Veteran director, who moved here last year, says he finds community
‘different’ in ways he wants to share
By Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Paul Bright says he moved to Sweet Home because he and his family sensed a difference in the community compared to others they’ve lived in.
“This culture is so different from the rest of the country,” he said. “There’s an honesty and openness here that I’ve never encountered anywhere else.”
Bright, 47, a veteran filmmaker and actor who grew up in west Los Angeles, has decided to share his experience with the world. He’s working on a series of short documentary videos about unique people he’s found in Sweet Home that he’s posting on the Internet on a site called Jackscoffeetalk.com.
Paul Bright, right, films an interview with Marks Ridge Winery owner Jay Westly for one of Bright’s videos
Starting in his teens, Bright appeared in TV commercials – for clients such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s, insurance companies and Miracle Whip and also appearing in bit parts in some TV shows in the 1980s while working a variety of other jobs, including railroad conductor, driving a bus, teaching and running a farm. He also attended UCLA, where he majored in history.
In his 30s, he moved to a small town south of Austin, Texas, where he ran a repertory theater company for three years before deciding to switch his attention to filmmaking.
Bright has produced six independent feature films which, he said, are in distribution globally. He is working on two more.
They range from a comedy entitled “Theft” to science fiction films “Altitude Falling” and “Goliad Uprising.”
“These movies are not being made by Hollywood studios,” he said. “The advantage I have in making these indie films is they are all made from the perspective of a rural lifestyle.
“What I find in Hollywood films is they tend to tell stories they think of sitting in their offices. They are not authentic. They are not what most people experience in their lives. Fans of smaller films can identify with the characters in these films.”
Bright moved to New York City two years ago, where he was cast in a pilot for CBS TV, which did not pick up the show, did some more commercials and appeared in more films, including “Paranormal Asylum,” produced by Meridien Films.
He said he and his partner decided they preferred a rural community and decided on Oregon.
“We wanted out of Texas because the weather is miserable there,” he said.
“We were looking for a place where we think the future environment will be sustainable. It rains here. The air is clean. In terms of the long-range forecast of what might possibly happen, this is an ideal place.”
They happened to visit Sweet Home and they liked it, he said.
They arrived in 2011 on the Fourth of July in a 24-foot moving truck.
“We snuck our four cats into the motel and found a house on the fifth of July and made an offer,” Bright said.
It didn’t take long for him to realize he was in a unique place.
“We were moving from a town in Texas where volunteers were very contentious and could not accomplish anything at all without a great deal of infighting. This was a huge transformation in our experience. We’ve been extremely impressed – extremely impressed with how welcoming people are.”
Bright said he decided to share some of what he found by making some short documentary films that highlight people he finds particularly interesting. Using a simple Pentax single lens reflex camera that shoots high-definition video, equipped with a microphone, he cut loose on the project this fall.
As of last week he had seven videos posted. Ranging from three to just over six minutes, the early postings include: “Alice of the Flowers,” which features Alice Grovom, leader of the Main Street median flower project, as she works on the flowerbeds; U.S. Senate candidate Xavier Small, who is running on a marijuana reform platform; Sweet Home’s Singing Christmas Tree and U.S. Forest Service botanist Alice Smith as she leads a mushroom hunt.
All are posted on jackscoffeetalk.com.
Bright filmed a wine-bottling operation at Marks Ridge Winery on Dec. 15, which he posted within a few days.
Planned episodes include an interview with Cascade Timber Consulting President Dave Furtwangler at the company’s tree nursery.
“Because I have friends all over the world and this is such a unique culture and environment to anywhere else I’ve been in the world, I wanted to share that,” Bright said. “The original focus was to show jobs that people do that other people never see.
“An example is Trevor at the movie projector. People rarely see that.”
He talks about how changes in the industry will likely impact the theater, Bright said.
“I followed that up with Alice Smith’s mushroom hunting tour. Fascinating. The feedback I’m getting from that experience is most people have no experience hunting mushrooms. They’re incredibly fascinated by that whole process of hunting for mushrooms in the wild.”
Bright said the process of making the videos has been interesting and he’s learned some lessons.
“This is all live-action and people are just doing their thing, and the equipment I have has a very narrow range of focus,” he said. “The real challenge is trying to keep the action I’m trying to record in focus.
“The first one, with Alice Grovom, had a lot of street noise. But that is life for her, in the middle of a two-lane street with log trucks rolling behind you while you’re bent over.”