NYFF: With "Stray Dog," Debra Granik Confronts You With the Harsh Reality for War Veterans

The director of "Winter's Bone" discusses her powerful new project about a war veteran finding solace in bicycle clubs and tiny dogs.

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

This is a portrait of Ron "Stray Dog" Hall. Looking at him, he's everything you'd imagine when hearing "old middle-American man on a Harley." He's bearded, tatted, dressed in leather, and fitted with a bandana. He's also a Vietnam vet. In other words, that quintessential tough guy character you've seen before—only he's not. And in Winter's Bone director Debra Granik's new documentary Stray Dog, you get a glimpse of that.

Stray Dog follows Hall, a Missouri RV park owner (whom Granik met while working on Winter's Bone), as he preps for his cross-country trip with his biker club to the Vietnam War Memorial, where they honor their fallen brothers. More than just his passion for motorbikes and his four small dogs, Hall is a contemplative man searching for purpose in this world, whether that's taking care of his community, helping his new wife, who is originally from Mexico, adjust to life in the U.S., or doling out words of wisdom to his eldest daughter, who's now a new mom. 

During the film's run at this year's New York Film Festival, Complex got a chance to speak with Granik about coming across Stray Dog's story, the reality for war veterans, and our convenient amnesia towards horrific events in American history.

What made you want to tell Stray Dog's story?

I visited his RV park and all the themes [that we touch on in the film] became apparent. He was describing this ride that he was gearing up for, a cross country bike ride to the Vietnam memorial, and he was pretty enthusiastic about it. He said, "We work with this huge group of synchronized bikers and macho bikers to get along but we made the best. We used all this restraint to be brotherly and get ourselves there." For someone who doesn’t know about masculinity and could never walk in those shoes, it was like, "Oh, would I like to be a fly on the wall for some of that." And he felt like it was possible. He said, "To some extent, you would not be in the inner sanctum, but you can sort of see what you can see." That made me want to try my hand at a portrait of him.

What's the most surprising aspect of his life?

Probably the decision to come out of seven years of solitude to become deeply entangled in the life of a Mexican woman and having her sons join the family. I knew that for years he had a fascination with Mexico as a place of emotional freedom. Ironically, when he went down there for that, he got himself real tangled up with something. Seeing that play out was sort of poignant and moving and had a little bit high-stakes suspense.

1.

When you watch the mayhem on Sons of Anarchy, you can't help but expect the same from real-life biker culture, yet his crew is surprisingly gentle and compassionate.

The fact is, this wasn’t a film that was dealing with a motorcycle club, it wasn’t dealing with outlaw bikers at all. That would personally be very daunting and intimidating for me because I don’t come from that culture. That said, these bikers have really struggled with how to be brothers and not have the impulses towards physical aggression overtake them. The gentleness is won through effort. They’re not even always very gentle, but they do love the feeling that they could be brotherly. It matters—​having someone’s back, caring a lot about their physical wellbeing. And I get interested when men are really nice to other men; I like looking for the kindness among men.

When I was watching it, I kept thinking that Stray Dog and his boys have seen the horrors of war, yet they carry themselves with quiet confidence. But also, there's a sense of loneliness in their silence.

Yes, all of that is accurate. That takes a lot of years and it doesn’t come right after the experience. It's that will among certain people to try to understand themselves over the course of their lifetime. It’s really hard, especially when you know the human brain will put things in different guises. It takes an outsider to ask, "Why is that such a trigger for you?" Initially, the person dealing with it doesn’t know or recognize it. There’s got to be a community or a caring person that doesn't shun them and helps them confront what they initially don't recognize. A lot of things need to be in place for that evolution to go on. A lot of it is solemn.

There are many telling moments in the way he speaks. For example, at the end, when he tells the bees on his cherry tree that he's not going to hurt them. 

That was just authentically weird. When we got that, he was actually coming across as the yard to his house from a different thing that we had filmed, but he stopped to inspect his little baby cherry trees. He was excited that they bloomed. We went through many possible endings, but this was so different than the other footage we had. It was almost a haiku in the end.

What do you hope the documentary conveys about contemporary American culture?

I think one thing it conveys is that for any horrific period in human history, we get sick of hearing about it. Yet we also have amnesia. I’m sure people have studied this in terms of people making warfare, the cost of war, the wiping out or harming certain generations of warriors. But warriors have kids, warriors have spouses, warriors then come back and sometimes they’re really lost and fucked up and really disfranchised or really marginalized. There’s all these costs of war, and they're huge and long lasting. It's not just the numbers CNN broadcasts. And we never want to pay the VA bill, we never want to pay the bill to take care of these warriors after we applaud their sacrifice. We know the cost of the armaments and all that, but what are the costs of in American family life and American culture?

I don’t want to be on a soapbox, but I feel like a lot of documentary filmmakers are part of the ancient tradition of writing down notes, of saying, "Hey people, hey people!" It's scary. Europe didn't want to hear any more documentaries about Afghanistan and Iraq. They're like, "We are tired of your 15 years of war, we’re tired, we’re done, we’re out. Our festivals don’t want to show your shit anymore." I don’t want to be mean, but there are so many filmmakers and journalists here who know that we still gotta be talking about it. It's not just a hot headline for two years. Like, what is atonement? Atonement means you kind of keep looking at your shit.

Tara Aquino is the Complex Pop Culture editor. She tweets here.

Latest in Pop Culture