Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Garrison
Hi Andrew, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in South Florida, gob-smacked by the beauty of my environment; I knew I was lucky to be there. As a kid, I fooled around with plastic cameras and cheap tape recorders. I was not as good at drawing or painting as my best friend, so at age twelve I started to walk around with a 35mm camera I borrowed from my father. When I was 14, we took a family vacation to the Bahamas. Local law enforcement and parental supervision were fairly lax. I played blackjack at a casino in Freeport and won enough money to buy my own 35 mm camera, duty free. I taught myself to process slides in my home bathroom and shot many, many very crappy photos. I also tried scratching on the film, marking on the film, and using alcohol to burn off layers of the emulsion.
By the time I got to college, 1/2 inch, black-and-white, reel-to-reel video tape recorders had just been invented and a faculty member at Antioch College made the two precious units they had, available to students. This was pretty cool although an editing system had not yet been perfected, so almost every edit caused the unstable picture to roll. I eventually taught a class at Antioch while still a student, with two other friends, creating a weekly video magazine. When we graduated, those friends and I, and two other friends who had actually made movies and graduated before us, created a political media collective in nearby, Dayton, Oh. We believed we could use media to change the world. I still believe that, but on a different scale.
Dayton was a small and interesting city. We figured we could have a bigger impact there than moving to New York. We pooled our resources and moved into a house that also became our workspace. We supported ourselves with odd jobs to pay rent and the expenses to make media—”slide-tapes” (slides sequenced to edited and mixed audio tape), radio documentaries for our local non-commercial station, posters, theater, video and film projects. My odd jobs included substitute teaching, lawn mowing, the first filmmaker in the Ohio Arts Council’s Artists-in-the-Schools program, waiting tables, graphic artist, and part-time work as a medical photographer and Patient Education Specialist in a local hospital.
I began freelancing as a D.P. and as a sound recordist. I joined IATSE Local 52 in the Sound Dept.—the freelancers’ union local in New York, but I still wanted to shoot, as well. After ten years in Dayton, I was invited to come shoot for Appalshop, a media arts center in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. The job was grant-funded and supposed to last two years. I moved to the Whitesburg, Kentucky and two years turned into twelve years. At Appalshop I shot for all the Shop filmmakers. I also made a couple of my own films. I got interested in fiction films, which were too outside the mission of Appalshop, so I struck out on my own to finish three short fiction films. I met my wife and we had two children.
By this point I had made several critically successful films, but that still was not a viable income and freelancing meant long stays away from family. I liked teaching, had taught professional workshops in addition to the artist-in-the-schools, and taught filmmaking for a year at a state university in Ohio. I looked for a likely MFA program in which to enroll as a student so I might be able to teach college. I saw The University of Texas had an open position for faculty in their film program—I applied for the job, instead. I taught at U.T. for 25 years and continued to make my own work.
My films have helped me earn Guggenheim, Rockefeller, NEA, and AFI Fellowships, won national and international awards, and screened at Sundance, Berlin, The New York Film Festival, SXSW, Rotterdam, Locarno, among many other festivals, and have been broadcast internationally and on PBS, nationally. I continue to work on my own projects and I do some work as a sound designer and a production sound recordist for other filmmakers.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Looking back, my working life looks like a direct path. But at the front end, I had no idea what would come next. Never. But in my twenties I felt like I had all this tremendous potential but I could not figure out how to channel it and use it. I very clearly remember feeling like, “If I could only figure this out, there would be sparks flying from my fingertips.” I had to shut off the voice inside that kept pointing out other, younger, filmmakers who had some great film or were in all the magazines that month. I was learning and practicing, but that did not feel like progress. Finally, at age 32, I made a little “slide/tape” of my own, about the work of photographer Wendy Ewald and the amazing photographs her middle school kids were making in Eastern Kentucky. The piece was, PORTRAITS & DREAMS, and though I would do some things differently now, I still like the short documentary very much. It was my real beginning as a filmmaker.
I continued my on-the-job training on camera and sound. My next big leap as a director was adapting a short story, “Fat Monroe,” by a writer friend of mine, Gurney Norman. I did not know how to structure that kind of story, but Gurney had already built the structure. Literature to Cinema is not a one-to-one translation but once I figured out some key ideas, I just had to stay out of the way of the story. I was lucky to work with Gurney, lucky to have a group of other friends and filmmakers who believed in the work, and very lucky to find my young lead actor nearby and then the Oscar-winning actor from Kentucky, Ned Beatty, to play the title role. FAT MONROE premiered at Lincoln Center in the New York Film Festival. That morning, “The New York Times” describing the film as “a pint-sized classic.” We had a full house. I was so full of adrenalin at the screening I can hardly remember it. A friend later told me there was a standing ovation. I couldn’t remember it. I was 38 when I finished that film. A slow goer.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
In the small world of independent filmmaking I am best known for making the documentary, TRASH DANCE and the fiction triptych, THE WILGUS STORIES. I also like working for other directors as a production sound mixer or a sound designer for post.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
My parents, like most working people, went to jobs to earn a living, not because it was their passion. Any of us who actually earn a living doing the things we love to do are lucky. I am extraordinarily lucky to get to do what I do and to have an amazing family.
Contact Info:
- Website: TRASH DANCE www.trashdancemovie.com (available on Prime and other platforms)
- PORTRAITS & DREAMS (free) https://vimeo.com/agarrison/pd
- THE WILGUS STORIES (free). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pnPxpfnW1Y
- THIRD WARD TX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHkdQaWt7H8
- EAST AUSTIN STORIES (my students’ work) https://www.youtube.com/@EastAustinStoriesOrg
Image Credits
photos by Ed Radtke, Scott Oliver, Arturo Jimenez, Jeff Whetstone, Marty Newell
