During the filming of No Time For Cold Feet, Producer Trent Tooley spoke with Tim Russell of WCCO radio about the project
Thanks for being with us -- Tim Russell WCCO. The Saint Paul Winter Carnival underway and one of the attractions for the past 50 years, the amazing medallion hunt, where people go out and bundle up and try to find untold treasures. So we have the 50th medallion hunt underway, and there's some extra special attention being given to this year's dig from a film crew. Trent Tooley and Jackie Garry have their own company called Not Another Hollywood Film, and they're shooting a documentary called No Time for Cold Feet, and we're pleased to have Trent Tooley with us today on WCCO. Am I right in saying this is a documentary?
TT: Yes, it is a documentary. We had actually originally written a fiction script a couple years ago surrounding the medallion hunt; however, we became fascinated with everyone that had posted on the Water Cooler at the Pioneer Planet. So we decided, hey you know let's. . . cause we're not really documentarians -- we make narrative features -- so we thought it was such an interesting story and such an interesting hunt that we thought, "Why don't we just go shoot people as they are?" And so far it's just been great -- we've gotten great footage, and it's still just mid-hunt.
TR:Sometimes art just can't trump reality.
TT: Exactly. . . and I think that this might be a case in which that's true.
TR:Now you did a feature, a first film called The Curse. I want to mention that's going to be screened on February 1st at 7:30 at the amazing Heights Theatre, so everybody can get a chance to see some of your work, some of your handy work.
How did you decide on the Medallion Hunt in the first place as a subject?
TT:Well, Jackie grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, and when I met her six years ago in Manhattan, I called her a New Yorker, and she goes, "No, I'm a Minnesotan." So we started collaborating on films, you know narrative features. And she said, "You know what, there's this crazy thing that happens every year in Saint Paul in which they bury this little medallion in the snow, and everyone goes and digs for it, and we should write a script surrounding it." So we had like two or three ideas of stories we could feature around the hunt, and then we eventually over the next two or three years wrote a script. And after we had written that script, we were researching how to rewrite the script when we came across the Water Cooler and the Coolerheads.
So that's how the whole thing came about. . . sort of through Jackie being a Minnesotan. . . and also we've been to Minnesota a couple times in past few years because Jackie's been a finalist in the Minnesota Independent Film Fund, so we come here for the finalist interviews -- so we sort of got hooked in that way.
TR: Well, there's a wonderful documentary that I saw a couple years ago, and I can't. . . I'm not sure of the title -- I think it might have been "Hands On." It was about this contest in Texas where contestants try to keep their hand on a truck, and the last person standing is the winner of the truck. If you'll recall that. . . do you remember that documentary?
TT: I haven't seen that, but it sounds great.
TR: Yeah, but it's that kind of deal that people find fascinating, so I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product. Trent Tooley is with us. . . hang on Trent, okay, we gotta take a little break, and we'll be back with you in a moment, okay?
TT: Okay.
TR: Very good. He's in the process of doing a documentary. and it will be called No Time for Cold Feet. Great working title. Back in a moment, let's get the traffic on the eights. . .
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TR: Tim Russell on WCCO with 25 degrees. Thanks for joining us at 2:42, and we're talking film today and the Winter Carnival. Trent Tooley is a co-founder with Jackie Garry (Jackie's originally from Rochester) of a group of artists called Not Another Hollywood Film -- I love that title. And they have a documentary underway, just in time for the 50th Anniversary of the Saint Paul Winter Carnival Medallion Hunt -- that's the subject of the documentary called No Time for Cold Feet. Trent, is that going to be a working title, or is that the one you're going to stick with?
TT: Yeah, that's a working title. I think that probably somebody will say something that will give us the title. That was the Winter Carnival theme either two or three years ago, and we sort of liked it just for a working title. But we're hoping that someone will say something or we'll luck into some sort of phrase that will become the magical phrase or title of the documentary.
TR: Now the Pioneer Press, of course, is one of the sponsors of the Medallion Hunt and has been over the years, and you mentioned their website, which has the Water Cooler. Tell us. . . tell us the kind of information you picked up from folks who've been actively involved in this medallion hunt.
TT: Well it's amazing. . . Jackie and I basically -- we downloaded the boards for the past two years, the 1999 and 2000 boards. It included over 30,000 posts. We went through every post, and we basically outlined the posts. We took each person who had posted and put them into a document. We also -- depending on the subject matter of the hunt -- you know, whether it was clue noodling or whether there are spotters or the various conspiracy theories -- we took all these posts and put them each into a separate document and outlined everybody who had posted. So basically we learned so much about the hunt just by reading these 30,000 posts.
