This is the uncut interview I did with Joe on his stoop…I chopped it up a good amount for the theatrical release, but I think the raw footage is really interesting too. The cuts you see here are moments where I turned the camera off except for one moment I cut out because it contained some personal details about my wife.
So you can see documentary is a bit of a lie…I changed the chronology of events, but I was trying to tell the story in the most cohesive way possible. In conversation we tend to repeat things and drift from subject to subject. My edits were an attempt to structure the conversation a bit more. So there ya have it…I think transparency is really important for this type of filmmaking.
Also, you might ask why I cut my dialogue completely out of the theatrical release. Well, I really wanted to create a space for the viewer to hang out with Joe. I felt like my voice was a distraction from that relationship. I wanted to mediate this relationship as little as possible. Sure, I mediated through shot choice and camera angle, but I didn’t think it was necessary for me to become a character in the piece. Though the creation of the piece was only possible through the interaction I had with Joe as we were shooting. The clip below shows the story of Joe and Jonathan. “The Scrapper” is the story of Joe and the viewer.