in photoshop on a Cintiq and an iPad. There were many hours and nights of sitting at home coloring the drawings (I initially had done half the film in black and white and once I decided it all would be colored, I had to go to each image color each trace 3 times). The animation style is called the “boil effect” which gives it that wiggly look. It’s  3-4 traces of a drawing on a loop. So essentially each image in the film is 3-4 separate traces.  

4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

Hmmm, well, I saw this film last year The Phenomenon. I’m kind of obsessed with it and have watched it a few times. It’s about the UAP phenomena, or UFOs. It’s a look at some of the most reputable cases of the last 100 years in the USA. It’s not about “aliens” but more of the phenomena of these things that are flying around which still are a mystery to us. I usually don’t like UFO documentaries, because they aren’t well made and cheapen the discussion around the subject. But this one is legit. Even Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader, is on camera acknowledging the existence of this phenomenon. It’s pretty compelling. I wish everyone would watch it.

5) What’s next for you?

I’ve been doing research and have gotten into the books of Jacques Vallee who is a computer scientist and has devoted his life to cataloguing experiences people have had with UFO/UAP around the world. I’m super into it. So maybe something along those lines? 

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