A talk with Paul Nethercott about his forthcoming film ‘F**K 2020’ on Owens + Crawley, and about his life as a filmmaker
Filmmaker Paul Nethercott
Paul Nethercott might be best known as a filmmaker for Grateful: The Jenni Berebitsky Story. The short film centers on the trials Berebitsky and her family underwent after she was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. It won numerous awards at festivals across the country, including the Audience Choice Award at the Indy Shorts International Film Festival, where it premiered in 2018.
Nethercott’s newest endeavor is a film titled F**K 2020, which is in post-production. The film trailer will debut at 7 PM at Kismetic Beer Company on Saturday, Aug. 13.
The yet-to-be-released film focuses on a pair of Indianapolis-based artists, Quincy Owens and Luke Crawley, and their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their studio, Owens + Crawley, located at 201 S. Rural St., creates public sculptures notable for their frequent incorporation of colorful, geometric designs and glowing backlit panels.
Nethercott employed the services of artists well-known in the Indianapolis arts community during the film’s production, among them composer Rob Dixon, artist/designer Aaron Scamihorn, and cinematographer/principal owner of Magnet Films David Yosha.
I sat down with Paul Nethercott on Aug. 9 to talk about F**K 2020, about his own trials during the pandemic, and about the experiences that led him to become a filmmaker.
Nethercott was born in Manitoba, Canada in 1956, and grew up in Minnesota. He currently lives in Near Eastside Indianapolis, after having worked many years in Japan as an evangelical missionary.
Owens + Crawley image by Aaron Scamihorn
The following interview was edited for grammar and clarity.
DAN GROSSMAN: Paul, you have an event coming up at highlighting the release of the FUCK 2020 trailer. It’s at the studio space of Owens and Crawley who are highlighted in your film. Can you tell me a little bit about the film?
PAUL NETHERCOTT: It's called F-U-C-K 2020. I guess the project idea for the project started in November 2020 when I saw a post on Facebook by Quincy Owens. It was a post about a Christmas tree ornament that they had just made and were offering for sale. And you guessed it, the Christmas tree ornament, a little round ornament that says 2020 on it. And I can't tell you why exactly but that really generated curiosity and interest in me and I had the crazy idea of making a film about Quincy and Luke. Luke Crawley and Quincy and Luke are partners, artistic partners. So I had a crazy idea of making a film called F**K 2020.
GROSSMAN: They specialize in public sculpture. They collaborate together for these big projects.
NETHERCOTT: They work together. They do a lot of fabrication. They have a very large studio at 201 S. Rural. The trailer for the film is done, and it will be the premiere, the release of the trailer, Saturday, at Kismetic Beer Company. The space they're in is the same building as 201 Studios and we're going to have an art auction and of course beer will be available at Kismetic Beer Company which is going to do barbecue and 201 Studio space which is at the back of the building. It's gonna be, I think, a really fun event, to have an auction where people can buy Quincy and Luke's art. Quincy and Luke are really rather unique artists. Quincy is an excellent painter.
GROSSMAN: And what they're best known for for their public artwork, like their “Sail” sculpture in Midtown Carmel, along the Monon Trail.
NETHERCOTT: It's a huge sculpture on the Monon. Isn't it amazing, a 30- foot high aluminum structure that's lit up at night? But they've done like a 16-foot high sculpture in Washington DC [”Interjection”], large metal they've done work at the alleyway on Pennsylvania St. [”Palisade”] for the Arts Council of Indianapolis, next to The Cabaret. They did a large installation with dividers, large metal dividers, and they made the alley really cool.
GROSSMAN: Yeah, their work, particularly the “Sail” sculpture, is very inspiring to me. It looks like a sail from the outside, but if you go inside the three-pronged sculpture, it's like stained glass in a church.
NETHERCOTT: Well, they're craftsmen, and it's kind of a combination between craftsmanship and fine art is the way I see their work. They bring a level of artistic expression and ability there that a lot of craft people don't have.
GROSSMAN: The film’s title, FUCK 2020 acknowledges that 2020 was a very difficult year for people, but doesn’t this film also go into how artists adapted to it? And maybe artists were better at adapting to that period of time, better than a lot of people were because they do spend a lot of time alone. They are self-motivated. And many of them are entrepreneurial. So they're going to grab opportunities that are out there, whatever they are.
NETHERCOTT: I think what you're asking, though, is what is the film about? And it's a really important question. The film is about Quincy and Luke and the people around them, the people close to them and how they responded to the pandemic. That's what the film is about. And my goal with this film is to make it very relatable. So people like Dan Grossman, whether you're a mom or a dad or a teenager—or you run a restaurant or you're an artist or you know you're an electrician or whatever—from different walks of life, people can watch this film and say, ‘I can really relate to that. I can relate to their experiences; I can relate to their feelings. I felt that way. I experienced that.” And, in working with the footage—I was working with the editor yesterday—anxiety was intense in 2020. And I think most of us experience a level of anxiety that was pretty unusual for us. It was a worldwide crisis.
