In Conversation with Michael Oblowitz Director of Confidential Informant
Confidential Informant stars Mel Gibson, Dominic Purcell, and Kate Bosworth
Facing East
Date: 26th March 2019
Director: Tommy Baker
Producer: Tommy Baker
Type: Documentary
indieactivity : What is your film about?
Tommy Baker : Facing East is a documentary about Eastern Cemetery one of the most grossly abused cemeteries in America, with over 100,000 disturbed burials. I stumbled on this story when I was first starting out as a filmmaker and was asked to come do some video of the cemetery to help spread awareness about an at the time fledgling non-profit group, ‘The Friends of Eastern Cemetery,’ who have dedicated themselves to up-keeping and preserving the now long abandoned graveyard. As I kept going down there, filming, talking to people, and began doing research, the story grew into something bigger and darker then I could have ever imagined at first.
indieactivity : Tell us about the festival run, marketing and sales?
Tommy Baker : Since the film took so long to finish and there was a considerable amount of demand for its release, we opted to start with a digital premiere, but we will be submitting to some non-premiere festivals over the course of the next few months.
Dramatic Features
Director: Tommy Baker
Producers: Tommy Baker, Russell Allen
Budget: less than $5,000
Financing: self-financed
Production: independent
Shooting Format: Canon 5DIII, Full HD 16 x 9
Screening Format: Also 16 x 9
World Premiere: Digital, 3/17
indieactivity : Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?
Tommy Baker : Eastern Cemetery was founded in 1848 by the partitions of two Methodist churches. Over the course of the next 141 years they redrew the maps of the grounds and reburied entire sections of the graveyard over and over. In 1989 one of the grave diggers employed there couldn’t take it anymore and blew the whistle on what was going on there. During the investigation the attorney general’s office found human remains in filing cabinets, tool boxes, and even the glove compartment of a pickup truck. After the court proceedings Eastern Cemetery was left abandoned with thousands of individuals unsure if their loved ones bodies had been disturbed, thousands more who had purchased plots that they couldn’t use because there were already several previous burials there. Finally in 2013 Andy Harpole knew something had to be done and formed the non-profit group ‘The Friends of Eastern Cemetery,’ to upkeep and maintain the grounds – so that those poor souls interred there can finally find some peace.
indieactivity : Development & Financing?
Tommy Baker : This project being a documentary, it was more of an idea then a screenplay. I knew what I wanted. Then in post I created an outline for my editor Russ and I to work from and wrote the narration to help streamline the story and fill in the gaps.
This story was so heavily reliant on the people who were there during the investigation in the late 80’s and early 90’s that we really had to craft the narration and storytelling around what they gave us in the interviews. As for financing, we basically just put this film together over time with what we had. The majority of it was shot on my Canon 5d with some cheap vintage lenses because that was all I had at the time.
The months and even years of editing, audio repair and mixing, not to mention research and writing was all done out of passion for this story to be told. No one on the film got paid at all and our expenses by the end totalled less than $5,000. I did try to crowdfund the project and raised a little cash but not even enough to purchase one minute of news footage from local news stations which doesn’t make the cut of the film because we simply couldn’t afford it.
indieactivity : Production?
Tommy Baker : I started filming on this project in August of 2013. At first it was just something that I didn’t really know what I was going to do with. Just footage of the cemetery itself and sometimes of the Friends of Eastern on their clean up days. Sometime in 2015 we started getting really serious about making this a feature length documentary. We set up something like 30 interviews right off the bat and held them all in a local building that we happened to have access to.
Back then we all had full time jobs so we dedicated what time we had, sometimes it would lay dormant for a few weeks or months, and then something would happen that would open up new opportunities to continue working on the film. When we finally met Beth Caldwell and Bob Allen, former employees of the cemetery, things really started coming together. I started making trips to my state capitol to find whatever was on public record about the cemetery and its thirty odd years of court cases.
The longer we worked on it and the more people we talked to, things just started coming to us. I was handed the first three chapters of a manuscript for a book the investigator had started writing about the cemetery but passed away before he could finish. I managed to find copies of video tapes made by the investigation. We had been slowly editing all along but once the pieces fell into place we really started putting the movie together. I asked an actor friend of mine to record the narration for me.
I started cold emailing distributors and found Uncork’d Entertainment. After just watching a rough cut of about the first half of the movie they were excited to work with us, so I knew we had to finish, and make it the best it could be. The biggest remaining problem was the audio. I had a good friend who was composing and recording a score for the entire film once we had a working cut of the movie but much of the audio we had captured during interviews, not to mention the audio on the tapes we had found or gotten from public record, was really rough.
Finally I made a hand shake agreement with one of the best audio mixers in my region and we were off to the races. We were able to pull together a pretty strong 5.1 audio mix and turn a final copy of our film in to Uncork’d Entertainment finally in 2019, six years after I initially started the project. Now that it is about to be released on March 17 it is a truly surreal feeling. Even after we started working with our distributor there have been a lot of times where I really didn’t think it would come together.
It became such a part of my life that I miss working on it and I almost wish it wasn’t complete sometimes. Sometimes I wake up in the morning thinking, “What am I going to do today to work on Facing East,” and then I come to my senses and remember that it’s over and about to be released.
indieactivity : The Release
Tommy Baker : I literally just started cold emailing acquisition departments of distribution companies all over the world with a couple of paragraphs explaining the idea of the documentary and a trailer of the then totally unfinished film. Not only did I secure a deal that actually made sense to me but over the next few months I received several more offers based on those original emails I had sent out. Once we had the film fully completed Uncork’d started setting up a digital release which is coming up on March 17 and we have been working with a PR company to get the word out about this movie to those that might be interested in this type of story.
indieactivity : Advice from the Filmmaker?
Tommy Baker : I’m not sure that I’m in a place to give advice to any aspiring filmmakers but for what it’s worth I’ll say the same thing I have heard a lot of my heroes say, and it’s what got this documentary done. Never give up. Even if you have a full time job, three kids, a wife or husband– even if you can only dedicate an hour each week to your craft or your project, just keep moving forward.
With a budget and a team of filmmakers this documentary could have been shot in a couple of months. That wasn’t an option for me but I kept my head down. If I didn’t know what else to do I would just go walk the cemetery. I don’t know why but it would give me hope. So many times things fell in to place by what seemed like coincidence. If you can be lucky enough to find a story that just wants to be told, that won’t shut up, I feel for you. It wasn’t my spirit that kept me going it was the documentary itself, pushing me, not taking no for an answer.
It took me out of my comfort zone countless times but I wouldn’t change anything for the world. This story and the film it became made me who I am today. If I never make a dime off of it, it will still be way beyond worth all of the time, personal funds, and blood sweat and tears that I put into this. So if you are out there and you want to make a documentary, find a story you care about, that will push you, and run with it. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not worth it, because trust me I heard that many times, and it definitely was worth it, beyond the shadow of a doubt.
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