Chuck Klosterman once wrote a brilliant essay about how brutally our lives are boiled down in obituary. How often do you read something like – “He was a devoted family man who loved golf.”
That’s it! All the complexities of a life reduced to kids, wife and golf. All our delights and missteps, enthusiasms and peccadillos, hopes – both realised and fractured – ironed out in perpetuity.
However, the opposite thing happens in art, where a single detail is presented about someone that beautifully captures exactly who they are. (In books, this is often formulated as, “he was the sort of person who…”)
I came across one of these in Alex Coppola’s Belongings (2022) when the writer Morgan Talty explains that his mum would often start, but never finish a diary.
For me, this very specific observation paints a vivid picture of this woman, whose haunted house is the subject of the film.
Alex and Morgan were paired up as part of a fundraiser for a youth writing programme in Portland, Maine. Kicking ideas around for what story they might tell, Morgan shared that his mum’s house was haunted, culminating in the discovery of a mystery turd on her bed.
From there, they created a captivating, funny and poignant film which touches on grief and memory, the connective power of stories, and the ways in which we tell them.
I spoke to Alex over Zoom from his home in Maine. You can see more of his work on his website.
Why did you want to tell this story?
When Morgan first sent me the idea, it was basically just a story about him finding this mystery shit on his mom's bed. There wasn't a lot more to it, which was really funny.
His voice is so good, I thought, can we blow it out in some way? And he was totally up for it.
Part of the reason it became what it did is that, I've done nonfiction, I've done some short narrative work, but mostly my interest has been in the line between the two.
The more Morgan and I talked, it made most sense to not hide the artifice that this was just someone talking, but make that part of the way that we were going to tell the story.
We used the story as a spine to build off, to see what we found there.
This is a story ultimately about his mom, which we got to later on. But it's also about storytelling and the way that we tell them – what’s true and what isn't.
I'm not a spiritual person, or a supernatural believer for the most part, but I believe Morgan.
I believe that whatever he experienced, he experienced it. And I don't know how to quantify that, or classify it, or make sense of it.
What was the biggest challenge?
We had all these funny anecdotes, but at the beginning, that’s all it was. For anything I’m working on, I think the biggest challenge is always, what does that mean? Where are we taking this?
It’s that leap of faith you have to take in any nonfiction piece – we’ve just got to jump in and we’ll find it, whatever it is. That’s always hard, especially for me, as I’m quite anxious and controlling.
I think from a tactical standpoint, the other challenging part was what were we going to see while he’s talking? I didn't want to do any recreation because technically, I don't think I'm good enough to do that.
Is there anything you’d do differently?
I don't think so. I did destroy my car driving to Morgan's house. It was spring and there's this very long dirt road with these huge ruts in it.
I was rally car-ing my tiny subcompact on this thing and I ripped the catalytic converter out of the bottom. It just shattered.
Someone asked me what the budget for this film was, and I was like, the price of a new car, basically.
What are you most proud of?
Typically, when I'm doing something creative, I'm the writer, or I'm telling the story. So to feel like I did someone else's story justice was a great feeling.
It was great to meet Morgan, getting to know him and his body of work. And I'm just proud of the fact that the two of us were able to put something together in a day and a half that people watched.
That’s still the craziest thing to me. I’ve been working in film for ten years now, and the fact that someone will watch something that you made still blows me away.
There's no reason anyone has to watch anything that you do. No one's waiting for you. That's been a good thing to keep in mind.
How did making this film change you?
I always feel like the next thing has to be different or better, and that means spending more time, and more money, and more whatever on it. I get paralysed a lot by that.
This was a good reminder that doing the thing is the important part. It's so hard for me, I guess for anyone, just to make the thing. You can talk about it and think about it forever. But until you release it, the film doesn't exist.
Morgan lives a couple of hours north of Alex in Maine, and yet as Alex explained, their lives were totally different. Often in non-fiction there is a sense that we have to travel to far-flung places to experience difference, but the truth is it’s often just up the road, if you know how to ask the right questions.
Thanks to Alex, and to you for reading.
so good
Ah I love this one.