>> How can I trust you to take care of the girls? >> Why are you even talking about not being able to trust me now. Okay? I'm a good kid. >> Yeah, I know you're a good kid. >> I do good things. It's not like I go out and I do drugs and stuff like that. >> No, I know that. Don't say stuff like that to me! I know you're a good kid most of the time. But we turn out backs, we go out of town for the very first time, asking you to take care of the girls overnight, and you end up giving them beer? To bribe them? What's next? >> I didn't do anything that bad! >> Yes, you did! Listen to me, it was an extremely bad decision! You're going to be going off to college in a couple of months, Justin. Is this the kind of thing behavior that I can expect? >> No, no, it's not! >> How can I trust you? >> Welcome to Director's Cut. I'm your guest host, Pete Schwaba. That was a clip from the feature film "Waterwalk," the story about a father and son who embark on a 1,000 canoe trip in an attempt to reconnect. We're joined today by the author of the book "Waterwalk," Steven Faulkner, and the film's director, Bob Cicchini. Guys, thanks for being here. >> You're welcome, Pete. >> Glad to be here. >> Let's start with you, Steven. You wrote the book. Writers have to have a lot of experiences to draw from, and I have to say, I was exhausted reading your bio. I mean, you have had a ton of experiences. Talk a little bit about your background, and what led you to write "Waterwalk. >> Yeah, I've lived a kind of strange life, you know. I've been a grave vault maker, and a carpenter, and a roofer, and a trucker, and now a teacher. So, yeah, things have changed over the years. I was getting near the end of my late education, because I had dropped out of college years before, and then went back later. I needed something to write about for a thesis. But more than that, I kind of lost touch with my son Justin. He's a city kid. We hadn't gone hunting and fishing like I had with the other kids. We needed to spend time together, so we decided to go a 1,000-mile canoe trip. >> That'll do it, huh? That'll make you connect, I would assume. >> Well, it could've gone very badly. I think a lot of teenagers wouldn't have been able to stand up to that kind of hard work, which canoeing turns out to be. It looks very romantic on the screen, you know, to be out there in nature in a canoe. But it's a lot of hard work, it really is. >> Bob, you directed the film. You're the lead actor. You have a really impressive resume as an actor in TV and in film. "Sopranos," "Godfather III." What about this story made you say to yourself, I want this to be my directorial debut? >> Well there are a number of things. I grew up in Michigan, and some of my fondest memories were going up north, you know, seeing forests, lakes and streams, going up to Mackinac Island. >> Oh, yeah. >> That kind of thing. So, that element of the story was very attractive to me. I just felt like, wow, you know, what a dream to be able to shoot a film up in these places that, you know, I used to fantasize about as a kid, and got to visit and enjoy. So that was a big element. The other part of it was I thought it was a great story. I thought it was what I would call a true family film, meaning not, you know, this is nothing against Disney films, I love Disney films, but not a film that is essentially for kids with a few bells and whistles thrown in for the adults, but a film that can actually be emotionally and intellectually appreciated by any member of the family, whether it's your five-year-old kid, your nine-year-old daughter, or your 89-year-old grandfather, whatever. >> Right. >> That really appealed to me. >> That's great. I have to ask you, you play Steven in the movie. Was he a good you? >> He was, I think my wife fell in love with him... >> Oh, wow.
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>> So, a lot of pressure, huh? Okay, we're going to see another clip from "Waterwalk." >> Yeah? >> Hey, Dad. >> Justin! >> Hey, ah, what are you doing? Are you busy? >> Ah, no, not really. Just, you know, packing up a few things. >> Okay. I was wondering if I could ask you something. >> Sure. It's not about that canoe in the garage, is it? >> Oh, no, no. It's about a different canoe. Look, I need to borrow $600. >> $600? >> Yeah. >> That's a lot of money, Justin. Have you thought about selling your car for that? >> Ah, no. I haven't. I mean, I guess I could. I figured I would just borrow it from you. >> Good choice. >> I mean, we're not that broke, are we? >> No, we're not the broke. Not yet. So, how are you going to pay this money back if you borrow it? >> Well, I'm glad you asked. Okay, here's the deal. So I'm going to make a blog, right? And I'm also going to build this website that tells people about