Stranger Than Fiction: Erwin, let me start with you, because you kind of got this started. What got you interested in this subject and set you on the course of writing this book?

Erwin Strauss: I saw a movie in the 1950s called Passport to Pimlico. It served the function for me that The Mouse That Roared served to a lot of other people. It was about a person who discovered that he had a charter that entitled him to secede from the United Kingdom in this little neighborhood in London somewhere. Hilarity ensued, and eventually everything ended with a reconciliation, which always disappointed me. I wanted to see the thing continue indefinitely. Later on I got interested in the prospect of a predecessor to internet gambling, if it had worked out, taking bets by citizens’ band radio on a ship on the high seas. If I were successful at that I would have ended up doing internet gambling.

STF: So you were taking the bets?

Strauss: Yeah, we were taking the bets. But for one reason or another it didn’t quite work out. But I had done a lot of research leading up to it, and some years later my publisher suggested, why don’t you put it together into a book? So that I did, and it has sort of become a cottage industry over time. People keep coming back to me and asking about this or that, and I give them a little file of countries that I hear of.

STF: Jody, you came across this book and that’s what got you started making the film, is that right?

Jody Shapiro: Yeah, probably about seven or eight years ago I came across the book at a bookstore on St. Mark’s place, and I was just fascinated by it. I picked it up, and the title alone grabbed me because it was a concept that I never heard of. And people were actually doing this. When you flip through the book there are examples of people trying to do it. I think Sealand and Hutt River are in the book. The more I started talking about it, the more I started researching with Denis, we realized this is a pretty big topic, mostly because it was very hard to define what makes a country. Through the micronation, we thought, why not make a film that explores that topic?

STF: Denis, were you part of the United Nations shoot here?

Denis Seguin: Yeah, unlike most writers on documentaries I actually went on every shoot, just for the food alone.

STF: Can you talk about what it took to film at the United Nations, and how that went?

Seguin: If you are watching closely, there are quite a few coups in there. We had the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations. Hooking them was really big. Just to get into the U.N. is fairly straightforward, but its tremendously bureaucratic. Once we were there, they were sort of nervous about what we were planning on doing, but we were able to cajole them. At one point, when we were shooting in the General Assembly, I played a game where I was taking the woman who were making sure we weren’t doing anything wrong, and telling them a joke and leading them up the hallway so that Jody could set the camera up quickly and Gregory could do his moment. We didn’t want to go right up to the podium.

STF: You got close.

Seguin: We got very close.

STF: Gregory, can you bring us up to date on the Free State of Caroline, and is everybody here allowed to join?

Gregory Green: Everybody’s allowed to join as a citizen. All you have to do is send me your contact information, and you don’t even have to say please. We have a very open immigration policy. Actually, the documentary has been very good in terms of the citizenship level, we’re now up to almost 4,000. Actually, I’m an artist, and this project is part of a whole series of works that I’m doing. What I talk about in the U.N. speech of claiming all of the disputed states is an upcoming show that I’m doing. But Caroline is doing very well, and I’ve actually found two other small little islands that kind of fit the criteria to potentially become another state. But in reality it’s a large responsibility, and I’m not sure I want to do that.

Audience: What was the artistic vision behind the interviews?

Shapiro: Most of them were obviously the countries that we went to, and we were fortunate to get some pretty stunning places. The composition of it, I wanted to treat these leaders as heads of state in some sense, and give them the royal portrait kind of look. But just the idea of space and environment, bringing Erwin to the sea was, I thought, a nice touch. I didn’t want to bring someone to an office. And to contrast the leaders and the people associated with the micronational world, with the world, and then have the experts someplace neutral.

Audience: I’m a sociologist and we teach that the definition of a state is the entity that has the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. If I remember Prince Roy of Sealand was tied up by those German sailors and then the British actually rescued him.

Strauss: No, he rescued himself. They put him and his family in a boat that went to England, and he came back one night in a helicopter with a baseball bat. They showed the Germans being lined up there, that was his own doing. As the commentator noted in the film, there was never at any time the involvement of the British authorities, which, as he put it, established that Sealand was a law into itself.

Audience: How come that definition was never mentioned in the film.

Seguin: Strictly speaking, there is no legal definition. So what we refer to, and what a lot of the micronation community refers to is the Montevideo Accord. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was trying to assert himself globally, he convened a number of nations of the New World, if you want to use that expression. Erwin, you wrote about this—

Strauss: The current codification of the line goes back to the Middle Ages. One of the principles was a territory, a population and defense of the territory by the use of arms.

Audience: How did you choose which micronations to film, and were there any that you shot that you didn’t end up using?

