SMOKE SIGNALS: DIRECTOR CHRIS EYRE

A Cineman Syndicate feature

SMOKE SIGNALS: DIRECTOR CHRIS EYRE INTERVIEW
* By Prairie Miller *

The first feature film written and directed by Native Americans, Smoke Signals is a two time Sundance award winner directed by Chris Eyre, and based on the short stories of Sherman Alexie. Smoke Signals follows nerdy Thomas and sullen Victor, two fatherless young Indian men, as they depart from their Idaho reservation to Phoenix to collect the ashes of Victor's long estranged dad. A magical and brooding tale about issues of home and fatherhood, Smoke Signals recounts a physical and spiritual journey through a very foreign America for two comically incompatible friends, Victor the warrior and Thomas, the storyteller and dreamer.

Director Chris Eyre sat down for a powwow to enlighten me about his very native take on Indian images on screen.

PM: Why did you want to direct Smoke Signals?

CE: I read Sherman Alexie's book, The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven, about four years ago. And the thing that drew me to it was the sensibility. The book was brutally honest. It didn't romanticize Indians. I think that's what usually happens. Indians have a tendency to be romanticized. That's what really drew me to the material, that it was very honest, and it was a beautiful story.

It's a story about forgiving our fathers. And more so, it's a story about home. So the identity thing is that Thomas understands what home is, and Victor doesn't quite appreciate what home is as much. When they leave and go to Phoenix, they're asked, do you guys have your passports? The United States is as foreign as it gets, you know? So this is their individual identity.

PM: Which character in Smoke Signals do you feel closest to?

CE: I felt close to both of the main characters. You know, I think directors are living vicariously. They have to be, through their characters. So I related to both characters on different levels. I've been both people in a sense, to some degree.

But I guess more recently I'd say I related to Victor. But earlier I was a nerd when I was growing up, so it would have been Thomas. The fact is that Thomas is special. He doesn't have a filter between his brain and his mouth. And just that alone makes him different.

PM: There's a lot of argument about whether to use the term Indian or Native American. What's that all about?

CE: Well, we call ourselves Indians, because it's not a bad term. I understand respecting people, but it's like people say, what do you want to be called? I say, how about Chris, you know? And if you want to know what my tribe is, I'm Cheyenne and Arapaho.

So it's not really that big an issue. Indian is what we call ourselves, and it's not a derogatory term. And I guess everybody else will have to figure out what they want to call you, if they don't want to use your first name...

PM: Tell me a little about the participation in Smoke Signals of many different tribes, and what that brought to the story.

CE: You know, for a while there's been an Indian acting community, and the window for that really began to open after Dances With Wolves. It was proof to Hollywood that hey, movies with Indians are popular again. There was Little Big Man, and then you had an absence probably until Dances With Wolves.

There's been that acting community before Dances With Wolves. These were the people that were out there paying their dues, you know, doing bad roles in loin cloths. Then Native filmmakers started coming. First there were documentary filmmakers. I'm probably the first narrative filmmaker that has received major distribution. But it's been a long time developing.

And when we were making the movie, we were all different tribes. You know, it's said, many nations, one people. So for sure there was a sense that we were making something significant. That we were working together to make something that was written by an Indian and directed by myself, and that had all these actors that had been playing these bad roles in movies. It's not a reflection of the actors, it's that they had been offered marginal roles, and the same type of roles over and over.

When we were making the movie we were many different tribes, but that's like a powwow. You go to a powwow and it's many different tribes, but it's one people. And we all know it's one people. You know, if you see an Indian anywhere, you say hi to him, because how often do you see an Indian walking around? It's nice to see, and you wave, nod your head and go about your day. But that's what it is. It's a sense that we were making something that was ours. And inventing ourselves. So it was a nice sense. And the contributions that everybody made were very trusting. The actors in Smoke Signals told me it was a very trusting thing. You know, you can ask an Indian to say Ug. But it's different if an Indian asks an Indian to say Ug. You know?

PM: Are there any movie about Indians made by whites that you admire?

CE: I'm not against non-Indians making movies about Indians. But I think it's been imbalanced for so long. As a matter of fact, it's never been balanced. I mean, there hasn't been us saying who we are. It's always been, oh I know what you mean. Let me be the vehicle to say who you are. And that's just economics.

But I grew up watching all the movies with Indians in them, and I love all of them. Indians are starved to see themselves on the screen. The older I get, the more I feel badly about those movies, but not growing up. We all had the wool pulled over our eyes about humiliation of Indians.

But when I was young, I didn't have that sense. We loved just to see ourselves on the screen. We were starved for our own images. There's a line of Smoke Signals where somebody says, the only thing more pathetic than Indians on TV, is Indians watching Indians on TV. That's Indian humor.

So Dances With Wolves was a beautiful movie. But it's a movie not made by Indians.

PM: What about the title of the movie, where did that come from?

CE: It's ...smoke! It's the end of something when you burn it and send it away, and that's basically what happens all through the movie. The book was called This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona. Which sounds too much like literature. And also too long. You know, it wouldn't fit on a marquee anywhere...

PM: Which filmmakers have inspired you?

CE: I like Frances Coppola, because I think he was ballsy in the seventies. He really was audacious. And then I like Jim Jarmusch's stuff. Dead Man I think is a really amazing stream of consciousness film.

PM: Are you working on your next movie yet?

CE: Well, I'm working on a drama about Leonard Peltier's life story. And I'm also developing an original film called Riverhead. It's about an Indian in a small fishing village in Alaska in 1947. It's a dark comedy. And then I have a movie over at Showtime called The Carlyle Indian School. That's about the first kids that were taken from their homes and forced to assimilate in 1879. It's with Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges. And there are some other projects. The boats are in the water.

PM: Why did you become a filmmaker?

CE: I love the process. I love shooting something, putting it together, and not recognizing it. That's what I love. I like putting a movie together, and it's like making soup. You add a little more here, take some out there, and you just keep tasting it and tasting it. And all of a sudden, you're like wow! That's what I love about filmmaking. The process, the emotion.

You know, I watch Victor over and over. I still watch him. I was in San Diego a few nights ago, and I sat in a theater and watched the whole movie. I do it all the time. I'm obsessive and compulsive, you know? And it's for the totality of it. It's satisfying.

Because in the end, I really feel for Victor. Victor makes the smallest mental transition, which are the five stages when somebody dies. You know, denial, anger...I forget the other three. He denies that's his father, and then he gets to a place where he's angry about it. That's poetic. What he does is he goes from denial to being angry. And that's the first step towards healing. That's what I love about movies. The totality of it, and sitting there and going Wow! This is wonderful...