Dreamkeeper Critique

Submitted by Dwight Youpee
Dear Friend:
I am sending you a copy of a short piece I submitted to The Los
Angeles Times COUNTERPUNCH column, which they may print and may not.
Any comments? A Happy New Year to all
Best, Hanay Geiogamah


DEFEATED BY SPECIAL EFFECTS

Thoughts on the ABC-TV Mini-Series DREAMKEEPER

DREAMKEEPER is a sprawling, $11 million mishmash of Indian hokum,
somewhat entertaining owing to the attractiveness of its two central
characters as well as its audacious take on Native American
storytelling, but also disappointing. The disappointment lies
mainly in the show's consistent difficulty in insinuating a human
element into the hellzapoppin' techno tellings of tribal stories that
are the film's main attraction. I don't believe Indian myths and
legends actually were so drenched in the phantasmagorical and the
outright supernatural as they are so extravagantly dramatized in
Dreamkeeper. The large Native cast, in a cavalcade of cameo-like
appearances, wasn't strongly enough directed to compete with the
intensity of the special effects

This beautifully photographed and scored film needed a firmer,
wiser-in-the-particulars-of-Indian-characters directorial hand to
strike a successful balance between the telling and relating of the
tribal myths, legends and stories and the gritty, often sad
complexities of contemporary Native American life. The human Indian
characters were all too often blocked out of the stories, and any
resonating meaning or relativity left mostly inchoate or eclipsed by
the lavish spectacle. And John Fusco's sprawling script contained
more clunky Indian-speak than one would expect from this accomplished
writer.

The overnight Neilsen ratings for DREAMKEEPER showed 9.84 million
viewers tuned in for the telecast. Add on millions more for the
worldwide broadcasts, re-runs, video and DVDs.

A good thing---millions in America and around the world partaking
in a Native American-themed offering on network television larger and
more dazzling than any Hollywood product since DANCES WITH WOLVES?
Many Indian people will be convinced that this is indeed a very good
thing, a great event. It is us! Us!

But it is only part us, and a lot not us. Indian creative
people must be careful not to be enticed by and lured in by
DREAMKEEPER's staggering exotification of our myths, legends and
cultural heroes. We have ingested more of the non-Indian media
mythification of our histories, cultures and realities than we will
be able to fully expunge from our creative agendas for some time to
come.

What specifically did the film makers fail to do, and what
could they have done to avoid the mistakes? The main problem, in my
opinion, was the non-Indian director who had little apparent
experience in working with Indian actors, either in a period
production or in a contemporary storyline. The actors seemed
under-rehearsed, indulged, allowed to fall back on clichéd instincts,
vocalizations, gestures, physical tics and posturing. The result was
often stiff and wooden, especially in the first two hours on the
first evening. A Native American assistant director, one with
experience working with Indian actors, should have been employed and
entrusted to deal with this.

Many actors have found themselves in shows where the director
provided inadequate support, insight or guidance in shaping their
roles, and Dreamkeeper apparently is an example of such a production.
Is it the responsibility of the actors to seek to correct such a
situation-with the director, the producers, the studio or network?
Until the overall situation for Native American actors improves, it
is necessary to rely on those invaluable assets of learned knowledge,
experience, instinct and technique. Acting is creating real and
extraordinary characters, not simply reading the lines and hitting
the marks and wearing the replica costumes and makeup.

The film's two leads, August Schellenberg and Eddie Spears, were
fortunate in that they mostly did not have to compete directly with
the special effects. Mr. Schellenberg's Grandpa remained
throughout a laconic, wise, crusty caricature of an Indian
grandfather who is at the core of 95% of the movie, telling the
stories, providing the lead-ins, the segues, the summaries, the wit,
the ironic suggestiveness, the humor of it all. But the script rarely
allowed him to give his grandson anything like the benefit of a doubt
that the stereotypically troubled youth could think for himself and
put a mystical two together with another mystical two.

Eddie Spears was good all the way through, the best performance
in the show. His performance gave glimpses of what Indian acting can
and ought to be on the road ahead. I also liked Alex Rice as a
Mohawk maiden and Gil Birmingham as Eddie Spear's father. Delana
Studie was also impressive as the sister of a white captive. These
performances all showed resourcefulness and confidence.

Writer John Fusco could have worked with a co-writer who is
Native American. He is obviously a talented and creative writer, but
even the author of Thunderheart would have benefited from the checks,
balances and interpretations that an Indian mind could have brought
to the adaptation process. The writers who produced the scripts for
the five films in the Turner Network Television series in the 90's
all were agreeable to and grateful for help in editing and rethinking
most of the clichéd situations, speeches, and stage directions in
each of their scripts.

All of the Indian myths and legends I have heard told or read or
that I have adapted to the stage are mostly accessible in their
storytelling styles and scope and rarely rely on or even contain
gigantic portions of the fantastic and the supernatural. The human
element and presence is unmistakably a central component of these
tales because the human imagination must be able to see and
comprehend the fantastic and the supernatural from a human point of
view in order to derive meaning from them. A lot of Dreamkeeper's
special effects creations evoked in me much of the imagery and shapes
and sounds I relate to the very early Greek myths, titans, gods and
supernatural powers in Hesiod, creatures, not human beings: a
writhing, hissing, multi-tentacled water monstress; a mighty,
love-smitten bull buffalo; a velvety-talking horse that is surely
Pegasus's divine cousin; and a mega-buff sky warrior who shimmers
with lightning currents and sounds like a young Darth Vader.

The vivid, even perfervid visions that Indian people in old times
converted into mythic heroes and animal figures, were versions of
ourselves, our weaknesses, strengths, our special and unique
characteristics. Coyote, the trickster, revels in fabulous squalor
and humor, in twisted vanity and venality, but DREAMKKEEPER's
Coyote played as overly abstract and underdeveloped.

There was not a single Native American creative artist with
sufficient expertise and film making experience employed on this
production to exert significant influence on the finished product.
It seems that nobody was specifically assigned to keep constant tabs
on maintaining the balance between cultural truth and legacy and the
demands of making a visually stunning television mini-series. The
father and son executive producers, the director, the writer, the
cinematographer, the casting director, the production designer, the
editor, the special effects creators, are all non-Indians. Native
actors, yes, but they were obviously not in charge of this show.

Native Americans were making some progress in the 1990's towards
being able to do it for ourselves or to work alongside non-Indians
co-equally on Native-themed shows. Dreamkeeper, for all its daring
and visual power, fails to help us move forward hardly at all, and
this should be on all our minds at the start of 2004, well into the
new millennium.

Can the Native American acting and creative community learn from
all of this? Yes, we can---and we must. We can begin by
acknowledging the fact that this film is the product of some very
gifted and serious film makers and contains many excellent examples
of how to make exciting, entertaining television movies (accomplished
with the help of a battalion of our best actors). We must go on to
determine, in a careful, step-by-step analysis of the show, exactly
what we would have done differently, as Native American film makers,
how we would have done it our way, why we would have done it that
way, and where we will go after this one.

Hanay Geiogamah
Professor of Theater, UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television,
Interim Director, UCLA American Indian Studies Center



Hanay Geiogamah
1750 N. Wilcox Ave., #223
Los Angeles, CA 90028
323/463-1914
310/306-1536
hgeiog!@ucla.edu, hanayg@hotmail.com