Shapiro: There are a lot out there, you can Google micronations and a lot will pop up. They range from kids and their parents to places like Hutt River. We had a big list and went through it. I was looking for two things. One, the story behind it, because ultimately, there were a lot of compelling stories that we wanted to hear. Each place represents a different idea of what a country could be. Each person had a very unique story to tell. Just because of budget and time, we went to about 16 different countries to shoot the six micronations that we went to. We had to really narrow it down, so basically everything that we shot is on there.

Strauss: You also said you had a preference for the places where the food was good.

Schapiro: Yeah, if you ever go to Seborga, there’s a great restaurant there.

Audience: I was wondering about Sealand. Did you get in there, and what was it like in there?

Shapiro: I’ll be honest. Unfortunately, Sealand had a fire right before I got there. Which was okay because Sealand plays a big part in the history of micronations, so I wanted to portray them through the stock footage that we had. So we couldn’t get up to the tower. But to even get in the waters we had to apply for a visa three times, we got denied. So it took us three years, and that’s not a joke. If you ever write them and want to go visit, they’re pretty strict. They finally came around and we shot them in their home in the U.K.

Audience: What are some of the interesting stories that you decided not to go with for whatever reason? Why did you decide not to focus on the larger micronations?

Shapiro: Again, it was something that we thought about a lot, where do you draw the line. I wanted this to be about the micronational world, these personal stories, and about what these places represent. The minute we start getting into states that are really fighting for something, politics comes into the way. I wanted to show that the idea of country could be a lot more than politics and borders and policies, so we wanted to keep it on that front.

Strauss: That’s why the book is called “How to Start Your Own Country.” My criterion was something that some individual or small group could actually intentionally undertake to do, rather than some existing ethnic group that lived in a territory and then decides to secede. That’s a whole different dynamic, and is not much help to the average reader interested in starting his own country.

Gregory: I would add that it’s also about each one of you rethinking your own relationship to your own state, your own nation, and the relationship between nations in general. Globally, things are changing a lot, from individuals to small groups. Countries have been changing regularly without the use of violence—the Arab Spring, the Arab Summer. There’s endless examples of that. A lot of that is a single one of you stepping back and rethinking how the world works.

Audience: As a fellow Canadian, I want to know if the Quebec issue had any effect on the film, and the other question is, do any women start countries?

Seguin: First of all, Quebec was tricky, and we did actually have a sit-down interview with the Canadian ambassador to the U.N. And before we even started rolling he said, I just want to say one thing, I can’t talk about Quebec. That did sort of set it up for us that we wouldn’t talk about Quebec. And also, we had some interesting, individual stories to tell. In terms of women, I think it’s safe to say that this is a lot about royal sceptres, big egos. Women basically have more common sense.

Audience: It appears that the host countries, I guess you’d call them, tolerate the micronations. Can you expound on that?

Shapiro: It did vary pretty widely, and Kevin Baugh, the president of Molossia, was very circumspect about what he did and did not do. He said he did everything up to the point where he thinks the FBI is going to roll up his driveway. He really doesn’t push it. Prince Leonard [of Hutt River] pushes it. I think he did one day in prison in the early 70s, and the MP Barry Hoss told us they made a mistake with Hutt River. They thought it was a joke, they had written the letters, Dear Prince Leonard, and it came back and bit Australia in the ass. They said, we made a mistake, we treated him as a joke and the joke has backfired, so now let’s just ignore him. Similarly, in England, we tried to talk to the foreign office. And of course, the foreign office says it’s got nothing to do with us, you need to talk to the home office. And the home office said it’s got nothing to do with us because we don’t acknowledge any of that.

Strauss: With Sealand, the courts decided that Sealand was outside of British jurisdiction. It was a rather low court and the government could have easily appealed it. But by that point the tabloids had gotten ahold of it, and the government was going to be made a laughingstock, and they reacted the same way as Australia and just ignored it.

STF: Erwin, I don’t know how much of a chance you’ve had to visit some of these countries. Was the film eye-opening to you in the ability to vicariously travel to some of these places?

Strauss: Yes, I hadn’t been to any of these countries, so it was interesting to actually see things I had researched in the library and written about. And here they are, living, breathing people out there doing things.

Audience: There was a riot in Australia a few years back where people hadn’t paid their taxes, and then barricaded their land and declared independence. The federal government arrested the farmer, who wrote a letter to the United Nations saying his country had been invaded, and could the Security Council do something about it. His pleas were ignored and the guy is in jail.

Strauss: I’m not familiar with that situation. I think because Prince Leonard is not actively farming, and because he has various legal angles, that’s why he doesn’t pay any taxes. Not because they think he doesn’t live in Australia anymore. As I’ve said, as far as farming goes, he’s semi-retired and probably lives off of savings, and probably has very little taxable income to report.

Audience: Have you renounced your U.S. citizenship? And if you do, who takes you then?

