The lessons learned on a pure practical production standpoint were immense. It instilled a faith that you can accomplish what you want if you just believe and stick together and continue to work at it. In that sense, it gives me the confidence to go into the next project with the belief that we can do it. This was an experiment in whether you can find a film without a singular conceit.
Sam PressmanAt one point, we were stuck at the border of Peru and Colombia and met this large Haitian population that was stranded there without passports and couldn't move. We had this revelation that, as tourists, we were so free to move, and here was this other population who couldn't cross borders.
Sam PressmanSo to watch that production was just the most insane vision of a filmmaker being unrelenting in his will to create. Learning more about that was what we wanted to do. To find out how in God's name anyone could do that.
Sam PressmanWhat we definitely agree with Walter on is that filmmaking is teamwork. It's one of the only arts that is truly based in the work of a team. Anyway, Werner he told us a lot of practical things. How to hang a hammock. He'd circle a map and give us a notebook with directions to get to certain places that were out of the way. He told us to drink the river water and not use purifications tactics that only "New Age assholes" used. He said that if we saw piranhas, we should jump in and swim with them. We did all of this. We took his word as gospel.
Sam PressmanFitzcarraldo is that metonymic character that's unwilling to give up on his dreams. Meeting Walter was the point in which all of these dreams coalesced into a very real person with a very real story.
Sam Pressman