If you didn’t get a chance to check out Kung-Fu Elliot at Fantastic Fest, I highly suggest you do whenever the film becomes available. The film chronicling two years in the life of Elliot “White Lightning” Scott, a martial artist with big ambitions and determined to become Canada’s first action hero, was definitely one of my biggest surprises at the fest so far. After checking out the doc I definitely had some questions for the filmmaking duo behind the film, Jaret Belliveau & Matthew Bauckman, who were kind enough to fill me in on what it was like spending two years with Elliot in his strange little world.
How did you come across Elliot and what made you want to do a documentary on him?
Matt: Basically it was years ago when I was in film school my dad would send me any articles about filmmaking in New Brunswick, and there was a few articles about Elliot and his movie They Killed My Cat. The article on how he was selling himself as a martial artist, an award winning filmmaker and the fact that his movie was called They Killed My Cat just always stuck with me.
When Jared and I started working together and wanted to do a documentary that was based in Maritime, we both actually came across the actual trailer for They Killed My Cat. We thought it was really wild and we wanted to meet with Elliot.
Jaret: Maritime Provinces is 4 provinces off the east coast in Canada, it’s pretty desolate in terms of the film world or much coverage on stories here. Also the limitation of doing something low budget, we knew doing something local would be the best plan, because we could afford it pull it off ourselves.
How long were you shooting and when did it become apparent things weren’t quite what Elliot led you to believe?
Jaret: We shot for over 2 years and there was always an inkling that some of the things Elliot was saying could be an exaggeration. But we thought a lot of it was innocent, we were very much looking to tell an underdog story.
After China, obviously there was a strong suggestion of what was going on and we kind started to get the idea that things were not going so well for Elliot and Linda’s relationship. But we never saw it coming until we walked into the fetish party, that last weekend was when everything was revealed.
That last final weekend with the fetish party, was when the true story revealed itself. We had no idea that was going to happen. We started the movie thinking we were going to make this light-hearted tale about this group of likeable people trying to do the impossible.
I was mostly intrigued about what made this man tick, and all these people that were around him their story and their relationship was really so weird we had to figure out what was making that work.
I think the most disarming thing about the film is because the viewer can identify with Elliot especially at an event like Fantastic Fest, the film really lulls the viewer into a false sense of security until you pull the rug out from under them.
Jaret: We really wanted to mimic our experience in the movie, because Matt and I ended up editing , shooting and directing it ourselves, we were just a team of three people and it took a lot for us to get back to a good place of seeing Elliot. How we saw him at the start and how we saw him at the end and mimic that for the viewer.
Matt: It was definitely a case of investigating a doc and getting too close or too deep. When we started editing and we had to take a step back to get that objectivity back again. We could definitely relate to him, we were low-budget filmmakers, making a film about a low budget filmmaker. A lot of people can relate to that.
Jaret: I think anyone who has been creative and has dreams can relate to him, especially in the beginning, not wanting the reality to sink in and just go for something. We felt the same way and didn’t even own a camera when we made this movie.
Matt: We still don’t own a camera.
Do you think Elliot did those things because he was on camera or do you just feel he had gotten too comfortable?
Jaret: Elliot’s a local legend; the more we started to get to know Elliot the more we started to hear other stories. Some of them were pretty wow. I am not thinking that was for us, necessarily, who knows maybe the stalker wouldn’t have appeared if we weren’t there. But for a good documentary you need your subject to be comfortable.
We filmed for two years and Elliot was always an open book, it was just mostly Linda and making sure we could get her story across, that was the more challenging part.
What was one of the strangest things you witnessed during your time with Elliot?
(Laughs)
Matt: That’s a loaded question.
Jaret: I think for me when we got to China and really saw what he was really doing there, was pretty shocking. I didn’t know what to do. Morally as well it was an interesting situation, you’re making a movie about this couple and part of that team is being unfaithful.
Matt: We tried to edit the arc of it to mimic our experience, because when we were in China things got a lot darker as far as what Elliot was telling us about all the women he was flirting with. Linda was really opening up to us a lot at that point too. There was definitely that moral conundrum of what do you do?
We had approached the film to do it in a very objective style. We definitely didn’t expect Jared to become a character in the film, but that is something that just happened.
BEWARE SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF THE FILM BENEATH THIS POINT!
That definitely leads into my next question, what made you guys decide to break that wall of objectivity as documentarians at the end of the film, where you confront Elliot?
Jaret: I would say at that point I was completely in Elliot’s world. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it just happened. I really hoped Linda was going to stick up for herself.
We had talked to Linda about us filming and she wanted to film that last scene when she was confronting Elliot, she was so certain she was going to stay strong and get Elliot out of her life. She was just being manipulated and had been for a long time in front of us and I just lost my temper. I was just so disgusted at that moment and then he went and attacked me. He punched me in the back of the head seven or eight times.
Matt: We had contemplated about keeping it in or not, but that is what really happened. We were characters too, so we had to have the same objective lens on ourselves. It showed all the people in the movie some respect.
I know there had to be some extra footage like with all docs; will any of that end up on the DVD or Blu-ray?
Jaret: We do have a lot of extra stuff for the Blu-ray; we also have brand new trailers for Elliot’s movies. We also have an exclusive Blood Fight trailer. I really hope Elliot comes back from inner Mongolia and starts talking to us again, we were in conversations with him and he almost came to Fantastic Fest, we haven’t seen him since that final scene.
Matt: We just started talking to him again a little while ago.
Jaret: Hopefully we can bring him to a premiere of the film; we just really want to make sure it’s a really good experience for him. We all have our own demons, but we really want to figure out how to make that happen. I’ve forgiven Elliot a long time ago.
Any updates on anyone else?
Matt: Blair is still recording music pretty regularly, the guy who did the Blood Fight theme. He just recorded a song called Scally Wag Row, which is this awesome pirate song. He’s just been busy doing music videos and acting as much as possible.
Blake got a few roles after the movie.
Jaret: Blake is taking courses to teach English in China. He wants to join Elliot in inner Mongolia.
We haven’t been able to touch base at all with Linda, she’s disappeared, we just want to get Elliot back from China. I think it would be great for him if he could meet Chuck Norris thanks to this film.