the trip, and it has this feature on it that people can donate money to. And all that money will show up on my PayPal account. So when I go into towns and I stop along the way, I can just go to an ATM and just withdraw it right out of the account. >> I don't know, Justin. Do you really think people are going to find this blog and make donations? It sounds kind of far-fetched to me. >> You know, it can't hurt to try. >> No, it can't hurt to try. Well, listen, there's just one thing. >> Yeah. >> You cannot go on this trip alone. >> You're right. There's just one thing, you're going with me. >> Probably the last thing a father who just lost his job wants to think about, going on a two-month canoe trip. Bob, you guys shot primarily in Michigan and Wisconsin. It was not a big budget. Was it tough to find actors that far from LA and New York? Was it hard to find actors? >> That's a great question. That was one of my biggest dilemmas when I approached this film as a director. But I hit upon a really good idea. I had some old friends that I had gone to acting school with, who I knew went to the Milwaukee Rep, and had careers in Wisconsin. I thought to myself, well, Milwaukee's pretty close to where we're going to be. And those two guys are really good actors, Mark Corkins and Doug Mancheski. I thought to myself, if they're having careers in Wisconsin, and the Milwaukee Rep is sort of the heart of that theater world, there must be really good actors out there. So, we contacted Milwaukee Rep, and a lady named Sandy Ernst became our casting director. She's the casting director there, and turned us on to all these really wonderful Wisconsin actors. Our film is hugely populated by and benefits greatly from the talent that we found out of Milwaukee Rep. Although, young Chase Maser, my co-star in this movie, he's a young actor from Kalamazoo, Michigan. That was something that Roger really wanted. He wanted this to be Midwestern movie, you know, sort of a homegrown made by, or with Midwesterners. In a way, that was a challenging parameter, but I think we came through really well with the talent. >> Chase, in the movie, Justin is adopted, but that's not the case in real life or in the book. What was the thinking behind that decision? >> You want to handle that? >> Well, yeah, what I'm told is that Chase, who auditioned for the part just blew the competition away. He was a marvelous young actor. So the script had to kind of shift a little bit, because he's part Korean American. >> Again, we were trying to cast the movie out of the Midwest, as much we could. You know, we might have been able to find an actor, you know, out of LA or New York, or whatever, but we auditioned some people locally out of Chicago and other places in the Midwest, as Steve said, Chase just kind of hit it out of the park. >> He was great. He did a great job. >> I have to ask, and either one of you can answer. What is a waterwalk? >> In the movie, the word kind of evolves out of the fact that we're portaging a lot, you know, especially in the Appleton area in Wisconsin. There were lots of dams and locks that we didn't know were there when we started this journey. We ended up walking as much as we were paddling, so the word kind of evolved from that. >> That's great. Well, we're going to see another clip from "Waterwalk." >> I don't know. You know, I would love to do this. I would. I would love to go on this trip. But I just can't. I've got to find a job. >> If you could get away, you could have a chance to focus more on your thesis. You could write about the trip. >> Yeah. And what are you going to be doing all this time? >> I'll never tell. >> Seriously. What are you going to do? It's 60 days with the girls. You know, we have never been apart that long our entire marriage. You realize that, don't you? >> Well, take short cuts. You'll save money, and that way you guys won't kill each other. >> Honestly though, if I was going to do it, and write a book about it, I'd have to do it. I'd have to get the whole experience. The whole thing. I'd have to do it almost exactly like Joliet and Marquette did it. No short cuts. That's be the only way. >> Does that mean you're going to do it? >> No, it doesn't mean I'm going to do it. I'm just saying that if I-- >> Oh, just do it! Okay, you're right. We haven't been apart that long, but guess what? You and your son have never been together for that long. Month after month, year after year, Justin just breezes in here and you say, hi how're you doing? And he says, okay, Dad. I'll see you at the track meet on Friday. And he says, okay Dad. Have you noticed, since this whole canoe trip business came up, he's actually talking to you? If you could just learn to talk back. >> No one could say that the Faulkner family does things halfway.
