The Scary Man - a film by Taylor Greeson

NewFest Success

Meadowlark received the Honorable Mention in the Documentary Feature category at NewFest!

The film was well received by a warm audience at the 20th Anniversary New York LGBT Film Festival. Here is what the jury had to say: "Honorable Mention went to Taylor Greeson's Meadowlark for exposing his personal story with emotional intensity and raw honesty, and for doing so in a creatively challenging manner."

I am excited to announce that Meadowlark will be screening at Outfest 2008.

Meadowlark was chosen to screen at the 26th annual Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. It will be screening in the Platinum Section, which is dedicated to work that "pushes the boundaries of cinema." Here are the screening details:

July 16, 2006 at 7:15PM
The Director's Guild of America
7920 Sunset Boulevard
Hollywood, 90046

You can find more information about Outfest 2008 at www.outfest.org. You can also go there to buy your ticket to see Meadowlark and a number of other wonderful LGBT films.

Meadowlark was invited to screen at festivals in New York and Oklahoma.

The two festivals are:

NewFest 2008: The 20th Anniversary New York LGBT Film Festival
New York, NY June 5-15
Meadowlark will screen Friday, June 6 at 6:00PM at the AME Loews 34th Street Theater

deadCENTER Film Festival
Oklahoma City, OK June 11-15
Meadowlark will screen Friday, June 13 at 9:30PM at the Harkins Bricktown Theater.

Meadowlark is set for its official World Premiere at the Independent Film Festival of Boston.

The screening times:

Thursday, April 24th at 10:30PM
Saturday, April 26th at 8PM

Somerville Theater
55 Davis Square
Somerville, MA 02144

For more information, or to buy tickets, visit www.iffboston.org.

The Chicago Cinema Forum is presenting Meadowlark at Chicago Filmmakers on February 29, 2008 at 8PM.

Just two days after my 27th birthday I will be screening my film in the Windy City. The screening will take place at Chicago Filmmakers, which is located at:

5243 N. Clark
Chicago, IL 60640

To find out more, you can visit their website at www.chicagofilmmakers.org. This screening is presented by the Chicago Cinema Forum. Please visit their website at www.chicagocinemaforum.org.

I'm hoping that this is the first of many screenings. With any luck, this news page will finally see some action in the coming months as I continue to submit Meadowlark to film festivals. If you live in Chicago, hopefully I will see you in February.

More pictures from the Victim Offender Dialogue.

You can check out the photos in the Odds and Ends section of the website. The dialogue happened last November but I only received these photos a few days ago. They were taken by one of my VOD facilitators, Sally Hilander, as I toured the prison with Seth Stewart and Ben Rodkin.

I finally took my last trip to Montana to film my thesis.

It actually happened two weeks ago, but I'm only getting around to writing about it now. I would be lying if I said that it has taken me this long to write about the trip because I'm so busy. Of course I'm busy--I'm trying to edit a feature-length documentary! But I've had plenty of time to update the website about my trip and I have been putting it off because I didn't feel able to write about the whole experience.

I'm ready now.

It was the shortest of my trips but it seemed like the hardest to prepare for. Seth, Ben Rodkin, and I left on a Sunday. We drove that day and the next, arriving in Shelby, MT on Monday night. Tuesday was election day (go Donkeys!) which was a great distraction to keep me from thinking too much about the Victim-Offender Dialogue that would happen the next day. Before election results came in, however, I was in prison with Ben and Seth. The warden took us on a tour, which he graciously let Ben film. Seth recorded sound. I think Warden MacDonald even kept the place on lock-down just a little bit longer than normal so that we could finish.

Warden MacDonald took me on a tour of the prison a couple of months ago so that I would know what it's like for Frank to live there. Despite having gone through it before, I was still struck anew by how miserable it would be to live in prison. Any time the warden decides, he can kick you out of your cell so that annoying outsiders like me can snoop around in your personal belongings. Or he kicks you out of the gym so some kid can come through with a movie camera to disrupt your routine. I was amazed at the lack of privacy you are afforded in prison. But I guess that's the price you pay for being a bad boy.

The prisoners seemed at least a little intrigued by our presence. When we went into one of the cell blocks they were all fighitng for room at the little windows of their cell doors to watch us. We could feel all of the eyes on us as we walked by.

After the tour, Warden MacDonald took us back to his office where he answered a few questions about the Victim-Offender Dialogue on camera. We discussed the schedule of the following day and then Ben, Seth, and I left to get a drink and head back to the motel. There are FAR more bars in Shelby than there are restaurants and Ben and I did not want to miss the opportunity to sample one of the staples of Montana culture: cheap booze. We opted for moderation, however, and had just two drinks before we went back to the motel to plant ourselves in front of the TV while election results slowly came in.

The next day we were up early. I had a motel breakfast with Sally and Kathy, my facilitators in the Victim-Offender Dialogue program, so they could check in and see if I was prepared for the rest of the day. Then they went to the prison to check in with Frank. I arrived at the prison about an hour later. Sally, Kathy, and I had one last meeting to set the ground rules for the Dialogue and then we were ready for it to begin. I walked out of the office we were using and Frank Fuhrmann was waiting with a guard in the hall. My stomach dropped at the surprise. For some reason I thought our first glimpse of one another would be more ceremonious or official.

I hurried into the conference room to set up the sound recorder and take a couple of deep breaths before the dialogue was to begin. Five minutes later I was sitting across from the man who killed my brother thirteen years ago. In the last picture I saw of him, taken a year ago, he had a full beard. When he came for the dialogue he was clean-shaven. It looked like he had nicked himself with the razor as there was a tiny red cut on his chin.

We talked for almost two hours and then decided to take a lunch break to collect our thoughts. I used the lunch break to think about what I wanted say to Frank when I went back. Frank had unfortunately already missed lunch, but he said that he usually skips it anyway. Since he wasn't able to go to lunch, he went to his health class, where he had to take a quiz. He said he did okay, about average for the class, but that he missed a lot of questions about alcohol consumption--probably because he's never really been a drinker. We talked for another two hours, we cried, and then I felt that the dialogue was over. We had both been able to say what we wanted and I think we both ended up saying more than we thought we ever would.

I brought a picture of Charlie into the room with me at the beginning of the dialogue. When I walked out of the conference room I accidentally left his picture behind. Frank picked it up and raced out of the room to make sure I didn't leave without it.

The next day we were on our way back to California.

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.

I've been crazy getting ready to leave for another trip to Montana.

I'm leaving on July 1st with Seth and Yfke. I think this is the scariest trip I've done so far because I'm going to have so much contact with other human beings this time. On the last two trips to Montana I rarely filmed other people, and when I did conduct "interviews" I was more nervous than I anticipated. This time I'm going to be speaking to a lot of people.

I set up meetings with both of the prosecutors in my brother's trial, the public defender in the trial, and one of the witnesses for the State. The witness I'm talking to is one of the people who stopped to help Charlie when he was stabbed. I think he was the last person that Charlie spoke to.

In addition to those people, I am also trying to meet with officers and investigators from the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office and the Billings Police Department. I hope to share some of the 4th of July with the Kliners, who now live in the house in Lockwood where I used to live. Then, of course, there are all of the people that I will probably meet along the way in the busy, touristy areas where I will also want to shoot.

The sites I visited on my previous trips were completely devoid of people; it's going to be strange to be filming in places where we won't be alone. I'm looking forward to it.