Deep in the forests of Oregon can be found a sanctuary for folk who have chosen to live unlike how most other people live. They are individuals for whom urban life is anathema, whether because they feel don’t fit in (or are determined not to) or simply refuse to trust in consumerist 21st Century values.
The inhabitants are mainly male, but we see a smattering of women, one young woman named Amber, an older woman called Gale, and another who is unnamed but seems to be the mother of the kids we see playing throughout the film. The place is run by Steve, who has a touch of the Kenny Rodgers about him. At one point, Amber and Steve were an item, but his infidelity put paid to her trust in him, but they remain good friends, even if his heart breaks every time he sees her with another man.
We also meet the younger Sky, a drummer and former prison occupant, who checked out of a system that he believes “controls, not serves, the people.” Likewise Wild Bill believes that Earth is his home, and that he doesn’t need “a frickin’ address.” For him, the great outdoors is “easier on the psyche.” Tom Sr and Tom Jr seem to have been there for a lifetime, the younger already admitting to 50 years in the woods.
And then there is Buzz, the first person we first meet. He is gnarled and grizzly and doesn’t like the company of others. He doesn’t want to be influenced either by their “positivity or negativity.” Nor does he want to be the initial snowflake that creates the snowball of continuing contact. His is a solitary existence by choice, and even among the waifs and strays of the community Steve concedes that “Buzz is different.” But he does have one love in his life, a mule called Daisy.
In 2017, director Mikael Lypinski made a similarly-themed film in the US called Desert Coffee, about a squatter community living in trailers, tents and run-down buses in a place called Slav City, in California. When, a little while later, he returned to Slav City to meet up with his characters, Lypinski’s attention was drawn to a lone man he had never seen before. “I saw this interesting guy (Buzz) being visibly unhappy about being there in the desert. We started to chat and he said that he longed to go back to the forest of Oregon where his mule Daisy awaited. You can imagine that that sounded very intriguing.”
So Lypinski determined to go back with Buzz. “He was basically my way into this sanctuary.” The Oregon settlement that the director discovered was small (certainly a lot smaller than Slav City), and in the film we meet just about all its inhabitants, other than a small handful who didn’t make the final cut.
Given that these were folk who preferred their own company, how did they feel about having their movements recorded and their personal lives told on film? First of all, Lypinski was, himself, acting as a sole operator, as director, DOP and sound operator, so that helped. “I was on my own…I was doing everything myself,” he points out. “I hope I was transparent and trustworthy from day one. I told them that I was fascinated by their way of life, and that I wanted to make a very honest portrait of them. And I think through dialogue and just hanging out with one another, they just decided to trust me.”
Lypinski further concedes that there is something enviably idyllic about their choice of life style, but that his is an ostensibly urban existence. Film business is conducted mainly within the confines of the city, he reminds BDE. “And I’m a father of a baby who is nine months old, and it’s much easier to deal with kid logistics in a town than elsewhere,” he says. “But having said that, for most of my adult life, I have found true happiness out there in nature, off-grid. So I very much identify with the characters, although I probably do not have the courage or the ability to go all the way, like they have done.”
At one point in the film, his characters talk quite openly about their belief in, and potential encounters, with Bigfoot. Sky even measures a footprint that is considerably wider than his own handspan. Buzz tells how his own encounter with Bigfoot was defined by the beast’s overpoweringly powerful musk, but that the experience wasn’t frightening or intimidating. Lypinski also tells how, on dark nights, he could understand how a strong belief in the creature, mythical or otherwise, could develop.
“Having heard quite a few stories, which are not meant to be horror stories because all of them underline the fact they’re not afraid of Bigfoot, they [the film’s characters] almost feel that he’s a kind of protector, a guardian,” says the director. “They spoke respectfully of him, but not fearfully…Oregon might be the state in the US which has the biggest amount of believers.”
The film receives its world premiere in Krakow’s International Competition. How does the director assess the film’s immediate trajectory? “We’re hoping that Krakow will generate positive buzz and that more festivals will line up. You know how it is, sometimes it takes one festival to get the whole thing started properly. But sometimes it takes much more time. That was my experience with my previous film Desert Coffee, which for the first two, three years was very slow, and then suddenly one day it ended up on Netflix.”
