A People’s History of Crawford Documentary Tells Crawfordites’ Story — Interview With David Modigliani, Filmmaker

AUSTIN, Texas David Modigliani was once like every other American who knew nothing about Crawford, Texas.

For all he knew, President George W. Bush was originally from there.

But what separated Modigliani from every other other American was his curiosity.

And his willingness to make a documentary about Crawford from the residents’ perspective.

That film, aptly titled Crawford, premieres at Austin’s SXSW Film Festival, Saturday, March 8, at 4 p.m., at the Paramount Theatre.

It runs again on Monday, March 10, at 11 a.m. and the following Saturday, March 15, at 1:30 p.m.

Lazy folks in North Texas can wait for it to play a few weeks later at the AFI Dallas Film Festival which begins March 27.

What viewers of Crawford will see is less Fahrenheit 9/11 prose but more American Beauty poetry.

Perhaps they’ll also imagine their own hometowns stuck in the middle of chaos and confusion thanks to political power plays.

“Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right” is a lyric that comes to mind.

But empathy for the denizen is exactly what Modigliani has.

Now, the 28-year-old director could have included the city councilmen, mayors, and the small enclave of black residents had he had the time and money.

So he hit the highlights: high school students, a school teacher, a football coach, a coffee shop owner, a souvenir shop owner, a horse breaker, a preacher, and a newspaper publisher.

The struggle they all have in common is the media’s representation of them as backward yokels.

Their differences lie in their ability to understand and interact with the world around them in the shadow of the president’s vacation ranchette a few miles down the road.

So how did Modigliani gain such access to a town so jaded by the conflict the media craves?

Answer: He just treated them with respect.

The first time Modigliani stepped inside the Coffee Station with its famed cardboard cutouts of Dubya et al., it was as if the needle had fallen off the record player.

“Who’s this feller?” was the look the farmers and ranchers gave him as they drank their coffee at 5 a.m.

“As soon as the people we talked to realized that we were more interested in their stories, they were very generous, warm, and funny,” he told the Iconoclast. “They had fun talking to people about what they wanted to talk about rather than a news story or something.”

Indeed, Modigliani made damn sure he stood out of the way of their stories.

“I never injected my politics into conversation. I think that helped people think they could tell their story and that we weren’t trying to push any particular viewpoint,” he noted.

It also helped that Modigliani began building these relationships and his credibility before those 26 days in August 2005 when all hell broke loose.

Above every other protest group that descended on Crawford, Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain U.S.