by John Wildman
AFI FEST Daily News

Jay Craven, writer and director of DISAPPEARANCES, screening November 6, 9:30 PM, and November 7, 1:30 PM, at AFI FEST 2006 presented by Audi

DISAPPEARANCES, a rural period drama written and directed by Jay Craven, screens November 6, 9:30 PM, and November 7, 1:30 PM, at AFI FEST 2006 presented by Audi.

AFI FEST Daily News: What was the greatest challenge in making a rural period drama on a limited budget?

Jay Craven: There were several challenges.

The first was to attract an experienced and talented production designer who would work for a fraction of his usual fee - and was experienced enough to know how to respect and make the most of a limited budget.

Period details can enhance a picture - or they can reveal the seams in a low budget production that is spread too thin.

Carl Sprague came onto the project and performed beyond my expectations. He had worked on several larger films including as art director on THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, STATE AND MAIN, and AMISTAD.

Carl assembled a first-class team that understood our budget and created magic, often using just the natural materials found in the woods to enhance an outdoor set.

We wrangled free period cars and the town of St. Johnsbury covered their streets with dirt - at no charge.

Carl also paid for the costs associated with the 1932 white Cadillac, based on his expectation of selling it after the shoot. (He's still looking for a buyer and, in the meantime, he's chauffeuring brides and grooms from their weddings.)

The other challenges involved getting free locations that were just right. The fact that we live where we shot the film helped us accomplish this.

Finally, we depended on hundreds of borrowed props. Again, we were able to use our local connections and the offer of film credit to win many peopleÕs cooperation.

The fact that many buildings here remain as they were in the 1930s is a plus. As is the fact that 200-year-old hill farms continue to dominate the landscape.

We were also lucky to be able to shoot on a vast mountain lake like Lake Willoughby where there are no visible buildings for miles.

AFI FEST Daily News: Though not directly addressed, there seems to be a Native American undercurrent throughout DISAPPEARANCES. Was that by design?

Jay Craven: These elements were partially planned as a subtext but they also continued to emerge during production.

And some of these themes kept bubbling up for me after the picture was completed - as I started to see how the various juxtapositions enlarged and defined moments in unexpected ways.

I'm interested in how native people live and have always lived in northern New England, despite a political tug of war that has raged for decades around formal government recognition.

Vermont does not officially recognize its native people even though they abound, especially in the northern part of the state, often mixed with French Canadians.

Even though the characters were not the usual "Indian" roles, I've cast Native American actors in all my films - Tantoo Cardinal in WHERE THE RIVERS FLOW NORTH and A STRANGER IN THE KINGDOM, Jordan Bayne in A STRANGER IN THE KINGDOM, and Gary Farmer and Heather Rae in DISAPPEARANCES.

I've also included some un-translated Abenaki in DISAPPEARANCES and Cree in WHERE THE RIVERS FLOW NORTH.

Native people, including assimilated Native people, are essential to the hardscrabble culture here - and uniquely expressive of it.

The themes in DISAPPEARANCES also draw from some Native ideas and practices that are part of the physical and cultural landscape.

Kris Kristofferson in DISAPPEARANCES, written and directed by Jay Craven.

AFI FEST Daily News: Kris Kristofferson actually played a couple concerts to help raise funds for the film. Why was he so committed?

Jay Craven: It took eight months before he actually got his hands on it, but once he did, Kris loved the script.

When he first called me after reading it, he called it "the Peckinpah script that got away."

Kris liked Quebec Bill for his optimism, his recklessness, his rugged indefatigability, his love of the physical world and his embodiment of a vanishing frontier.

And Kris liked the relationship with his character's son, Wild Bill, who is anything but wild.

Kris' Billy the Kid in [Sam] Peckinpah's PAT GARRET AND BILLY THE KID also embodied this idea of the fading frontier, with some similarities and also differences.

But the frontier theme is obviously large enough to entertain any number of treatments and even commentaries on previous approaches. And in DISAPPEARANCES we're dealing with the idea of the northern frontier.

Kris pinpointed a line that marks one of the film's emotional turning points. "Ain't this the most spectacular trip you ever imagined," he said, letting it hang in the air for a moment.

"I want to do this," he said. "I'll work for scale and help in any way I can."

We took him up on it and, mid-way through the shoot, Kris performed a sold-out benefit concert in St. Johnsbury Academy's 800-seat Fuller Hall.

Kris told me his buddy Willie Nelson called to see how he was doing. Kris told him about the planned benefit concert and said he was excited and a little nervous to be performing solo and acoustic.

"What I'm interested in is how much money you're going to make for these people," said Nelson.

"We hope to make $30,000," relied Kris.

"And how much are you making?" asked Nelson.

"SAG scale," said Kris. "I don't know, $9,000 or $10,000"

Kris said Willie Nelson didn't miss the opportunity: "It's come to this, hasn't it, Kris."

AFI FEST Daily News: What is different about making a film so far away from Hollywood, geographically and philosophically?

Jay Craven: It would be nice to make a film in a place where crew members could eat at least one meal on their own and sleep in their own beds.

Location shooting in a remote area eats up a lot of cash on a low budget.

We also had technical problems with our camera scratching film, where our distance from Boston and New York made it difficult to diagnose and resolve the problem quickly.

What's nice about shooting in northern Vermont is that I know the natural terrain quite intimately; 80 percent of the film is shot within three miles of my house.

In fact, my barn is the one struck by lightning in one of the opening scenes.

But these places in the woods and lakes and dirt roads are places that hold meaning for me and I feel quite comfortable being there and allowing this natural world to come forward in the narrative.

In my first feature, this natural world was grand but forbidding and even brutal. In DISAPPEARANCES, I was more interested in looking to its qualities of magic and mystery - even as a place that harbored family ghosts.

We always look to Hollywood for whatever support we can wrangle. I've always had some LA crew and LA actors - and they're essential.

Genevieve Bujold, Bill Sanderson, and Lothaire Bluteau were all based in LA when we pitched them for the project. LA producer J Todd Harris was also helpful.

Still, I am constantly made aware how the style of this filmmaking exists outside industry conventions and that "regional" production doesn't excite a lot of interest.

But I like to think of how much America's finest literature is rooted in the specificity of place - and how it is able to explore that detail and specificity to express universal themes.

AFI FEST Daily News: What would be your reaction to someone describing the film as "The Waltons on acid?"

Jay Craven: I'd laugh and appreciate the notion.

I'm cool with the idea of someone seeing the common ground of a rural period piece and then getting thrown for a loop because of unexpected developments from there.

That's what I hoped for, although this mode challenges traditional rural blue-collar audiences, who are our bread and butter during special regional distribution like our Vermont 100 Town Tour to theaters and town halls last summer.

But that's OK. I've been keeping a diary of the range of reactions to it.

Someone else called DISAPPEARANCES "Terry Gilliam in the sticks."

If the film subverts traditional expectations of the "regional" genre, I'm happy.