Worth of art

Filmmaker Matt Leach on the fleeting and the eternal

Location: Fassler Hall
To drink: Spaten Optimator

The Tulsa Voice: So, how are things going? Staying busy?

Matt Leach: Yeah. Whenever I came back from doing this project [“Far Western,” a documentary following Japanese musicians who make authentic American country and western and roots/bluegrass music, primarily shot in Japan], I was basically broke. I was hoping that things would come around, so it’s been nice—thankfully, I’ve stayed busy. 

TTV: Where are you in the project? Is it in the can?

ML: Well, we have all of the footage that we’re going to get. We used a Kickstarter campaign to get the cash to go to Japan and shoot, and now we might need to do the same thing to finish this thing in postproduction. We obviously have mountains of editing to do, we need to put it together, we need translators—you know, there’s still a lot of work. But that’s how it goes. That’s all part of it.

TTV: Had you been to Japan before?

ML: No. I’d never left the country before.

TTV: You left in a big way.

ML: I always wanted to get paid to travel. That was my dream early on when I started working in film. It only took about 15 years or something [laughs] but it worked out. 

TTV: Here’s something I’ve been wondering about for quite some time: How does it come to be that a society that we used the atomic bomb on, come to envy and emulate parts of our culture? Is that a Stockholm Syndrome thing?

ML: That’s gonna definitely be a part of the film; it’s something that has always interested us. And I think it’s partly about the power of music. The music is so powerful that it can speak across cultures in the most extreme sense. Several people we follow in the film are in their 80s, so they can remember what it was like before the war. They can remember not having enough food to eat or not being able to have access to Western music. So when American rock and roll became available to them, they were not unlike the teenagers here in the states. The fact that their parents hated it was part of it, part of the rebellion and freedom, just like it was here. Also, this type of music was the first Western music the Japanese had ever heard that they could sing along to. They had maybe heard some American jazz, maybe even some big band stuff. But this American roots music was accessible, and out of this war, these people became lifelong obsessives devoted to American country and western music. 

TTV: So, are there country and western themed bars in Japan? 

ML: Oh yeah. And it’s all about Bud Light and American flags. It’s all of it. It’s not just the music. When you go, you feel like you’re in a country bar in the deep South or something. Every part of that country and western culture, down to the brand and vintage of boots and jeans, the instruments they play, the décor, old wood they’ve purchased and brought over, wagon wheels, everything is obsessively faithful. It’s more country than Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill for damn sure. I think there’s something really sweet about it. It’s pretty innocent. A lot of them couldn’t understand the language when they first heard the songs.

TTV: They were just getting melody.

ML: Yeah, exactly. When you listen to traditional Japanese music, it’s beautiful, but it’s also so much more sophisticated. It’s not something you can put on and in three minutes totally identify with. That’s part of what this film is about. After the war, these people were devastated to some degree, and here comes this common-man type of music from the West, and even though they don’t understand the words, they can identify. It’s poor people singing to poor people. And maybe unlike jazz, you didn’t have to be sophisticated to get it. 

TTV: It’s accessible.

ML: Right. And even now, so much of popular music is not that way. You hear all of these bands, and they’re trying to get to some level of authenticity, but it just doesn’t seem to be there. They’re all models, and it feels like they haven’t really been through anything. It seems disingenuous.

… I think it’s interesting that there are so many people that aren’t more curious about film and music that’s been made in the past. Maybe the wealth of information is all too blinding, but I feel it’s a strange time to not be curious because you can get at most of it relatively easily. 

It used to take years and a cooler older brother and access to a car and a fuckin’ job just to get your hands on some band’s total collection of music. Now, it’s just right there on your phone. But, I think it also makes all of that stuff not mean anything anymore. 

TTV: That’s the cut.

ML: It’s an amazing thing, but it makes all art just not worth that much. We care about it, sometimes intensely, but the time we care about it is brief. As a filmmaker, I’ve been told to make 2-minute films, I’ve been told that that is all people have the attention span for. But then there’s this other side of things where people will spend 12 hours binge-watching a series. It’s like we’ve all got to just power through the media we’re told we need to enjoy. 

TTV: Who put a camera in your hands for the first time?

ML: My parents bought me a camera for my 16^th birthday. It was a little High 8 camera. When I was 16, I asked for editing software and a camera. 

TTV: That’s pretty normal.

ML: [Laughs] Yeah. Jesus. So I’ve got this piece of hardware, and you can attach the camera to it, and it’s this real rudimentary editing software. So that was how I started to learn. I just shot things and then started trying to edit them. Also around then, Oklahoma Summers Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain started their first film program, and the way you got in was to make a short film. That was the first thing I was serious about, film-wise. And I got in. And it really changed me.

TTV: How so?

ML: Well, I had played music for a long time as a kid. Like a lot of people, I wanted to be a musician—it’s one of the most amazing, immediate art forms. But no matter how hard I practiced, it just wasn’t going to fuckin’ happen. I had been at it for years, and I hadn’t even scratched the surface. I took lessons, I mean, I was working at it. It was like a job, but it just wasn’t coming. 

But then I got this camera, and the stuff I was doing wasn’t great, but it was immediately so much better than what I had been working on for years on the guitar. 

TTV: Would you say it was intuitive?

ML: Yeah, it just clicked. And I immediately had success with it, even if the success was very small. I felt good about it. People want to do creative things because it’s fulfilling, but you have to be open-minded about where that takes you. I feel like it took a lot of trying different things. It helped that I liked the editing side of the process. With film, I could shoot something and then take it back to a computer and work on it over and over and over again. I didn’t have to stand up in front of a thousand people and nail a guitar solo note for note. I could shoot something and work on it for three months before I showed it to anyone. It took all of the anxiety out of trying to create. It just fit my personality better, but it took time for me to learn that about myself.

TTV: You ever think about heading to L.A. to work?

ML: Well, here’s the thing: A lot of my friends have headed to the coasts to work, but I wanted to do this here. I’m not sure it started out as a conscious decision, but I want to show people that you can make cool shit here in Oklahoma. If you want it bad enough, you can make it happen. There are enough people around here now that can help you. There’s enough talent around here to get things done and get them done at a very high level. Technology has helped as well. You can do your own thing here. You’re not going to have to work for 10 years on the set of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” just to make your rent. 

If what’s most important as an artist is making exactly what you want to make, then I think in some respects that’s easier to do here. I make a living making films here, and I live just as well as those guys in L.A., all things being equal. I can’t drive to the beach in 25 minutes, but when do they go to the beach? In Oklahoma, I get to personally make films that mean something to me.

Want more Day Drinking? Check out Beau's interviews with Tulsa yogi Tom Tobias and mathematician and craftsman Eric Fransen. For more stories on Okie cinema, read Molly Bullock's feature on Oklahoma filmmaker Sterlin Harjo and Joe O'Shansky's Q&A with Tulsa native filmmaker Todd Lincoln.