Alexie dishes on directing and being a straight Einstein

In 1998, Sherman Alexie’s story The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven was turned into Smoke Signals,a picture that took the Sundance Film Festival by storm as it won two top awards and landed a lucrative distribution deal --- a major accomplishment for the first movie ever produced, directed and written exclusively by Native Americans. The following year, The New Yorker tagged Alexie one of the top 20 writers for the 21st Century. Already a celebrated author, poet and filmmaker, Alexie also began an incredible run of four straight wins at the World Poetry Bout Championships, which finally ended this year when he retired and finally gave somebody else a chance to win.

Alexie’s latest cinematic offering --- The Business of Fancydancing --- is about a successful Native American writer named Seymour who returns to his reservation for a funeral. It screens this Sunday night as part of the ImageOut Festival.

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City: Where did the story come from for Fancydancing?

Alexie: It's semi-autobiographical. The lead character is sort of a combination of Evan Adams, the lead actor, and I. Evan grew up on a reservation and was very successful in the art world as well as being a doctor --- he's actually in his residency right now. He's gay, I'm straight, so we combined stories in a sense. It's a mix of us and, of course, a whole lot of fantasy and stuff, but its genesis is sort of (pause)...if Evan and I had a baby, it would be Seymour

City: You didn't direct Smoke Signals, so why did you end up in the director's chair this time?

Alexie: I didn't want to work with another director.

City: Were you disappointed with it?

Alexie: No, I just don't like directors (laughs). I really like Smoke Signals; I think it's a good movie. Chris Eyre, the director, was a nice guy. I didn't have serious issues with him at all --- it was other people's reactions. People are lazy about films; they assume the director does it all. For Smoke Signals, I wrote the screenplay --- it's based on my book, based on a trip I actually took --- I co-wrote five of the songs, I was in the editing room the whole time, it was filmed on my reservation, my cousins and family were all extras. Then people ask me, "How much were you involved?"

City: How was it to direct?

Alexie: It was fun. I was the least experienced person on the set, so it was great to be able to ask for help and not feel some arrogant need to try to dominate. I listened to people's ideas. A lot of it is me, but a lot is other people, too. In real life, I'm not very good at listening. I think I was a better person on set than I am in the rest of my life, which I think is the reverse of most directors.

City: Does it bother you that the film is kind of being pigeonholed as a "gay" film?

Alexie: It's been great. A couple of weeks ago I was at a screening and somebody said I was taking advantage of the gay audience and targeting them economically. I just started laughing and said, "Yeah, that's a really wise move --- make a movie about a gay man and make millions of dollars!"

City: There's a short film called Lez Be Friends playing at the festival here where a straight filmmaker makes a movie about her best friend coming out of the closet. After she screens it, everyone assumes she's gay. Are you running into a lot of that?

Alexie: Oh, yeah, it's great. I've never been hit on women in this way. I've never felt more attractive than when I'm at these gay festivals. Then, when they find out I'm not gay, they're mad and want me to be gay.

City: Is it any different receiving criticism about your films than it is your books?

Alexie: When I talk about movies in the book world, I always tell this story: When I'm among other writers, I'm always, by far, the least educated and the least well-read person. In a room full of movie people, I'm Einstein.

City: How do you feel about the sport mascot debate?

Alexie: They're certainly racist, but more than that, they're blasphemous. Those songs and feathers and drums and dancing --- that's Indian religion. Seeing somebody dressed as an Indian, in an Indian headdress, running across the floor at a football stadium is akin to somebody dressed up as a Jesuit tossing communion wafers into the crowd.

City: Did it bother you when everyone fell all over Denzel and Halle after last year's Oscars when Native American actors still have so far to go?

Alexie: It doesn't bother me. I'm happy for them, but I think it's interesting they won their Oscars for playing roles that are pretty clichéd --- the single black mother at the sexual mercy of a white man and the psychopathic rogue cop.

City: So what's up next?