Filmmaker interviews
Christian D. Bruun’s documentary, BLUE GOLD: AMERICAN JEANS, is a pretty classic version of a documentary that likely introduces you to a world you had no idea ever existed. The film looks at the literal history of blue jeans from their creation, the evolution of jeans as a wardrobe staple, and then a fashion sensation, and international presence, and finally, a highly coveted collectors item.
We often see men in roles that are a complex character study, but not women. Eden is a modern woman who is self-actualized, self aware and self-destructive. I was bent on reinforcing the fact that a man isn’t going to fix her and she knows it.
When I first got diagnosed, I was in a daze. You’re shuffling from this doctor to that surgeon to that oncologist. Plus, I was juggling a 3 ½-year-old and an 18-month-old. It. Was. Bananas. Since I went to film school and both of us are arty types, the only thing I could think to empower myself in an otherwise powerless situation was to document.
They live with a painful memory of a bygone past, yet they refuse to throw themselves back to the earlier time often associated with a point of no return, their hometown -which they felt they rebelled with a cause. To a certain extent, the film is indeed a reflection upon contemporary China at a crossroads.
We forgot about the outside world. No one came and went. No agents visiting. I didn’t even have one. We all stayed in a funky motel on the outskirts of Reno in rooms that circled the pool. We were like a little theater company in the heat of summer that went off to a small gambling town in the Wild West to tell a story centered around love. You can imagine how contagious that could be.
That is how you can prove to a production company that it’s possible when they say it is impossible because you can say, “I’ve got a guy…with testicles”.
