Post-Montana | 07.18.06

I'm back in California after spending two weeks shooting more of my thesis all over the Big Sky State.

When people ask me about my trip to Montana to shoot more of the film I can't immediately come up with answers. It doesn't seem like enough to say "the trip was good," but I am finding it difficult to articulate another response on the spot. So, I took some time and wrote a little about my experience there:

Seth and Yfke were my film crew and travel buddies. On the way to Billings we drove through Yellowstone National Park. We camped for a night. It rained. As I was driving (and, yes, I did most of the driving!) I thought about all of the parts of the trip that I was looking forward to. I started thinking about the trip the same way I thought about car rides when I was a kid. I thought about the last road trip I took before Charlie died and felt uneasy becaused I experienced the same giddy impatience to be at the Lewis and Clark Caverns that I felt when we went there when I was 12 and had never seen the caverns. It was absurd of me to be worried that this trip would end in the same way my trip to the caverns ended in July of 1993, but I couldn't help but feel that irrational disquiet.

When we got to Billings we stayed with a friend that my mom met when she went back to college. His name is Jorge. Some of you may have heard fantastic tales about Jorge and his free-range ferret who roams the house in the middle of the night searching for a cozy pile of clothing to burrow into or a succulent earlobe to gently nibble. Those of you who are repulsed by thought of this critter would have been relieved to hear that said ferret, Tsunami, died. The rest of you (the ones with hearts) just went "ahhhhh" like you do when you see a sick puppy on the animal channel.

Jorge made a real impression on Yfke and Seth when he showed them his boobs. Not the ones that he has now--the ones that he had surgically removed and then placed in a mayo jar full of formaldehyde. I love Jorge.

In the first week we were there I spoke with one of Frank Fuhrmann's public defenders and both of the prosecutors in his deliberate homicide trial. When you are the prosecutor, you have to passionately believe that the man you are trying to convict is guilty, but the defense team rarely has to passionately believe that the man is innocent.

It was a treat to see my closest remaining relative in Montana, crazy Aunt Laura. Laura is my grandma Sally's sister. I think everyone in Red Lodge knows her because for about a thousand years she has run an insanely cheap thrift store called the Rummage Room. The moment I loved the most is when she suddenly turned to the camera and started singing a Finnish song about a squawking parrot.

We left Red Lodge in the morning to drive over the Beartooth Pass to Cooke City and back into Yellowstone Park. I haven't been over the pass in a long time because the last few times I was in Montana it was closed due to snowy weather. The Beartooth Pass is one of the most beautiful drives in America. The road goes way above the treeline and switchbacks through fields of wildflowers and pools of glacial water. I can't think of anything profound to say about the road, but I can tell you that I feel something very special when I am on it.

After touring the Lewis and Clark caverns and the little town of Whitehall, we travelled on to Helena where I met with Sally Hilander from the Department of Corrections. Sally is my facilitator in the Victim-Offender Dialogue. Talking with her is always illuminating because I have to answer such questions as: "What is your idea of justice?" "How would you feel about your offender being paroled?" "What is your idea of forgiveness?" "Do you need to forgive your offender in order to move on?" "What is your philosophy of life?"

After we talked for a while, we set a tentative date for me to meet with Frank. I think it's going to be in October. I was surprised that we set a date. It means it's really going to happen. I'm going to talk face to face with the man responsible for my brother's death. This realization is still sinking in, but I feel, um, good, about it.

I went to the office of the Clerk of Court when I returned to Billings. The Clerk of Court's charge is to safeguard the records of the court as well as provide access to those records. I was unaware of this when I first approached the Clerk, but you can also see evidence from a trial. Given the nature of the trial I am investigating, the physical evidence I discovered was not pleasant to handle. The clerk brought out a big brown box and placed it in the middle of the floor in the office. She opened it and pulled out items such as a pair of bloody pants and the handle of the knife that Charlie was stabbed with.

There are a lot of people who think I am crazy for putting myself in a position where I see things like my brother's bloody, ripped-up jeans. If I'm reading people correctly, there's even a little bit of anger that people feel when I ask them to produce such items for me. I get a lot of "Are you sure you want to see this?" and "There are some things that are better left alone." People would rather not be confronted by tragedy. Nobody wants to think about death if they don't have to, so maybe people think I'm wrong for making them think about it.

I get angry when people assume that I am doing something inappropriate or harmful by digging through these unpleasant and gruesome artifacts from my family's life. Here's how I see it: 24 people from two different juries, 4 lawyers, a judge, a bailiff, a court reporter, and countless other people who I don't know from Adam saw these pictures and this evidence. This is the stuff they evaluated to decide if Frank Fuhrmann was guilty of deliberate homicide. Charlie is my brother and I had never seen it.

To finish the shoot, I talked with one of the witness for the state. His name is Terrill. He was at the scene of the crime. Charlie flagged people down for help and Terrill was one of the people who went to his aide as he was bleeding on the road. I went with Terrill up to the Rims, where Charlie was killed. He showed me where everything happened and we talked a little bit about the nature of tragedy and how it affects us over time, what we remember or want to forget, and how our remembrances of the past prompt us to act differently. It was a good way to end the shoot.

After I filmed Terrill, there was only one stop left to make in Billings. Yfke, Seth, Jorge and I made the obligatory journey to Billings' most happening gay scene at Billings' one and only gay bar, The Loft. I had to make another trip to the Loft the following morning after I stupidly left my credit card there the previous night. Luckily the owner, Ron, was unbelievably nice when I woke him at 10AM to retrieve my forgotten plastic. With my credit card recovered we got on the road and began the journey back to sunny Valencia.

- Taylor
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