Video

Missionary

Missionary, 2017, video installation. Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, Louisiana.

Missionary is one part documentary and one part self-portrait. When I moved to Shreveport from the West, I felt out of place and recognized the same feeling in the young missionaries I met there. Our friendship turned into a collaboration as I filmed them on their missions. The installation sets their story beside time I spent with a former missionary, no longer practicing, for whom the mission and the Mormon way of life had not been rewarding. I sit somewhere between the two, and I still do.

Elders Shreenan and Zundal

Elders Shreenan and Zundal, 2017, 8:10. From Missionary.

Elder Shreenan and Elder Zundal were companions, two missionaries serving together in Shreveport, Louisiana. Missionaries work in pairs, assigned to companions they have never met. Usually one takes the lead, scheduling lessons and running the discussions, while the other takes notes and nods along. Between lessons they show off for each other and wonder what their families are doing without them. Watching young men like these two struggle with being uprooted led me to ask questions about the mission as a religious rite of passage, and about what Mormon families and the Church expect of the young men they send out. The films show the same thing in motion: apartments with nothing on the walls, borrowed furniture, and a life packed into a suitcase, ready for the next transfer.

Elder Shreenan’s Last Day

Elder Shreenan’s Last Day, 2017, 5:08. From Missionary.

The Church transfers missionaries every six weeks to six months during their two years of service. How long an elder stays in one place can depend on how he gets along with his companion and how well he uses his time. Leaving is hard, because by then many of them have made the place their home. This film stays with Elder Shreenan through his last day in Shreveport. The films show the same thing in motion: apartments with nothing on the walls, borrowed furniture, and a life packed into a suitcase, ready for the next transfer.

Trucking with Geoff (excerpt)

Trucking with Geoff (excerpt), 2015, 4:44.

Geoff and I were roommates for a semester at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He served a mission and later left the Church. Years later, while I was working with the missionaries in Shreveport, we got back in touch, and I joined him as he drove a semi truck delivering toilet paper across the Midwest. Along the way he talked about trying to set his life back on track since leaving. I wanted to see what happens after a young man leaves the shelter of the Mormon community, and what takes its place. This is an excerpt from the short film.

Trucking with Geoff

Trucking with Geoff, 2017.

In 2017 I finished Trucking with Geoff, the short film that began with the 2015 excerpt above. It follows Geoff, a former roommate who served a mission and later left the Church, into the life he built afterward. Making it let me look at a path I could have taken. Geoff’s story sits beside the elders I filmed in Shreveport, and my own place is somewhere between them, on the fence.

Jeff in New Mexico (excerpt)

Jeff in New Mexico (excerpt), 2016, 7:53.

Jeff was my other roommate that semester at BYU-Idaho. He went by the book, Geoff was the risk taker, and I fell somewhere in the middle. Jeff also served a mission and has since left the Church. In 2016 I stayed with him in his small adobe home in New Mexico. He had just moved from Idaho and was trying to become self-reliant. Looking at what replaced his old Mormon life is a way for me to look at my own, and at the choices I could have made. This is an excerpt from the short film.

Bastard of Bigfoot

Bastard of Bigfoot, 2017, 11:11. Directed by Michael Sessions.

My friend Michael Sessions and I met at BYU-Idaho and always wanted to make a film together. In the summer of 2017 we finally did, and we wanted it to be a coming-of-age story. I play a young man who is mailed the ashes of a father he never knew. His father was a scientist, and he left a series of tapes directing his son to where he wants his ashes spread in the Louisiana swamp.