Growing up on the Spokane Reservation, Alexie published his first collection of poetry ten years ago and gained greater notoriety for his short story collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which formed the basis for the critically acclaimed Smoke Signals. I caught up with him via phone in his Seattle home on October 14, 2002 to discuss his current film, The Business of Fancydancing.

John Nesbit: Smoke Signals did meet with a lot of critical and commercial success. I have to think that Hollywood wanted to take advantage of the trend and approached you for projects?

Sherman Alexie: Well, they didn't make Smoke Signals, remember that. We made it independently and then sold it to Miramax. So it never would have been made without independent money here in Seattle. So what they saw as successful, they couldn’t replicate. They didn't have the guts to make a film like Smoke Signals.

JN: So they weren't looking for a sequel?

SA: No, they saw a success, they wanted me to make movies . . . but they wanted me to make their movies. They weren't interested in the movie I wanted to make, and I wasn’t interested in theirs for all sorts of reasons. In the end, I wanted to make a movie, so I had to figure out how to do it.

JN: How did you end up making The Business of Fancydancing then?

SA: For pennies. A group of financiers, including myself, financed this movie, and it ended up being less than $200,000.

JN: People from the Seattle area?

SA: No, actually most of them were from Utah. The 10 liberals who live in Utah financed the film. (laughs)

They're friends we made through Sundance. They were movie fans, who wanted to get involved in movie making, but they made their money in all sorts of other ways that had nothing to do with the entertainment industry, and I'm sure they don't want anything to do with the entertainment industry anymore! It's been tough.

JN: What's been your biggest challenge?

SA: Well, not making it. None of that was hard. That was really fun, and rewarding, and I made great friends, and had a great time and I think we made a decent movie. But releasing it has been horrible. Impossible!

JN: I know there’ve been some screenings in San Francisco. Anywhere else?

SA: We've made about $170,000 box office total. We've played everything from Landmark Theaters in big cities to little theaters on the Rez and in little towns. So it's been a combination of things, but we just do not have the money to compete with even the smallest distributors. And it's my belief now (I suspected before), but it's my belief now that it's impossible to theatrically release a truly independent film now.

JN: What makes you say that?

SA: We are truly independent, in the sense that I own the film. Every other film out there is owned by the distribution company--not the artist who made it. So number one: there goes your independence, and number two: it's impossible to get into theaters without serious commercial concerns and compromises. So it's flopped from the beginning.

And in the end if I made a bad movie, I suppose I'd understand, but I made a pretty good one. And people think it's better than I think it is, so the reviews have been just about as good as any other independent film out there. And yet we can't get into theaters

JN: I'm assuming the decision to shoot digitally was financial?

SA: We had no money. It's funny, there's been insults out there in the world about "how could he say this is the reservation when he filmed it not on the reservation," and I just started laughing. Cause we had no money. We did shoot second unit stuff on the Rez, but we couldn't shoot the primary stuff there. We couldn't afford hotel rooms.

JN: So this was very much like Dogme?

SA: Oh yeah, very much. We did have lights. It was Dogme based on budget. I enjoy those films and the aesthetic, but I would have loved to have a little bit more money.

JN: Since this was your directorial debut are there any directors you modeled yourself after?

SA: I didn't know what I was doing. (laughs) I like those directors who say things like that.

Movie-wise, the movie I was really thinking of when we made this was 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. That's the original influence of what I wish I had made. That was the strongest influence, and Wild Strawberries by Bergman, which is light years beyond what I did.

JN: The film does seem highly autobiographical. Evan Adams really impressed me in this film with a more rounded portrayal.

SA: He played a human being this time. Smoke Signals is a broad comedy and a broad tragedy. It was very exaggerated. I think it's a strong movie, but it’s a fantasy--it's a fable

What I been telling people (I kept trying to figure out a way to say it), if Evan Adams and I had a baby and if we abused him, it would be Seymour Polatkin.

JN: Is Evan Adams going to be your alter ego now?

SA: I don’t know. I don't think so. The thing is . . . I think most movies are metaphors. I think they hide their realness and humanity behind metaphors. Steven Spielberg was not in Germany. Schindler was a metaphor for something else entirely, and I think it was a fraud of a movie. I think E.T. is a much more honest and humane movie than Schindler's List. E.T. is much closer to Steven Spielberg than Schindler's List.

JN: So this is much closer to you than Smoke Signals?

SA: Yeah, I've always wanted to make movies that are very close to me. It's not autobiographical or strongly autobiographical nature I'm going to take risks with myself. I'm not interested in mucking around in other people’s lives. I’m navel gazing, and I just hope other people find it to be an interesting navel.

JN: The cast certainly seems to have a lot of fun.

SA: Yeah, we had a great time. There’s a lot of improv and because I'm a performer myself, as a director and writer I was able to improv right along with them on the set. I looked at the final shooting script and the movie as is and 80% of the movie did not exist in the original shooting script.

So we had a great time, and it was a really small crew. Sometimes there were only four or five crew members and two or three actors, so at no point did we ever have more than 15-20 people working. So we became very close.

