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Pat Rendleman in McElwee's
Sherman's March
(1986).
delighted by it. She's even had her agent circulate it to studios in California, hoping that she can get work.
It's true that a lot of the situations that I end up in or that the women end up in are humorous or comic, but it's important to have a sense of humor about life and about oneself. I see the situations as being funny, but not pathetic. I've made films that flirt with filming the pathetic in other people's lives, and it makes me very uncomfortable. I hope I've avoided doing it in
Sherman's March
.
MacDonald:
Do you think of yourself as a Southern filmmaker? The South has not played a particularly conspicuous role in independent filmmaking.
McElwee:
I don't feel a responsibility to film the South. When I made
Backyard
and
Sherman's March,
the South seemed very rich in possibilities, and as you say, not so many other people have explored it. I'm glad that you've asked this question because I do think that aspect of
Sherman's March
often gets overlooked. It's not merely an autobiographical film; it's a film about a region, to some degree about a way of life. I don't think I would be satisfied doing purely ethnographic films of the South. There are certainly filmmakers who choose to do that. There are a number of documentaries that deal with the customs, the rituals, and the arts and crafts of the South. These themes are a peripheral interest