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Stubborn Kind of Fella
30 Sep 2014 : Paul Byrne
As he prepares to tour the country with Unbreakable - about blind paraplegic Mark Pollock - filmmaker Ross Whitaker talks to IFTN about filmmaking, friendship and the future of documentary.
Having become friends whilst students at Trinity College, Dublin, it was somewhat inevitable that budding documentary filmmaker Ross Whitaker would feel compelled to chart his buddy Mark Pollock’s loss of sight at the age of 22. When the resulting documentary, 2010’s Blind Man Walking, aired in 2010, a footnote had to be added, following Pollock’s tragic fall from a second story window, which left him paralysed.

Unsurprisingly, this acclaimed adventurer, athlete, rower, kayaker, author and international motivational speaker was determined to beat the odds, and walk again. Mark Pollock is, after all, the first blind man to reach the South Pole. For Ross Whitaker, the four-year fight for his old friend to literally get back on his feet was both exhausting and exhilarating...

PAUL BYRNE: You had made both the 2007 short Larry & Me and the 2010 documentary Blind Man Walking when Mark had the fall that left him paralysed. Did you know straight away that you had to continue his story...?

ROSS WHITAKER: It was a bizarre situation, and initially, I really didn’t want to continue with it. I just found it too sad, too harrowing, but after a while, Mark and I decided that we should keep a record of what he was going through. So, we started shooting footage, not entirely sure what we were going to do with it. I’d known Mark for years before he became blind, in his fourth year at Trinity, and so I felt that we knew each other well enough to have this trust between us when it came to charting his life.

There must have been times when you didn’t feel so much like a fly on the wall as a cuckoo in the nest, as Mark and his fiancee, Simone, struggled through some very tough times.

True, but if you can’t show the toughness of what is going on here, then you’re not really doing Mark, and Simone, justice. This is something Mark feels very strongly about too. He didn’t want this documentary to be some kind of soft sell. Funnily enough, after they watched the edit - and I don’t want to misrepresent them here - but they were glad that there the tough moments were there, and they were wondering if there were any more that could be included. They want people to understand what it’s like.

As a filmmaker, you want to balance that out a little, make sure that it doesn’t get too tough for the viewer.

During those six months in hospital directly after the fall, a series of infections slowing down the recovery process, Mark seemed to genuinely lose his trademark lust for life. And he spoke of the waring pressure to live up to his gung-ho spirit, being the great comeback kid once again. Was that hard as a friend to witness, to document?

Absolutely. That’s why we shot so little at that point. There are very few photos of that time too. It was touch-and-go, and it wasn’t something that anyone really wanted to document. People weren’t sure if Mark was going to live or die, and you don’t want to stick a camera into the middle of that. He really came close to death, and filmmaking takes a back seat to something like that.

You can paint whatever picture you want in the edit; how do you balance between portraying Mark’s determination and dealing with the pain after the accident?

Yeah. As I say, you’re just trying to balance it out, give a fair picture of what happened. If you filmed this over the six months just after his accident, you would be watching unadulturated pain. I followed them over four years here, and there are good times and bad times. Which is reflective of anyone’s life. I’ve always wanted that in all my documentaries - the fullness of life. No one’s life is completely bright or completely dark. There’s always some grey in there too.

Simone, Mark’s fiancee, is incredible here, always by Mark’s side, always smiling, always loving. So, I’m guessing it’s a bad thing that I fell in love with her, right?

I don’t think you’re the first, but I’m cautioning against that at the moment. You’re right though, Simone is an incredible woman, just as stubborn, and strong, and a highly, highly intelligent woman. And I think it’ll surprise people just how strong she is here. When you think about it, if your loved one has an accident that leaves them needing help to do even the most basic things, that has a huge impact on your life - and not only your day-to-day. So, really this is a film about the relationship between these two people.

Mark expresses his desire here not to be seen as a poster boy here, akin to a kitten hanging on a branch. Did you have to keep reminding yourself of that?

I was always aware of how Mark felt, partly because he would always let me, and everyone else, know. I think he was more concerned about being seen as some kind of novelty. If he could be a poster boy for spinal injuries, he’d be more than happy about that. He just doesn’t want to be pitied. He was always setting himself new goals, always looking forward rather than back.

Given that Mark is always looking forward, not back, how does he feel about having his past flash before him in your documentaries?