I feel like, you know when we're interviewing people, we know the hunt just as well as people that have been doing it for thirty years. Of course we don't know the exact stories, and we didn't experience it. But through these postings and this great information that people provided, not only do we know about them personally, and we can contact them through e-mail, but we also learned a tremendous amount about the hunt.
TR: It becomes a great subculture, and I was very close to the medallion on a couple of occasions in high school -- out there you know digging around in some Saint Paul park. Uh. . . have you talked to some winners?
TT: Yeah, we've talked to a couple of finders. We talked to a guy named Kirk who's found it twice. We talked to another guy -- I think his name is Rick -- he found it at Como four years ago. And we've also contacted a number of other finders, but I think we're not going to be able to talk to them because we're sort of in the middle of the action now of running from park to park and covering a lot of the digging.
When we first got to town about three days ago, we did a lot of interviews with people because there wasn't a whole lot of action going on. But now that we're sort of in the middle of it, now's it's like sprint from this park to that park to that park -- and people are calling us saying, "We're over here digging. . . we're over here digging. There are twenty people digging over here." And we kind of run over and try to cover that action.
TR:Today's clue leads me to believe it's some kind of a baseball park, and you want to be out in the outfield somewhere. It's just a guess. I don't know.
TT: Yeah, I think a lot of people think that. Basically a lot of people seem to be leaning towards either Como, Battle Creek or Phalen. That seems to be the Top 3 that we've been hearing about. I'm actually at Como right now. . . at a pay phone.
TR: Does the weather present a filming challenge?
TT: Oh yes. It's really brutal filming in this cold -- especially with this snow. . . the lens getting wet. But we -- I think we spent like a thousand dollars on winter clothing. We're layered like you would not believe.
[TR LAUGHS]
We're actually keeping pretty warm. But the main problem is the equipment -- you know some of the stuff freezing and stuff like that. But so far we've been pretty smart and avoided some of the other major problems that other filmmakers have had.
TR: Well the next time Anne Bancroft wants to cross the Antarctic like she's doing right now -- there you are. You're all geared up for it.
[TT LAUGHS]
Now tell us about this group Not Another Hollywood Film.
TT: Well basically Jackie and I founded it five or six years ago, and we have a number of filmmaking friends and we also have. . . I'm also a musician and I have a lot of friends that are musicians -- and we sort of got together as a group and said where do all of our arts collide -- film. Because film includes all the major arts -- acting, you know, writing and music.
And so we all got together, and we all had similar likes, and we did our first feature film called The Curse. And everybody from the group pitched in. We had a DP, who was part of the group, he shot The Curse -- and now he's actually out here shooting No Time for Cold Feet for us. His name is Bud Gardner. And then we had three different composers compose the score of The Curse, and they were part of the group. So it's sort of like a loose-knit group -- Jackie's close friends, my close friends, and we sort of want to keep it a tight group, very focused on making film after film after film. We just finished The Curse, and now we're doing No Time for Cold Feet, and we're going to do another film hopefully in the Fall called Stalkers.
TR: All right, that's great showbiz tradition -- there's costumes in the barn, let's put on a movie.
TT: Exactly -- that's exactly what we're doing, and so far we've been completely self-financed. We've had a lot of opportunity to actually get bigger money, but we really want to keep control over it. About three or four years ago, we were working on a film called Our Lips Are Sealed, which Jackie had written and was going to direct. And we had a lot of money, and we had stars attached, and people kept telling us we have to do this, we have to do that, we have to do this. And we finally said, you know what, let's try to. . . let's go make some smaller films on our own, let's get a reputation and let's get a little more power. Because we were getting tired of people pushing us around. And that's true with a lot of filmmakers -- as soon as people give you bigger money, they tell you what to do, and it becomes very difficult to make the film that you want to make.
TR: Well if folks want to see your first effort, The Curse -- it'll be at the Heights Theatre on February 1st and that's at 7:30, and it's a wonderful theater experience too, so good luck with that, and I'll try to get over there and catch that.
TT: That sounds great.
TR: Alright thanks, Trent.
TT: Okay, thanks so much. Take care.
TR: Good luck. Trent Tooley -- he's one of the co-founders of Not Another Hollywood film with Jackie Garry from Rochester, and they're doing a documentary on the Medallion Hunt. And we'll join the traffic picture with Caroline Peterson right after this. . . .
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