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That's amazing. I mean, most dads would take their son to a ball game, or fishing, or something. But I mean, it really amazed me because of the dad. You has seven kids. >> Right, in real life. >> And you took two months to spend with one of them. That's a lot of time. As a father, I was thinking, how fractured was your relationship that you were willing to do that? Seriously, it's admirable, but it's also a big time commitment. >> Honestly, I was worried about it. Because if you take a teenager, he was 16 at the time, you take a teenage son out on the Great Lakes in a canoe, a lot of kids just wouldn't have stood for that. I'm not sure if some of his brothers and sisters would've stood for that. But Justin adapted very well. I was very fortunate that I had a kid who kind of got used to the rigor of it, and you know, being out there in the weather, in all kinds of weather, and he stood up very well. Yeah, it was a risk, and I knew it was going to be a risk. I didn't know if we'd make it 1,000 miles. >> I think I'd be calling the wife to come and pick me up in Green Bay, or whatever. Were you nervous about spending it, I mean, the talks, were you anticipating big life talks, or were you kind of like trying to keep it light? >> You know, yeah, I tried to keep it light at first. I was hoping, you know, we could get to know each other a lot better, and be able to connect. But again, that was-- And that's one thing I liked about the movie, is it really stresses that aspect of the relationship. The father and son kind of contending at times, and trying to adapt their own strong wills to each other, and work things out. >> Yeah. Bob, you play the lead actor, too, and did a great job. Was it hard to direct yourself? >> Surprisingly, I found directing myself to be the least of my challenges. And I don't mean that as a, hey, wow, I was great in the part, kind of thing. It was really more like, you know, I chose to play Steve as myself in Steve's shoes. I picked up a couple of his characteristics. I didn't get a chance to spend much time with Steve before we shot. I read the book and I picked up a couple of his physical characteristics, but that's all I did. I didn't try and do an imitation of Steven Faulkner. For me, you know, the truth of being in the moment was the most important thing. It's a very heartfelt story. So, I was able to leave myself alone, basically, and I found that sometimes you gotta just get out of your own way. >> Right. >> You know? And I found that to be a real pleasant surprise in this project for myself. I did have an assistant director named James Sparling, who was a very able assistant as well, and every once and a while, if I was uncertain, I'd look at James, and you know, he'd give me the thumbs up, or maybe let's do that again, or whatever. It's funny, I just wanted to mention that scene that we just watched, that was Mary MacDonald Kerr, who plays my wife. She's a really really terrific actress. She's from Milwaukee also. But the funny thing about that is I had just met Mary for the very first time. Well, she auditioned for us, but I met her again for the very first time about 30 minutes before we hopped in bed and did that scene together. Not only that, but I think it's the Milwaukee Sentinel or Journal, or something, whatever the paper, they were there that day, because Mary is really well known in Milwaukee. So they were there, taking pictures of us, interviewing Mary, you know, and here we were in bed like 30 minutes after we had just kind of gotten to know each other. >> Was the audition finding out if she had cold feet or not?
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>> We just did a reading of the screenplay at Milwaukee Rep with a bunch of their actors, and then we asked people to let us know what parts they were interested in. Then we held auditions after that. >> Who are your influences as a writer as a director? >> I'm a descriptive writer, so I like other descriptive writers. I love Cormac McCarthy. He's a little more grim than I am, you know, he wrote "The Road and "All the Pretty Horses," and a number of other books. I read a lot of him. I don't read much William Faulkner, even though my name is Faulkner, because if I start reading him, I start sounding like him. He has these long extended sentences, so I have to kind of stay away from him. >> We have to go to a clip, but when we come back, I want you to answer that question. Could you set this clip up for us? This is when you're on Fox River and you guys encounter some danger. If you could set this up, and then we'll go to it. >> Well, you know, this is a scene that from a filmmaking standpoint, particularly with our budgetary challenges, was extremely challenging to shoot. In the story itself, Steve and Justin, as Steve mentioned earlier, were portaging a lot, which for those of you who don't know, portaging is carrying your canoe on your back and you know, walking on land to get past dams, impassable areas of water, going back, getting all of your equipment, and continuing that process until everything is where you want to put the thing back in. >> It's a waterwalk. >> Yeah, and it's, you know, a grueling experience. Steve and Justin in the story are exhausted, a little bit tired of portaging, and they have portaged to a spot, and thought about not putting in, about portaging just a little bit farther, but thought that they were probably okay. They were influenced by their fatigue, and put it, and found out that the currents were much stronger than they had anticipated, and were pushed back toward a dam that is going to take them backwards over the falls. This actually happened to Steve and Justin. >> Let's do that clip. >> Paddling upstream on the Fox was exhausting. As we portaged around dams, we now faced big risks. Heavy currents where now pushing us back towards the same spillways we had supposable avoided by carrying Natty Bumppo over our heads. At Appleton, we should have put in further up river. But after weeks of canoeing, we though we could handle whatever currents the Fox had to offer. The old river had other ideas. >> I'm trying, I'm trying! Okay! Okay, Dad! >> Justin, if we have to jump, grab the cable! >> Okay, okay! >> Justin, pull harder! >> I'm trying! >> Harder! >> I'm trying! >> Justin, jump! Jump! >> Yikes! That's pretty intense. Do you guys, I'm sure there were times when Marquette and Joliet had to flip it over in serious danger, but were you guys, did you ever have any moments on the set when you were in danger? >> Yeah, well, there were moments where we were scared. How much danger we were actually in is debatable. >> Actor