Courage, New Hampshire — Thinking Back On It..

I Binged My Own Show..

Two nights ago, for the first time in at least seven years, I watched every episode of Courage, New Hampshire — our four part, four hour period drama filmed on the farm between 2011 and 2015.  I was expecting, frankly, to see mistakes I wouldn’t have been able to register when I was too close to it, years ago.

I was pleasantly surprised.  The performances in the first episode genuinely moved me, and I found the whole production smart, historically accurate, and what I would call “artistically efficient.”  Most storytelling fails because the audience is told too much.  They are left with nothing to discover on their own.  Our plots, and the motivations of our characters, were so intricate, and so quietly drawn, that I wondered if the audience would have to hit the replay too much, in order to understand what was happening.  In short, it really was, and is, the sort of period drama I would like to watch if someone else were producing it.

And I’m a very harsh critic, of both my own efforts, and everyone else in the media world.  The show explores, credibly, what it might have been like to live in a small town on the periphery of the events leading to the American Revolution.  We managed to reference the Boston Massacre, the White Pine Act (which drove New Hampshire farmers to riot), the nepotism of Governor Wentworth’s privy council, along with the drama of the New England Quarter Sessions Courts, where everything from pig-stealing to bastardy took the stage.  I even whittle “maple taps” in one scene.  The art direction and wardrobe is stunning.  Drew Ganyer’s lighting and cinematography was compelling.  It felt fully realized — to  me at least.

However, I’m a bit of an eccentric, nerdy, history-lover, and Courage, New Hampshire never found a conventional audience.  It was released on independent PBS stations and on the family network, INSP, but it never attracted groundswell attention.  No money men in the industry came forward with an offer.  It’s the story I wanted to tell, and it met my standards, but it never attracted a crowd.

So be it.  Maybe it will find an audience if it’s out there, free, and the YouTube advertising formula might earn us back some money.  Keep watching this space for news..

What I Learned

• It’s wickedly difficult.  Visual storytelling is a layered art, and any one layer can ruin the whole thing.  If you have a great script, great acting, great art direction, it can all be ruined by one bad period wig in an 18th century drama.  I have come to believe that film and television drama is probably THE most difficult art form ever devised, because you are calling on the skills of everyone from the writer to the plumber to the makeup artist to the set designer.  Everyone has to be good at what they do.  From time to time, you’ll see a football team, or a small company, carried over the finish line by a few talented, hard-working people.  That’s not the case with film.  Everyone has to be performing at peak levels.   I was so contemptuous of flaky Hollywood types, that I said to myself:  “I can do this.  If these morally degenerate weirdos can do this, I can do it.” Not so fast, Skippy.  There’s a reason Hollywood produces so much crap.  It’s just a terribly difficult skill to master, and even if you detest their world view, you have to respect their craft.
• He’s Called a “Director” for a reason.  One of our actors, a very talented fellow who played a British soldier and who is also a US Army captain in real life, lectured us on the need for solid direction the very first day of principal photography.  I was the director on that episode, and at the time I took a little offense, but in hindsight I know what he was talking about.  The director has to have a very solid idea about what he wants, and he has to be a bit of a general on the battle field — loved and feared.  I was trying to do too many things by consensus, and there simply isn’t time to have a huddle between each take.  The auteur theory is there for a reason.
• Laughter is both medicine, and reality.  If I had it to do over, I would include a little more human comedy, not just because it’s good to laugh, but because credibility itself demands it.  Go to a restaurant sometime and watch how many of the conversations are punctuated with merriment.  Life is at least 20% pure comedy.  In a period drama with heavy topics, moreover, it intensifies the heroism of the characters by forcing us to remember what they were risking — the joy of living itself.  They say that before crossing the Delaware, George Washington got in the boat and told the rotund Henry Knox to move over with the words, “move your fat arse, Colonel Knox.”  (Maybe that’s why Washington is standing in the famous painting; Knox refused to budge?)
• A Star on the Set.  I once held a naive, romantic conviction that you don’t need major stars to tell a story.  Theoretically, this is true, but a bona fide celebrity brings production value just by virtue of the name.  We had some very accomplished Hollywood actors on our team.  (The late Basil Hoffman has appeared in everything from All the President’s Men to the Coen Brother’s Hail, Caesar.)  Still, we had not one buzz-making celebrity in the cast.  That’s a worthy investment to consider, even if you have to pay some B+ actor $15,000 for a 30 second cameo.  (By the way, did you know that one of our cast members went on to appear in Mad Men, another in a Clint Eastwood movie, and still another in a mini-series about the making of The Godfather?)
• The Faith and Family Audience.  I believe a “good” story is “good” because it credibly makes the case that good can triumph over evil.  A “bad” story simply surrenders to evil, and maybe even celebrates it.  In either case, you actually have to depict evil.  Oddly enough, the faith and family audience doesn’t always use the Bible as its guide.  Imagine a young woman at a church picnic tells you, “my husband was refusing me children, so I dressed up as a prostitute and fooled my father-in-law into getting me pregnant.”  That is the Biblical story of Tamar and Judah, and it’s one of many stories in scripture that are equally scandalous.  I think Courage, New Hampshire received a half-hearted response because it wasn’t racy enough for HBO standards, but it wasn’t pristine enough for Hallmark.
• It’s the money, stupid.  I believe most filmmakers only get one friendship production.  It’s just too exhausting to do, long term, without a reasonable budget.  One line producer estimated that we would have spent $1.1 million per episode, if we had done them conventionally, complete with items like $28,000 for the Teamsters, scale for the performers, etc.  Our episodes cost us about $75,000 a piece, and we were always sweating payroll.  If “Silas Rhodes” looks like he’s about to keel over in that last episode, it’s because he was worried about paying the hotel bills of of that weekend’s cast.  A very good friend saw me looking distracted and he wrote me a $50,000 check.  I paid it back, with a little interest, but it would be nice, someday, to work 14 hour days and know there is at least a little money in the bank.

While I don’t think a new, full Courage episode is on the horizon, I do believe we will try a few 2-3 minute vignettes.  My instincts, early on in the planning process, was to use very short, shareable 18th century anecdotes as a way of building the audience and perfecting our characters.  I’d like to go back to that approach.  “Stay tuned.”

A question for you YouTube experts:  what is the best time and date to publish these episodes?

Categorised in: Courage

This post was written by Jim Riley