‘Butte, America'

By Roberta Forsell Stauffer of The Montana Standard - 01/04/2009

Movie poster

It all started one evening at sunset, up at the Granite Mountain Memorial. Independent filmmaker Pamela Roberts remembers the chill that came over her as she looked out over the stark industrial graveyard.

The enormity of it all settled in, and Roberts thought to herself: "What really happened here? And why is this place still here?" Roberts had loved Butte ever since visiting as a girl in the early 1960s. She'd grown up in the Hardin-Lodge Grass area and had never seen anything like it. But not until that night did she choose Butte as the subject for her next documentary, launching an epic chapter in her own life that would span more than 10 years.

"You come out a different person at the other end" of a project like this, she said.

http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2009/01/04/videos/hjjajijgibhjjf.txt And now a Butte audience will be the first to see the 67-minute film — "Butte, America: The Saga of a Hard Rock Mining Town" — at the Mother Lode Theatre on Saturday, Jan. 17, at 8 p.m.

The Emmy-nominated director-producer decided early on that she needed a Butte native partner, preferably a writer, and after reading Edwin Dobb's "Pennies from Hell" piece in the October 1996 issue of Harper's Magazine, she knew he was the one.

"Against his better judgment, he finally fell in with me," Roberts joked during a recent interview.

No fan of collaboration, Dobb resisted initially, but said "the force of Pam's personality and her passion for the story" finally brought him around. He nicknamed her, "Tenacious P." And once they got started, the two found they shared a lot in common from their working-class upbringing, to their commitment to quality and their dedication to making people the centerpiece of this film, not historical facts and figures.

"It's an epic story from an intimate, personal perspective," Roberts said.

"Scores" of people were interviewed, and about 12 to 15 made it into the film. And in the process of finding those characters and framing the story, a new "Butte community" sprung up, several hundred strong, united by their desire to help see this documentary through to completion.

"I now have lifelong friends here," Roberts said.

Many of those friends also came through with donations at a critical time. The project garnered a $400,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, but at one point they risked losing it unless they came up with an additional $60,000 to $70,000 match. Butte donors came through and saved the grant.

Through Roberts' Bozeman-based nonprofit, Rattlesnake Productions Inc., they secured other grants as well, and the total budget for the film came to $863,000. But it was truly a labor of love for Roberts and Dobb, neither of whom took home any pay for their work these last few years. And while they're not in the hole, Roberts said they're "right at the hole," since they still need additional funding for screenings and promotion.

But the focus for now is on celebrating the film's completion. After the Butte premiere, the film will be shown throughout Montana, and next fall it will air on both Montana Public Television and national PBS. They also plan to show it at film festivals, and screenings are in the works for New York City, San Francisco, even Cork City, Ireland. DVD copies will be for sale eventually.

Roberts and director of photography Erik Daarstad shot more than 170 rolls of film, and the team sifted through hundreds of hours of archival film, including home movies. They also looked over thousands of historic photos and family mementos, looking to create just the right combination of visuals. Film editor Jennifer Chinlund worked on 61 rough cuts leading up to the final version.

The original musical score was composed by one of the best in the business, Todd Boekelheide, who won an Oscar for mixing the music for "Amadeus," and Dublin-born actor Gabriel Byrne lends his deep, warm voice as narrator. He currently stars in the HBO television series "In Treatment." And while the script co-written by Dobb and Eugene Corr is the glue tying the whole thing together, Roberts said "the heart and soul of this film are the characters." "You make the film that your characters give you to make," Roberts said.

By listening closely to the many stories about the way Butte was, from the early 20th century up through the 1980s, Roberts came to the end with some moving answers to her initial questions about what really happened here and why people persisted in this place.

"This place is still here because people here embrace their loss and move on with their lives in such a way that they keep moving forward," she said.

Losses also occurred over the course of the filming itself. A brief memorial will be shown before the premiere starts in remembrance of those who helped but have since died. Seats will be left empty in their honor.

Now that they've finally reached this point, both Roberts and Dobb are pleased with their final product, knowing they did their best. But still they're a little leery of letting go and of what kind of reception the piece may get here at home.

They aimed for a universal audience and were careful not to "prettify" the reality of the Butte working class experience, but to portray it as accurately as possible.

Roberts said the best mindset to bring to the premiere is an open one. "Not to have any expectations at all," she said.

Roberta Forsell Stauffer is the editorial page editor for The Montana Standard.

To view the movie trailer for the film go online to http://www.mtstandard.

com/articles/2009/01/03/ videos/hjjajijgibhjjf.txt.

Or from the home page of mtstandard.com, click on the multimedia tab, then select video to view.