Quincy, in the footage I saw yesterday, talks about how he experienced little panic attacks and a level of anxiety he'd never experienced before. And so, the film is to some extent about the creative process and about two artists that are struggling to survive, struggling to make ends meet financially, to do excellent work and do it in spite of the worldwide pandemic and what that meant for them. But it's much more than that. It's also about their relationships with their family members. The film is going to feature Quincy's five children. I did interviews with all of his five children. Quincy's wife, Nikki, I think I did four interviews with her. So she's an important character in the film, and then Christos [Koutsouras]. Christos is an art teacher from Greece. That was Quincy's teacher 20 years ago, here in town, and Christos is the mentor. And Christos is an important part of the story. He brings an international element, which I really love because I'm an international person and I just am really thrilled that Christos is part of the story and he was here and stuck here during the pandemic. So he's kind of the dad, the Grandpa figure, and he was stuck here during the pandemic. Turns out, it's like he got really close and has a new family. He said, he talks about how much it meant to him to have his family to be with.
So I think there are just a lot of very evocative human interactions and relationships that are going to come out in the film that most all of us will really be able to relate to. I wanted to make this film for one reason: We all have to do something with 2020. And what are we going to do with it? Pretend it didn't happen? Rant and rave about it, get pissed off about it all the time and just get angry with it? Are we going to make peace with it and make the most of it? And I think the characters in the film had different reactions. For the most part, everybody in the film made the most of it. But, it's a difficult process and coming out the other side changes us and one question I asked everybody that I interviewed for the film is how did 2020 How did the pandemic experience change you? What happened to you or how did it change? What and what and what were the big challenges?
So I think that's going to be very relatable and I view stories as being therapeutic. I did grief and loss work 20 years ago in Minnesota as part of my coursework in counseling, and I noticed that stories really were the only thing that mattered to people that were in the middle of grief and were feeling a significant loss. Stories are what reached them and stories are what helped them, and it's a lesson that I've really absorbed into who I am and what I do. And I think stories are therapeutic for various reasons. Both the telling of stories is therapeutic so I think it's therapeutic for everybody involved in the film to tell their story. I think it's very therapeutic and healing for people to hear these stories. We all need help dealing with the difficult things in life and 2020 was a difficult year. It's the year we will never forget [laughs] so the Christmas tree ornament represents something. It represents an attitude... Quincy is a fighter and he's just not going to let the pandemic defeat him. But it represents a year that's a tough year for billions of people around the world. So this film is a way of processing, integrating, making sense of and doing something positive with the year that for most of us, including me, was just incredibly challenging.
GROSSMAN: Can you talk about some of the challenges for you during 2020?
NETHERCOTT: Well, isolation, loneliness. I felt isolated. I had experienced significant loss. I had a trip planned for Europe in June of 2020. I do an annual trip to Europe for a film camp in the Baltic Sea sea coast of Lithuania. It's one of the highlights of my year. I love what I do with the film camp work and the trip. I love taking people there and seeing how they respond and what their experiences are. I had seven people signed up to go on that trip. And this was in February of 2020. They had all paid deposits. They were all committed, and it all went through. It just disappeared. And so, something that I really love to do was just taken away. And a lot of other things changed too. I mean, just being stuck at home and the anxiety of wondering, “Oh my God, if I get this virus, what's it going to do to me? I don't want to get sick.” It caused my daughter to freak out and absolutely be insanely worried about her dad. And then the financial pressures were a significant thing. Thank God there was unemployment insurance available even on the self-employed people like myself and that saved me. But I didn't know if there was anything going to be like that. So my income completely dried up. I couldn't travel, couldn't do film work hardly at all. And thankfully unemployment came through. But early on, I didn't didn't know what was going to happen. So there was a lot of anxiety and I think that is a common thread for most of us that anxiety was really high and the fear of the unknown.
GROSSMAN: There were a lot of unknowns.
NETHERCOTT: Because there were a lot of unknowns, a lot of anxiety, the world just kind of went from being planned and predictable, at least in terms of how we felt to being completely like we didn’t know what the hell's gonna happen.
GROSSMAN: Well, in your films, you've dealt with personal and family tragedy before, as in the film that people in Indianapolis probably know you for best, Grateful: The Jenni Berebitsky Story.
NETHERCOTT: Grateful: the Jenni Berebitsky Story is very talkative, very personal. I think the FUCK 2020 film is going to be similar in those respects. It's going to be very different too. David Yosha is my DP. He brings a level of cinematic quality to the film, shooting with an excellent camera and knowing how to get the shots and make it look beautiful. It’s going to be a much more cinematic film. But I think in terms of being a personal story, it's going to be very similar. I think the power of Jenni's story is that she's just very genuine and very personal and people could relate. Moms and dads especially could really relate to Jenny and her story. I think relatability was very important for them. She was a woman who suffered from ALS [amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, a disease from which there is no cure] with real courage, humor, and tenacity. She rose above the challenges and made the most of extremely difficult situations.
