When your movie wins the Audience Prize and critical raves at three high-profile film festivals — as did “Smoke Signals,” at Sundance, San Diego and Taos — even the most jaded Hollywood studio executives are likely to be impressed. If you also happen to be an American Indian, however, this kind of attention can present a mixed blessing.
“I’ve had meetings with the most powerful people in this town, but they still want to make loin-cloth movies,” said author and screenwriter Sherman Alexie over lunch. “Every producer and director wants to make the great American western — that’s the mythos that informs everything in this town. All these action-adventure movies are just westerns.
“What I’ve seen generally is every dusty old `Trail of Tears’ screenplay that has been sitting on a producer’s shelf for 15 years. So far, nobody’s approached me with the idea of doing anything new.”
Although, as Alexie points out, his film employs some familiar cinematic archetypes — “the road movie, the buddy movie, the Huck and Tom/Mutt and Jeff qualities of the characters, the absent father” — to expand upon the concepts of recovery, home and forgiveness, “Smoke Signals” certainly is something different. If nothing else, it’s the first Indian-written, -directed and -produced feature film ever to find mainstream distribution (Miramax).
“People are interested in a particular kind of Indian . . . the visionary Indian on a mountaintop, waving eagle feathers in four directions and talking about Mother Earth, Father Sky,” suggests Alexie, of the Spokane/Coeur d’Alene tribe who lives in Seattle. “That’s the stuff that makes money. But those of us interested in stories about Indians in jobs, or Indians driving cars and digging ditches, we have a whole other barrier to go over.”
“Smoke Signals,” which was adapted from the book “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” and opened on Friday, follows a mismatched pair of 22-year-old Coeur d’Alene cousins — the nerdy storyteller, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, and the sullen, athletic Victor Joseph — as they travel from their Idaho reservation to Phoenix to claim the ashes of Victor’s estranged father. Thomas’ enthusiasm and constant chatter drive Victor nuts, but an offer for companionship is reluctantly accepted because Victor is nearly penniless, and Thomas can provide the bus fare.
In this contemporary western — in which battered pickup trucks substitute for horses, and panoramic vistas are tarnished by mobile homes and high-tension wires — the young men deal in very different ways with the loss of parents and a diminished cultural heritage. Thomas uses his oddball sense of humor as a weapon against poverty, racism and despair, while Victor adopts a warrior’s stance.
Because the movie stars popular Native American actors Gary Farmer, Irene Bedard, Tantoo Cardinal, Adam Beach and Evan Adams, and humorously introduces such cultural touchstones as fry bread and “rez cars,” Alexie knows “Smoke Signals” will appeal to its primary audience. That won’t be enough, however, to satisfy him, or Miramax, which is anticipating crossover success.
“When you talk about a film like `Waiting to Exhale,’ there’s a built-in audience there, of, what, 20 million black people?” he says. “There are a million-and-a-half Indians. I’m comfortable that all of them will see this movie, so that’s $5 million right there. But we need to make more than that.”
“Smoke Signals” was directed by Chris Eyre, a 30-year-old Cheyenne/Arapaho, and financed through Seattle-based ShadowCatcher Entertainment (“Our budget equaled one chandelier on `Titanic,’ ” Alexie said). The company is also producing a supernatural thriller based on Alexie’s novel “Indian Killer,” which is about a series of ritualistic murders being investigated by a Native American cop in Seattle.
“Only American Indian actors will play American Indian roles in the movies I work on; that’s in my contract,” declared Alexie, who also will direct the film. “There’s a budget for interns, as well, so they can come in and learn the business.”
On this publicity tour for “Smoke Signals,” he not only has had to convince the mainstream press that his project is worth writing about, but Alexie also has had to address the concerns of Indian journalists.
“It’s always about, `What are you doing for Indians?’ . . . about social responsibility,” he says. “Indian artists are just as much politicians and social workers as we are artists. Sure, it’s a burden, but I’m proud, and I accept the responsibility.
“I’m proud to stand up and say I’m a very successful artist, writer, filmmaker, poet, songwriter . . . and I’m sober. I’m proud to present to Indian children the image of an Indian man, married to an Indian woman, with an Indian child, who’s very successful and very happy and very comfortable.”
Moreover, Alexie remembers a time when he was very much like his character, Thomas, and he, too, was haunted by dreams, songs and visions.
“I thought I was the weirdest person on the planet. . . . I thought I was insane,” he recalled with a laugh. “I just wish there was someone, like me, who would have come to my reservation and said it was all right to be that way, which is what I do now. There are so many kids out there who have the same stories, songs and poems in their heads and I want them to know it’s OK.”
