AUGUST 7. 2009
31
.M
The Elephant in The Room
r r .
Portland Film m aker A ndy
B lu b a u g h ’s Feature
Debut Intersects with
Headlines
ha ve your
By AMANDA SCHURR
Late last year, Portland filmmaker Andy
Blubaugh began production on The Adults in
the Room, his feature debut. His two shorts
had screened well at Sundance; Filmmaker
Magazine named him one of the “Top 25
New Faces” in 2007. As with his previous ef­
forts, Blubaugh planned a uniquely personal
approach in order to what he calls “make
connections to a larger human experience
and explore a more common thread.”
This time around, that meant telling the
story o f his first love, a clandestine affair as a
teenager with a man twice his age.
And then came January.
Some seven months later, The Adults
in the Room has taken on a relevance and
timeliness Blubaugh couldn’t have imagined
when the project was accepted at New York’s
Independent Film Week in September
2008. Blubaugh admits he’d been watch­
ing the initial headlines concerning Mayor
Sam Adams and Beau Breedlove and, “when
it really blew up, was a mixed bag” for the
production.
“It created a great opportunity for me as
a filmmaker to observe the way that every­
one in the city was reacting to the events,”
explains Blubaugh, a Cleveland native who
moved to Portland in early 2000. “Suddenly
this idea of what it means to be an adult,
what metric we use to measure adulthood,
was on the tip of everyone’s tongues, and
th at’s ultimately what my film was about.”
O ther dialogues all but halted— a signifi­
cant problem for Blubaugh since his story is
told in a hybrid of documentary and narrative
formats, intersecting in the present day. “This
is not an exposé. I’m not attacking anyone,”
notes Blubaugh, who says the Adams “issue”
has nonetheless been incorporated. “There are
no ultimate conclusions to be made—what
I’m interested in is the discussion and when
the discussion dries up, it makes it very dif­
ficult to continue with the film.”
According to producer Phoebe Owens,
the film’s financing took a hit as well. “W e’ve
had people who were originally interested in
investing that won’t now because they just
don’t want to be involved with something
that they feel can so easily connect to [the
Adams scandal],” she says.
Modestly budgeted at about 175,000, The
Adults in the Room has eight days of shooting
at m onth’s end to capture the narrative half
o f the film. Blubaugh and Owens hope an
August 9 benefit at M ontage will raise the
funds necessary for this, what Blubaugh de­
scribes as “the most labor intensive and the
most money intensive part of the project.”
The documentary portion, now wrapping
up and featuring interviews with columnist
ci('U
Film m aker An d y B lu b a u g h (left), seen
here with actors Ryan Findley a n d
C alvin M cC arthy explores questions
a b o u t youth a n d intim ate relationships
he e n c o u n te re d in his own life in The
A dults in the Room. The film, now in
p ro d u c tio n , is a mix of d o c u m e n ta ry
a n d narra tive storytelling
' 2iti I U omri
iUI
mm
A benefit for the Audrte M.Tîdwards (Scholarship Fun
7pm Sunday October 11 2009
Dan Savage, among others, was captured on
digital with a small crew; the upcoming nar­
rative shoot, which traces Blubaugh’s for­
mative relationship via actors and dramatic
recreations, will be shot on Super 16 mm
with a crew o f about 35. Plans are to submit
a rough cut to Sundance by October 1.
Blubaugh, who teaches at Northwest Film
Center, says that while the Adams-Breedlove
debate has put his own journey in a very pub­
lic context, the questions he set out to address
haven’t changed, the individual matters o f ac­
countability no less simple. “At what age are
we comfortable saying that a young person
has the agency to make their own decisions,
but also at what age do we trust ourselves
with the young people?” he asks.
“That’s why I’m making this film now.
I’m the age that this man was when our
relationship began and I teach children that
are the age that I was when our relationship
began.”
Blubaugh hopes the film will transcend
headlines and catalyze an “internal discus­
sion,” one that both he and Owens view in
shades o f gray— a marked contrast to the
seeming black-and-white, for-or-against
opinions regarding Adams. “[Blubaugh] has
all these mixed emotions,” Owens says, “but
when he looks back oft his relationship...,
it’s first love and for him that trumps every­
thing. So it’s very messy and complex.”
And in progress. Blubaugh says he hasn’t
yet arrived at an answer to his question, to
whether or not “I [became] the grownup
that I thought I was going to be.” “I go back
and forth,” he admits. “Right now I’m at
my most observant point. I’m just trying to
take in the entire experience and analyze it
and make sure that the film is responding to
what is happening every single day.”
A fundraiser; documentary preview and
silent auction fo r The Adults in the Room is at
7 p.m. Sun., Aug. 9 at La Merde at Le Bistro
Montage, 301 SE Morrison. Suggested dona-
tion is t20 and includes food, drink and more.
Visit www.theadultsintheroommovie.com.
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