GROSSMAN: I remember she was able to make it to the Indy Shorts premiere in 2018.
NETHERCOTT: She was at the premiere of the film. When she entered the theater, she got a standing ovation. We probably had, I don't know, 200 people in the audience who personally knew her, maybe more. She was very well liked, loved in the community here. And so a lot of people showed up.
GROSSMAN: Can you talk a little bit about your personal background that led you into filmmaking?
NETHERCOTT: I think that's a really good question. I'm glad you asked. First of all, I'll say I'm a very late bloomer. It took me a long time to figure out who I am and what I really want to do and what's important to me and what's not important to me. It's a little bit like the first time I took karate from an excellent teacher in Chicago about 10 or 15 years ago. It's a little bit like the first time I've walked out on the mat. It was almost like this invisible force field was pushing me back. I had to force my way through that force field to get onto the mat. In other words, I was dealing with fear and I don't know where the fear was coming from exactly. Fear is often irrational. Fear of making a fool out of myself on the mat or something, fear that I couldn't do it, you know, but it turned out when I walked out on the mat and had a great time. Making the film was a bit like that.
GROSSMAN: Making this film specifically?
NETHERCOTT: Because using the word F.U.C.K in the film and making a film like this, I'm making a statement. I'm doing something I've never done before. I'm using words I've never used before. And working with people that use words, like F.U.C.K, that I've never used in a film before and aren't generally aren't used in documentary films either. At all. So I feel like I'm really putting myself out there and exposing myself and doing something that I'm doing a lot of things that I've never done before. Kind of going out on an adventure that both excites me and scares me and is making me vulnerable to criticism... I don't like criticism. You know, I don’t like it when people don't like me or don't like what I do, but like I have two sisters that are going to absolutely hate this film just because of the title. And, you know, I started making films as a missionary in Japan. I was part of an evangelical mission group for many years and virtually everybody that I used to work with is going to hate this film if for no other reason, because of the title. So I'm exploring really new territory in terms of who I am and what I'm doing with this film and the words I'm using and I'm crossing a lot of lines. My dad was a Baptist pastor. I grew up going to church camps and church three times a week, four times a week, and we just never used words like F.U.C.K, a terrible, terrible thing to do. So I'm exploring the territory and crossing a lot of lines and I'm doing it very intentionally because I'm no longer part of that group.
I think the positives far outweigh the negatives. I feel really good about it most of the time but I'm also going to pay a price. I know for a fact that many people that I used to be close to are absolutely going to hate this film, and condemn me for making it or at least -- especially at the title. But I'm just not in that narrow little segment anymore. I'm thrilled to be exploring new things and doing what I think I'm doing if I continued growing and exploring the way I did when I was a teenager.
I started making films in Japan as a missionary and one of the early films I made. It's called Bicycle, 自転車 [Jitensha], in Japanese. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival in Italy, and screened here at Heartland Film Festival shortly after that and won two top awards. I mean, it was just a fabulous experience. I decided early on I was going to make good films. That took me in a direction that, I didn't know at the time, landed me where I am today. Which is you know, as an independent filmmaker making films like FUCK 2020. I wish I could say I can guarantee any film I ever start to make, that it’s going to turn out absolutely fantastic. I can't guarantee anything. Hollywood can't either. But I think FUCK 2020 is going to be an excellent film. My goal is to premiere the film as they do the film at a prominent major film festival somewhere in the world.
GROSSMAN: Do you have a prospective release date yet for the film?
NETHERCOTT: Well, the first cut of the film will be done by the end of August now the end of this month. We just .. I was working with Walter Bender, the Assistant Editor. I was talking with Walter yesterday… We just finished a 20 minute cut. The film is going to be more like 70 minutes long. This was a 20 minute cut we made for a grant proposal. So we'll have the first cut done by the end of August. And probably a cut ready to submit the film festivals within another four to eight weeks, and the final cut done by the end of this year.
GROSSMAN: Sounds good.
NETHERCOTT: Yeah, it does. I am excited. It's a long difficult journey to make a film like this and it's kind of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle but you don't start with any puzzle pieces. You have to make the puzzle pieces first and the puzzle pieces are the different segments of footage that I used in the interviews and stuff that you capture. But you don't have a clear picture of what the final result is going to be. It's a process of making the puzzle pieces and then putting them together and maybe probably making more puzzle pieces and putting those together and rearranging them. It's really a complicated, artful process, also a technical process because you're dealing with files and a lot of data. But you are also searching for the story. And I believe documentary films are narratives. Narrative means literally story. Documentary films are stories or narratives. My goal is to make a really compelling narrative that people can relate to, that is evocative. I want people to watch my film, watch, FUCK 2020, and say, “Oh my God. I felt that way too. Oh, my God, I had that kind of experience too.” And that's going to be the case, I think. That's going to happen.
—Dan Grossman
