The Way We Get By is almost certainly a marvelous movie, at least judging from Mike Riggs' review, which ran in our Silverdocs issue (6/12). The producers of the movie liked Riggs' review so much they excerpted it on their movie poster, an excerpt of which you can see above. Interesting thing about that review, though: Riggs never said "Absolutely stunning" in it (regardless, I am absolutely stunned I didn't kill such wildly gushing copy when I had the chance).

To find that part of this quote, you have to turn to Riggs' morning roundup from Thursday, June 11. He wrote then:

As for me, I got pretty choked up watching The Way We Get By, and can’t think of a single friend, family member, or down-on-his-luck stranger to whom I would not recommend this film. Absolutely stunning. And Trimpin opened my eyes to the joys of reviewing movies while high sound installations.

I had to ask. He says "I had smoked a little bit before I watched" The Way We Get By, but swears he was stone-cold sober when he wrote that ringing endorsement.

Set in Bangor, Maine, the film follows three elderly individuals – Bill, Jerry and Gaudet's mother Joan – who go to a small airport every day to greet the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite facing failing health, depression and mounting debt, the three are committed to greeting the troops as they first step back on American soil, even if it's as early as three in the morning.

I had the opportunity to chat with Director Aron Gaudet. Here's what he had to say:

Q. What was the impetus for making the film? How did you come upon these characters?

Gita and I both worked in local television news around the country and when we met I think we both agreed that there were so many great stories that got passed up in local news just because it would take more than a day to tell the story. And it was really frustrating to us. We'd see all these great personal stories go by and we'd say: we don't have time for that, let's go to the town hall meeting. It wasn't very fulfilling. I had always wanted to make documentaries and when I met Gita and I told her about that, she took the ball and ran with it. She was like, we'll start a company and we'll find a subject. When I went home that Christmas and got her to meet my mom, we saw that flight come in and we said: this could be at least a great short documentary. And then we went home with Bill that first time and saw his living conditions and we had already known that he had been battling prostate cancer and saw how he was living and he told us about his wife dying. We just realized this guy is going through a lot and he's out there all the time. He's a compelling character for a movie. It all kind of started with him and then we met Jerry.

Q. What was your biggest challenge in making the film?

We were first time filmmakers and I think we went in thinking this would be easy. I shoot everyday, I edit every day. We'll just get the equipment and we'll do it. We weren't thinking of fundraising and getting the money and all that. This was our film school. Over the four years we made the movie, we learned so much. We didn't start fundraising until we were almost done shooting three years into it. It got to the point where it was like: if we don't get money, we won't finish this. It was at that point that we got funding from ITVS. We got it just when we needed it.

Q. Were you working on other projects in the meantime?

We were working full time jobs for the first three years of it. At first we were still working in Michigan and we would drive to Chicago, fly to Boston, drive Bangor. Or, if we didn't have money to do that we would drive from Michigan to Maine which was like a 19 hour drive, stay there a couple of days and drive back. Eventually we said we've got to do something to be closer, so we moved to Boston, so it was a four hour drive. So that made it a lot easier. And having my mom call and say, the 500,000th troop should be coming in on a flight tomorrow, we could drive up and be there. We would start at my mom's house and when she got a call, we'd go in with her at the airport. And then at the airport, we'd pick Bill or Jerry and follow them.

Q. What has the response been to the film?

We premiered at South By Southwest and in the last three months, we played at over 20 film festivals and the response has been great everywhere. When we had a chance to have one of the subjects there with us, the response has been even greater. By the time I was done editing the movie, I didn't know what we had. I walked out of the editing room and I remember saying to Gita, I don't know what this is. It's because you're so close. And it wasn't until we saw it with audiences and saw them respond that we knew what we had. People would always come up after and say l loved the movie and then launch into this personal story, like my dad had prostate cancer. It always became how it related to them personally. One woman was saying that it had a lot of universal themes and that's what we're starting to take away from it. Everybody is connecting to it on a really personal level. It's been really overwhelming.

Q. Bill says in the movie that he feels like he's outgrown his usefulness. Has the film changed that feeling for him?

The best thing out of everything so far to me has been watching him when we are able to bring him to a screening and then watching people come up and talk to him because of what he says in the film. To see these people come up to him and say what he's doing means to them. The most fun of all of it has been to experience the film through him.

Silverdocs, white supremacists and more, after the jump.

• It was only a matter of time: Already the Washington Post, not 24 hours after James W. von Brunn opened fire at the Holocaust Museum, is asking "Did that controversial Homeland Security report on right-wing extremists (pdf) get it right?" And sayeth the POLITICO's Josh Gerstein: "Civil rights activists say a string of recent attacks blamed on right-wing extremists, including Wednesday’s shooting at the Holocaust Museum, show that conservative critics were too quick to fault the Department of Homeland Security over an April report warning about the potential for such violence." My take: Conservatives, arguably, have a right to be upset. More often than not, "conservative" is a simpler term for a whole range of peaceful ideas and political decisions. Anti-semitism and racism are no more apart of conservatism than eco-terrorism is apart of liberalism. In testimony from 2002, the FBI divided domestic terrorism into three categories: right-wing, left-wing, and special interest. From the FBI: "Special interest terrorism differs from traditional right-wing and left-wing terrorism in that extremist special interest groups seek to resolve specific issues, rather than effect widespread political change. Special interest extremists continue to conduct acts of politically motivated violence to force segments of society, including the general public, to change attitudes about issues considered important to their causes. These groups occupy the extreme fringes of animal rights, pro-life, environmental, anti-nuclear, and other movements." So before the DHS decided to sow discord–and before the MSM decided to latch onto this new report for dear life–the FBI already had a term that managed to address the problem without associating conservatism with terrorism: "special interest extremists." Michael Moynihan has some smart (brief) thoughts on yesterday's shooting.
• Silverdocs is here. From Tricia Olszewski's (brutal) opening salvo: "Unlike last year’s fest—which boasted, among many other excellent films, future Oscar-winner Man on Wire and nominee Encounters at the End of the World—few of the 122 documentaries being presented are home runs. We were able to review nearly 70 of this year’s entries, approximately double our coverage of 2008’s festival, and not many of them left us drooling. An inevitability of numbers, or is Silverdocs stumbling? With celebrities gracing the screenings and the world watching, it likely doesn’t matter." As for me, I got pretty choked up watching The Way We Get By, and can't think of a single friend, family member, or down-on-his-luck stranger to whom I would not recommend this film. Absolutely stunning. And Trimpin opened my eyes to the joys of reviewing movies while high sound installations.