Green: No, I haven’t. But I will say about the previous question about the FBI, I have a massive FBI file, but it’s not because of the micronation.

Strauss: As for the legal implication, you go to any embassy or consulate of the U.S. and declare that you are no longer legally a citizen. Where you go after that, that’s your problem from then on. There was one famous case—the Dart family which made its fortune making foam cups. He cut a deal with Costa Rica, officially renounced his citizenship, became a citizen of Costa Rica and was appointed the consul of Costa Rica in Orlando, which is where he lived. There he was, living in the U.S. and not a U.S. citizen or subject to U.S. taxes. This lasted until somebody in the State Department got wind of it and declared him persona non grata as the consul of Costa Rica. Usually the U.S. is pretty lenient about letting people become Americans again, you’ve got to give them credit for that. When I was working on this gambling ship project, the question of whether I might need to do that arose if the U.S. started to crack down. Costa Rica is known as a very friendly country for that sort of thing. For a few dollars more they’ll give you a passport and citizenship, they’re not particularly picky about it.

[Q&A is edited for length and clarity]

Judith Helfand [Co-founder, Chicken & Egg Pictures]: I met Gail at a film festival in 2002, and she was there with Daughter from Danang. Dan Gold and I were there with Blue Vinyl. It’s always a funny thing to meet someone in competition and then they become your best friends. They won this top award and Dan won a cinematography award, and we sat together late into the evening and she was like, I’m really sorry, I love your movie. I told her, my mother said if we were going to lose to a movie, we should lose to yours, because she learned more about Vietnam from your movie than any other. You never know how a little film festival can turn into a lifetime, or at least twelve years. This tribute was made with incredible love and lots of friends sent all sorts of material they had, and snippets from their movies. We made it with the idea that it was for people who didn’t know her, who would have loved her had they had the chance to get to know her.

What’s unique about Barber from Birmingham is that she partnered with a still photographer, Robin Fryday. The idea for this movie really was an inspiration of Robin’s. It was the year before the election for President Obama. Robin said one day, I’m really excited for this election, but can you imagine? There must be foot soldiers that fought for the right to vote who laid their lives on the line, and they might still be around. Can you imagine going through all of that and then living long enough to vote for an African American president. She just thought that was extraordinary. So she went to Birmingham and spent a couple of weeks there. And everyone kept saying, have you been to the barbershop, have you met the barber of Birmingham. And she finally did. She thought she’d just go and say hi for the morning, and six hours later she came out. The only problem was that she’d never made a movie. She came back to the Bay area and was talking to her hairdresser. She said, I found this extraordinary man and story and I need a filmmaker who really knows how to make a movie who could take this vision that I have and make this happen. And it just so happened, Gail had been to the hairdresser the day before and had been investigating this story, To Kill a Mockingbird and was really trying to make this movie about the person who wrote it. It looked like she had all of this extraordinary access and it kind of fell through, and she really wanted to make a film exploring civil rights. She knew it was going to be her last movie, and she wanted to dedicated her last breaths of work into something around those issues. So Gail and Robin met and this movie came out of that. I got to spend some time right before Gail passed away. We had a conversation and she and Robin thought it was going to be a feature, they were finalists for ITVS feature funding. I said, not everything gets to be a feature, you kind of have everything about Mr. Armstrong that you need. What if we made it a short, what if we preserved all of your edits? And that’s what we decided to do. We had a production meeting on her hospice bed a few days before she passed away. We went through the movie and talked about archival footage and the music. We asked her about the archival footage and she got this funny look on her face and said, it’s all footage from Eyes on the Prize VHS tapes, I don’t know where any of its from. Then I asked her about the music and she said, I know where that’s from, and you need to use every single bit of it. She said, I have this history of using really expensive temp music, don’t change any of it. And so we didn’t. It cut like butter and Gail was with us all the way through, and it got into Sundance. For three months after her death we got to spend this extraordinary time with her. I hope I get to go like that, talking about a movie that you love more than anything else in the world, and getting to talk about your work, and being able to pass on something that you really care about and not worry.

Sunshine Ludder [Associate Producer, Daughter from Danang]: Gail was so good in life and in her work in bringing compassion to people and where they were coming from. The making of Daughter from Danang was interesting on so many levels and I feel that it was reflective of who Gail was as a person and a filmmaker on so many levels. Gail never gave up on this film, and we all kind of helped each other. At one point it took, I think, four rounds to get funding from ITVS and other sources to get any money for the film. What I came to learn about Gail was that her whole life was an artistic practice. She had a real capability to connect with people in interviews, both in this film and in other projects, and their stories. It was phenomenal, and I think one of her greatest gifts. I’ll also just say that Gail inspired me a lot as a filmmaker, as a woman, trying to be creative in this world, and have a voice and share other voices. We’ve heard from countless adoptees from Vietnam and other parts of the world just how much this film spoke to them, and spoke to part of their experience that so often goes unspoken. Also, to people who have given up children in war circumstances, or had their children taken from them. Gail’s personal experience as an activist against the Vietnam War really brought her into the film, because she knew [Tran Tuong] Nhu, who you saw in the film, through her activism, which is how this film even happened. One of the things that meant a lot to me in making this film was how much this film really speaks to the long-term consequences of war. To the losses of families and children and mothers, and how so much of that is irreparable damage. This film really brought that to life, which is so often forgot in the counting of immediate casualties, in the counting of bombs.

