Goldies Extra -- Cary Cronenwett's revolution nowBy Cheryl Eddy
Still from Maggots and Men
“It was schoolboys sitting in the classroom, having daydreams,” Cary Cronenwett explains, describing Phineas Slipped, his 2003 debut as a director. “The classroom was in video, and the daydreams that the boys had were little Super 8 [films]. It was bullies, and bullies being bullied, and it was sexy and violent and stuff like that.”
Five years in the making -- including time spent studying filmmaking at City College of San Francisco with director of photography Ilona Berger -- Cronenwett's follow-up effort Maggots and Men was first seen by Bay Area audiences as a short film (“sort of an overgrown trailer,” as Cronenwett calls it)
trailer for Maggots and Men
Maggots and Men | MySpace Video
“The structure of the film is kind of expandable and contractable. It’s broken up into discrete stories, or segments. More of those could be added, or taken away,” Cronenwett says. “I did the same thing with my first film: the idea was to get three quarters of the way through it, and then see what’s needed. I always wanted to lean towards the side of making it shorter and really dense. But I also thought, we’ll see how it works out and maybe it needs to become longer.”
Cronenwett’s City College peers provided crucial help during Maggots and Men’s long filming period. “The thing that I got out of it was being around other filmmakers, and making connections with people,” he says. “I could show my teachers my work as I went along and get them to respond to it. I would meet people who would come and work on the film.”
Cronenwett and crew made a studio of sorts in Berger’s basement and backyard; they also traveled to the Vermont home of one of the film’s art directors, Flo McGarrell, to film Maggots and Men’s key “frozen ocean” scenes. Lack of snow aside, though, Cronenwett is quick to note that he probably couldn’t have made Maggots and Men anywhere but San Francisco.
Stormy Knight (standing, center) in Maggots and Men
“The film is so specific to San Francisco, and I was really calling on DIY networks that were already there -- people who would already mobilize for other things, and artists who are all working on other people’s projects,” he says. “I think those networks exist to some extent in other cities, I’m just not familiar with them. Doing the transgender casting is pretty specific to San Francisco, too -- that’s something that definitely seems like an inexhaustible resource in the city. There was one time where I was doing a call out and trying to get extras, particularly transgender guys, and there were two other films calling for transgender actors that was being filmed on that same day. It was really funny, I was like, ‘Wow -- I mean, I’m really happy actually, but, dang, it’s hard to get more than 20 people in the same space!’”
Similarly, though Maggots and Men’s groundbreaking, nearly all-trans cast has earned it the most initial attention, the film’s themes are multilayered.
“Much of what the film is trying to be about is how there’s different versions of history,” Cronenwett points out. “It’s something that historians can argue about. And it’s also something that the Russian government completely erased from history.”
The film’s revolutionary ideas also go beyond historical re-enactment. “The film contextualizes the movement for transgender equality in a larger social justice movement,” Cronenwett writes in an email after our interview. “It’s about hope, a vision. It’s about the corruption of power and a system that crushes its opposition. It’s about wanting more from society. It’s about sadness, isolation, impotence.”
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