With Smoke Signals the crew was so big, you felt cliques forming and here it was just impossible.

JN: Both films devote significant time to parents and alcoholism--

SA: Alcoholism is not a stereotype among Indian people. It's a damn reality. And in my family it's certainly no stereotype. Out of aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins, extended family of a couple hundred there are five people who don't drink.

JN: Seymour and Aristotle are the smart Indians that are expected to succeed off the Reservation. That must parallel your experience?

SA: Every smart Indian is expected to be Jesus, and some people thrive as the Messiah and some don't

When I was younger, it was more of a struggle. It's not now. I'm not going back, and my kids aren't going to live there, and I feel no conflict about that.

Seymour's story and my story—he hasn’t got to the place where I'm at now, and there are some scenes cut out that play to me now. The idea that I live a great life . . . an epic life. I am living one of the more epic lives of all time!

I mean, I'm an Indian kid that grew up on the Rez, and now I travel the world, telling stories, and hang out with the best artists of our time. And am good friends with many of those artists, and I've seen the world. And I got all that and all that has come to me because I left the Rez.

JN: And yet, like Seymour, you write about the Rez.

SA: It's funny. I've actually stopped, much like Seymour's going to eventually, and that began with the last book of short stories. The Toughest Indian in the World was about 60% urban, and the new book of short stories is completely urban--all set in Seattle, all about white collar urban Indians. So my artistic work is just beginning to catch up to my real life.

JN: I’ve got to ask about the sexuality issue since it plays such a major role in Fancydancing. Seymour states that he's had sex with one Indian woman, 112 white guys, 16 black men, 7 Asian men, 3 men of ambiguous ethic origin, and no Indian men. What’s the significance?

SA: You decide. (laughs)

One of the things I hate about movies and love about them. The thing that bothers me about movies is how they try to give all the answers.

JN: Better to be ambiguous? (laughs)

SA: Not ambiguous necessarily, but I wasn't interested in giving answers. I'm interested in giving questions.

I'm not gay, so no matter how good an artist I am, there are all sorts of themes and ideas I'm never going to get about the gay life because I'm a straight man. And so Evan's autobiography as a gay man playing a gay man was a large part of this film. So many of its themes and ideas come from him.

JN: So this was truly a collaborative effort?

SA: Oh yeah. A film by 62 people. We all made this movie. I hate the idea that directors make movies. It's a lie. Directors are like basketball coaches. They draw up the plays, but it's somebody else that takes the shot to win or lose the game. It is collaborative--whether or not the director chooses to call it that. They can either tell the truth about the collaborative making of film or they can be egotistical assholes and lie.

Michael Bay doesn't do his special effects. Scorsese is not Robert DeNiro

JN: One scene I really loved is where Seymour goes to the funeral, expected to deliver an eloquent eulogy, and can only cry out.

SA: That was my Streetcar Named Desire homage. (laughs)

I think there are five or six great moments in the film that make me happy, and I think there are eighty or ninety things I cringe over. When I think about the movie, I try desperately to think about the five or six moments when it all worked.

JN: That one worked for me; I'm not sure it did for you.

SA: Oh, that did. That moment, and the one with the kids outside the bar.

I think I could actually live with doing the first poem, the kids in the bar, and then the end . . . and there's the movie. That would have been a much better movie.

The thing about independent releasing is, I can be honest with you. PR is all lies. You'll never get a director or actor being completely honest with you. They'll say things like, "Oh, he was a joy to work with." (laughs)

JN: You could have a 17-minute film like Bunuel's first--and it changed the world. (laughs)

SA: I might do that. The DVD is going to have that--this is what I really wanted to make.

JN: You are making a DVD release? What special features?

SA: We’re going to have the world's first crew commentary where the gaffers and grips and DP are all going to be in the room together and we're going to have that on the disk.

We had nine hours of edited scenes, so there's going to be all sorts of stuff. Other scenes that are good. Some that didn't work and some that did, but just didn’t make the film.

I would love to have a randomizer button to make your own movie. We can’t do that yet--we don't have the technology, but sometimes I think that with this disk you can do that. You’ll be able to explore much more about the storylines with these characters.

It's a novel, I think. You’ll be able to go off in all sorts of directions. All the characters will have their section of their scenes, so if you want to learn more about Aristotle, here ya’ go.

The DVD is going to be . . . something special in a way that can only exist on a DVD. We are putting it together. I'm not sure how many we'll be able to make, but we'll have some.

JN: Are you considering making a film from your last collection of short stories?

SA: There’s offers out there to maybe write and direct movies for them. I'm mulling that. I still do a little script doctoring, but as far as a real personal project, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

I want to spend less money next time and market it strictly on DVD and VHS, and avoid theatrical completely. If we had done this with Fancydancing, the budget would have been a third of what it is now—we would have spent $80,000 or less.

JN: Any other current projects you're working on?

SA: Just finishing my book of short stories, and I just signed on to do a biography of Jimi Hendrix. It's a series called black lives, biographies of famous black folks and they're making "odd choices" for the writers--mixing and matching, trying to surprise people. An Indian boy writing about Jimi is a little odd.