[Q&A has been edited for length and clarity]

Audience: I was wondering if you spoke to the NHL about what they’re doing for substance abuse. There were a few players who passed away this summer. Do they have a solid program in place?

Alex Gibney: The NHL does have a substance abuse program. That guy Dan Cronin, whose face the NHL asked us to blur out, does reach out to people. I think they’re also thinking about what to do in light of some of these recent deaths.

Stranger Than Fiction: Maybe for some of the non-hockey fans you could contextualize why this film is so relevant right now.

Gibney: Right. For people who haven’t been following hockey, there’s that card at the end that says three enforcers have died in the last five months, maybe. A guy named Derek Boogard from the Rangers, Rick Rypien and also a guy named Wade Belak most recently, not too long before the Toronto Film Festival. So there’s lots of concerns related to all kinds of things. Not only the role of the enforcer, but in the case of Bob Probert, who died last year, they found plaque buildup in his brain which indicates damage from a concussion. Chris Nilan would say, in his view, there were fewer concussions back in his day because he as an enforcer protected other folks. And it is true, a lot of the concussions come from impact. Players are very fast now. I think the idea that when these enforcers get out, they have a very hard time knowing where to put the stuff that allowed them to be enforcers in the first place, once they’re off the ice.

STF: Chris Nilan came to the premiere in Toronto, can you talk about what that experience was like for him?

Gibney: We had not shown Chris the film before we showed it in Toronto, and it was very tough for Chris to watch, particularly the bits with his Dad. That was very hard for him to see, his father talking about how he was ashamed of him, which he hadn’t seen before. It was a very moving, emotional experience. But I must say that when Chris came down in front of everybody he got a standing ovation for a long time.

Audience: Can you talk about when you entered Chris’s story and his life, and about how you determined you needed to shoot the film a certain way to fill us in on the back details.

Gibney: The original assignment of the story was to—we were approached by a group, some of whom were NHL owners, to do a film about hockey enforcers. We were going out and trying to find good ones to film. Larry found Chris and did the first interview with him, and we began to realize, wow, this guy is something. He’s a really powerful character. And it seemed to make sense to dig in deeper and deeper with Chris and follow him over a good period of time. I think that was the key to the production in this case. We didn’t have the plan to do the Chris Nilan story at the beginning, it emerged because Chris was such a powerful character. Jim, who’s the editor, came up with a structure that would alternate Chris’s story with the other enforcers’ stories. I think the key thing was realizing over time to have the confidence in Chris’s story because he was such a powerful character, and that really guided us.

Audience: I was really curious about whether you had the cooperation of his wife, because I was struck by her absence in the film and the toll it took on his immediate family. Is there a reason why that’s not in there?

Gibney: I think, initially, it was because Chris really didn’t want to go there.

Audience: How did Chris come to be where he is today with the public speaking?

Larry Weitzman: You always have to make choices about what you’re going to put in. It’s not like he became a world-renowned public speaker. He’s very much at the beginning of this. He met with a speech coach, and he got a chance, and the chance he got was in the Arctic Circle talking to Inuit kids. And subsequent to that he has done some back-up radio work in Montreal, which has been good for him. While he is a compelling speaker in an interview, he does struggle to write stuff down. It’s an ongoing struggle for him.

Audience: Are there more NHL programs offered to the enforcers when they’re about to retire?

Gibney: Every league has a bunch of that. Every league will get all the players in there and tell them, don’t do drugs, watch out for these symptoms, watch out for those symptoms. Every possible program is rolled out there. The real question is, are they effective? What else can be done? And is it just, as some of the commentators have indicated, that once they’re out of hockey they’re going to have a hard time. That’s a real debate.

Weitzman: Chris did say when he was there they had programs, and people talk to them about it until they’re blue in the face, and they don’t pay any attention until they’re out of it, and they’re like, oh my god, what do I do now? I don’t know how many times he went into rehab, but he could call them at any time and they would go get him and take him to rehab. So they were there for him, I don’t think they turned their back on him.

Gibney: To be fair to some of the people trying to help him, Chris had trouble adjusting to authority outside of hockey before his drinking started to really take over.

[Q&A has been edited for length and clarity]