danger. >> No, I mean, in this particular scene, where we were shooting that, where we capsized, it was just in front of a dam, which if you haven't ever been close to a very large dam, it's similar to being suddenly very close to a large whale, or a large ocean liner. You are awestruck by its awesomeness, you know, and you feel very minuscule. It was also 100 feet of water we were in, so even though we had life jackets on, you know, it was just scary to be out there by yourself in 100 feet of water. Again, it was a low budget film, so we didn't have a lot of divers around watching us, and stuff. >> You probably didn't have an understudy ready, either. >> No, no stuntmen. That was the thing about it. Everything that you're seeing Justin and Steve doing in this movie, Chase and Bob did it. It was grueling and very physically challenging. >> Was there a low point on this, either for you or Justin on your initial canoe trip? And during shooting, what would be your low point? >> For me, the Mississippi River isn't really a canoeing river. It's kind of an industrial highway. I didn't know that until we got on it, but there's just these huge barges going up and down. By the time we got there, it was July, and the heat was intense. You guys shot some in July and August, I think, so you experienced some of that. It was a tough slog down the Mississippi. >> What about for you, Bob, was there a low point where you were like, why did I do this? I have a comfortable life in LA, what am I doing out here on the Mississippi River? >> I think it was a very high-low experience. There were lots of highs and lots of lows. There were many times where I was frustrated, mostly as director, because things, you know, I just felt like things weren't coming together as I wanted them. But I would say, you know, there were equally times that there was a lot of kismet. Things would happen, you know, happy accidents, as you might say. I think the low point for me, probably, was I guess about midway through the shoot. Utterly, physically exhausted, not getting enough sleep, working really hard all day long, and then one evening, finding out that a great deal of the footage that we had shot was lost, had not been downloaded properly, which you know, in a digital age, you get a lot of advantages, but that's one huge hazard. There's no cans of film that are just being stored. It's all electronic, and if it's not downloaded properly, we lost a lot of footage. >> Make you want to jump out of the canoe in 100 feet of water. >> That was just, you know, despair. >> Geez. >> Hands in head moment. >> Let's see another clip from "Waterwalk." >> Well, Huck Finn was right. He said it's lovely to live on a raft. >> Actually, I was wondering about that. Illinois, it's a free state, right? >> Correct. A lot on slaves ran away to Illinois. >> Okay, well, why didn't Huck Finn just float across the river and drop Jim off in Illinois? >> That's a good question, Justin. Probably because that would have squashed the Huckleberry Finn plot like a tiny, little bug. >> I really don't think that's it. You just don't know what it's like to have different colored skin. You know? You don't know what's it's like to be brought up in a place where everyone's sure they're better than you. Who would want to live in a kind of world like that? When you could just float on the river forever. Sleep on islands and fish for your dinner, and just float of the river in your canoe. >> Raft, you mean. >> Yeah, whatever. >> Justin, are you talking about the color of your own skin? >> I'm just talking. >> Okay, talk to me. >> You don't even know what you did to me, do you? You don't even know what you did to a baby still in diapers. Okay, you snatched me out of whatever foster home you could find me in and then you forced me to grow up in a place which pretty much guaranteed that I'm not going to be like everybody else. >> Hmm, just a little window into your experience with your son. Are you guys closer today because of the trip, you and Justin? >> Once again, it was a real risk. I thought it might drive us apart. But in fact, we do have a better relationship. I wouldn't recommend to every father and son to go on a 1000-mile canoe trip to patch things up, but it worked for us. Justin fell in love with nature. He loves canoeing. He goes hiking now. He takes his daughters out in the wilderness. Yeah, so it worked out in many ways. We do have a better relationship now than we had then. >> Bob, any desire to direct again? You want to direct another project? >> Absolutely. I've got a couple projects in the mix, one with Roger Rapoport, the producer and writer of "Waterwalk." We've got an idea for a script that we just started developing a couple weeks ago, actually. Then I have a script that I've been working on that hopefully will see the light of day. So there's a couple things happening there. >> There's a lot of spiritual underpinnings in the movie. Do you guys feel any connection to Joliet and Marquette after this experience, going through something like that? Do you feel kindred spirits with them? >> Their's was an epic journey. I wouldn't say our was epic, you know. They had to go in a wilderness they had never seen before. No European had seen this area before. There were hostile Native tribes there. There were grizzly bears. There were buffalo. You know, they encountered so much. We, you know, we had to encounter, you know, barges, and motorboats that wanted to knock us over and whatnot, but it's not the same. At least we knew where we were going, and that makes a really big difference. >> Have the occasional vending machine, or something. >> They probably didn't have access that. >> Right, and we had food, that's right. We didn't have to shoot all our own food. >> It's amazing to me, to think of how rigorous and tough those guys must've been. They went all the way down to the mouth of the Arkansas River and back. And back was upstream almost the whole way. I feel like if I run into those two gentlemen some day in the great beyond, they might give me a little nod. >> Yeah, they'll have respect for you for making an independent film. Nice try!
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>> That's an epic journey itself. >> Well, hey you guys, thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate it. It was great to have you guys. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thanks very much, glad to be here. >> And thank you for watching Director's Cut. For more information on "Waterwalk," please go to wpt.org and click on Director's Cut. I'm your host, Pete Schwaba, and that's a wrap. Ahh! >> I'm sorry!
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