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“Stereotypes Help People Delegitimize Other People and Ideas They Want to Distance Themselves From”: Michael Premo on Homegrown
Homegrown While the eruption of violence at the US Capitol on January 6th left most Americans dazed and confused — and too many journalists and talking heads scrambling to dissect the psyche of the rioters as if they were extraterrestrial beings and not our actual next-door neighbors — multimedia artist Michael Premo had been listening and filming throughout the summer of 2020 with open ears and eyes all along. His Venice-debuting Homegrown follows three diverse (yes, diverse) Trump-supporting “patriots”: an excited young father-to-be (to a biracial child) in New Jersey, an Air Force vet and rightwing organizer in “liberal” NYC, and the only person of color and red state resident of the trio, an activist in Texas who finds common cause with BLM. It’s an up close study in how movements get built by true believers seeking camaraderie and connection. Albeit ones whose passion and enthusiasm can sometimes reach a dangerous tipping point, spiraling beyond any single individual’s control.
Just prior to the DCTV Firehouse Cinema theatrical premiere of Homegrown (December 6th, with Amy Goodman moderating the Q&A), Filmmaker caught up with the award-winning director, whose past co-creations, with his longtime collaborator and producer Rachel Falcone, include the participatory documentary Sandy Storyline (recipient of the Jury Award at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival), the site-specific performance Sanctuary (for the Working Theater), and the multiplatform exhibit 28th Amendment.
Filmmaker: In addition to being a filmmaker and journalist you also work in radio, theater, installation and photography. Which made me wonder if you’d ever considered another medium for Homegrown. Was this always going to be a documentary?
Premo: Like all of our projects, Homegrown started with a question: How does homegrown political violence come to be justified, and normalized? How does someone get to that point? An early idea on the whiteboard was to explore this question through a mixed media exhibit composed of an arrangement of photos and objects. But as we poked at the question it immediately became clear it had to be a documentary. It was important to hear directly from people. And even better, to see their emotional development over time.
After reading a few dozen recent nonfiction books on the topic and watching as many films as we could find, I found very few investigations followed people over an extended period. Especially with journalistic rigor and an observational approach. There were lots of theories and vague pronouncements based on conjecture and rumors, but very few firsthand accounts from the people that, now after the 2024 election, many realize we need to better understand.
We were sensitive to the pitfalls but thought that, when compared to an interview-based film, an observational approach offered a powerful way to explore how people come to believe what they believe and the emotions inherent in that journey. Most of the headlines trying to diagnose the results of the 2024 election are topics we explore in the film. As a result Homegrown might be the only documentary that captured one of the most consequential moments in American history this century from the passenger seat, as it unfolded.
Filmmaker: How did you narrow down your characters to the three that ultimately appear in the doc? What made this trio stand out from all the other “patriots” you filmed with?
Premo: We started filming in 2018, and we got to spend several years with a number of people around the country. The pandemic supercharged the political realignment that had been in motion for the previous decade. It also meant we had to stop filming with several people.
But there was so much happening that we met new people and landed with a bunch of compelling participants. In pre-production we’d decided that the film would work best with protagonists who interact with each other, or who are in direct conflict with each other in some way. We arrived at the final three participants out of many possible options because they represented broad trends in the movement that we had observed in our reporting, and they were most closely connected to each other or to the same events. Thad and his friend group represented the increasing multicultural participation in the movement. Chris is an example of a young man who never paid much attention to politics before Donald Trump. But, as we see in the film, Trump spoke to his feelings of frustration and alienation. And Randy is the tireless behind-the-scenes organizer, full of ideas and passion for the cause, that is the backbone of any movement.
Filmmaker: You’ve mentioned that one of your biggest surprises regarding the patriot movement was seeing how many folks of color are drawn to it. This is by no means an exclusively white community anymore. So did this multiracial “openness” make it any easier for you as a Black filmmaker to gain the trust of those you were filming with? Or were you still met with skepticism as part of the broader “media”?
Premo: Like with other documentary work we’ve done we were met with a fair amount of skepticism. But encountering so many people of color I realized I had more in common with some of these activists than I expected.
We discovered that the patriot movement is full of more ideas and types of people than is typically portrayed in the media and national discussions. And I get it, stereotypes help people delegitimize other people and ideas they want to distance themselves from. But I think this lack of understanding — and frankly, often a lack of interest in even trying to better understand — is what contributed to the Democratic Party losing the White House and both houses of Congress in 2024. We approached the movement as we would any other, with a genuine curiosity, of wanting to understand.
Filmmaker: Homegrown played Venice, and you’ve since screened both nationally and internationally, so I’m curious to hear what’s been the various reactions from audiences at home and abroad. Have any big similarities and/or differences stood out to you?
Premo: We set out to make an honest, no judgment, study of the people heeding the clarion call of “us vs. them” politics. Social movements with this outlook are winning elections around the world. Homegrown is at once a unique record of a transformative moment in US history, and an urgent sign of those to come.
That urgency is visible in the strong reaction we’ve gotten to the film in Europe, in places like Italy, Sweden, Greece, Germany, France, and Spain. (Starting at the Venice Film Festival in a country with a nationalist Prime Minister.) European programmers and broadcasters have been much more eager to encourage conversations. There is a palpable interest in discussing the future of democracy in a way we don’t see here in the US.
Americans can be resistant to reconciling with our history, whether that history is four years ago or 400 years ago. The US is not alone in cherrypicking versions of history that suit our interests at any give moment, but we certainly excel at that. And both conservatives and liberals seem like they’d prefer to forget the 2020 election and the unlearned lessons that continue to haunt us all. But the film is starting to get out there because it addresses so many questions people have about the uncertainty of this moment.
Filmmaker: What are your ultimate hopes for the film, especially now that Trump will be back in the White House come January?
Premo: The results of the election made the film even more relevant than it was. These days so many of us are so siloed in our bubbles that we rarely interact with anyone with different perspectives. This contributes to a pattern of reducing people who have differing opinions to one-dimensional caricatures. But people are complex. Systems of power are complex. When we reduce people to stereotypes, the proposed answers to our challenges become oversimplified.
Too often we define ourselves by our differences instead of understanding our similarities. I hope people walk away from this film with a taste of the nuance and complexity of people they might not agree with. People of all stripes wrestle with similar aspirations and frustrations. That suggests our disagreements and problems are not intractable. And that presents many opportunities for hope.