I think that part of Mark’s story now is spreading information about spinal injury, showing people what it’s like, and explaining what needs to be done. So, from that point of view, the documentary will be a plus for him, and I’m happy that it will help him spread the word. Having said that, it’s a documentary that stands on its own.

I’ve had this experience with a few of the films that I’ve done, where I’m shooting people in the moment, and it’s always surprising for those involved to look back. When I showed this to Mark and Simone, they were able to enjoy it, and it helped them reflect on how they felt then as opposed to how they feel now. There were a couple of things I didn’t expect either. There was a scene of Mark heading off on his yacht race, just a week or so before the accident, and they both found watching that very difficult. That was the last moment of everything going well, where life was great, and it was tough for them to revisit.

Blind Man Walking aired not long after Mark’s fall in July 2010; was it difficult to finance another feature documentary on Mark pretty much immediately after the first?

It was tough. Luckily, the Irish Film Board supported me with development funding from the beginning, and then we had to convince a few people as we went into production - at which point the Film Board, RTE and Rehab got involved. For a while, it was very precarious, and we weren’t sure if was going to get made. Hard to sell a film without an ending, given that the story is still happening. So, hard to fund. Wasn’t a big budget, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was enough to get us over the line.

What was the budget? It was €130,000, and it filmed over four years. So, not a lot of loose money to play with there.

On the commercial front, where do you see the money coming back from?

We’ve sold out the first screening this week, which is great, and then we’re heading off around the country with it, where we’ve already gotten some very decent advance sales. I think for documentary, you’re always going to have to look at all the various platforms out there - video on demand, television, online. The internet is particularly good for documentary. Some of the most watched things on Netflix are documentaries, which is rewarding. The plan is to release it in Ireland this year, and then in 2015, we’re hoping to take it out there internationally, possibly doing a series of red carpet screenings with spinal injury charities, and then also looking at the more modern ways to get it out there online, through iTunes and the like. The life of the film, commercially, is probably online, and we’ll be going down that road next year.

You’re trying something new with this film too, right, heading out alongside Mark with the film as it tours the country...

We’re taking the film from town to town to town, doing Q&As everywhere we go. We’re not a music band - we’re not that cool - but we want to treat this like a rock tour. This is really event-based cinema, which is quite innovative. Taking the film and us out there and giving people a very different experience, that’s going to be interesting to be part of. Mark is such an incredible person to talk to, it’s really going to be special to talk with people who have just seen the film.

What led you to documentary? From 2007’s Saviours through the likes of 2008’s Big Time: Bernard Dunne’s Fight For Glory, 2009’s Croke Park Lives and 2012’s When Ali Came To Ireland, you’ve firmly planted your flag.

Yeah, documentary is what I’ve always wanted to do, from seeing this spate of amazing feature length documentaries about 15 years - the likes of Hoop Dreams, then When We Were Kings, Bowling For Columbine, and on and on. Suddenly, you realised that documentaries could really communicate with people, and they have an authenticity that you can struggle to find in drama, it makes it, I don’t know, a much more emotional experience. I have no aspirations towards drama at all. All I want to do is keep making bigger and better documentaries, and finding bigger audiences with them.

This generation growing up are charting their own lives online all the time; finding footage of a life soon won’t be much of a problem. Everyone’s their own documentary maker now...

It’s a strange time. What I’m starting to think is that less footage is more. Placing a director at the heart of a story is so important now. When a filmmaker has 400 hours of footage, it’s going to take you ten weeks just to watch it.

Self-editing skills have never been so important as now...

Yeah, self-editing while you have the camera in your hand. I think that’s what it’s about now. The problem is, you have all these storytellers capturing everything, but it’s really about connecting the creative moments, the moments that tell you everything you need to know.

Have you got something new in your sights yet?

I actually decided to take a little break after the four years working on Unbreakable. I’m doing a TV series on surfing next year, and there are three or four feature docs already in development. The competition out there is massive, so I feel I need to take stock a little bit, and make sure that the next thing I do is at a really high level. There’s no point in making documentaries and just throwing them out there, so, going to take a moment and think about that. This is the space I want to be in, and I want to make documentaries that reach as many people as possible.
Unbreakable: The Mark Pollock Story starts its Irish tour on Friday Oct 3rd at the Light House Cinema. Visit markpollockfilm.com for the full list of venues.



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