Chat Interview with Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love & Valor – The Intimate Civil War Letters.”

ReelHeART: Hi Charles, my name is Ben from ReelHeART International film Festival. We’re going to play a little game called “20 Questions”. Are you ready?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Yes

ReelHeART: How are you today?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  I am fine. How are you?

ReelHeART: I’m great! Little tired. Please tell everyone your name and the title of your film you’re premiering at ReelHeART 2011

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  My name is Charlie Larimer. My movie is “Love & Valor – The Intimate Civil War Letters.”

ReelHeART: Great!. Before I ask you more questions about your film. What are you seeing on your desk right now while we’re chatting? Give me a list…

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  On my real desk, I see piles of paper, a bag of cough drops, a paper cup containing diet coke, my key board and computer screen.

ReelHeART: You just getting over a cold?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Sinus infection.

ReelHeART: Ouch.

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  It slows me way down.

ReelHeART: I know what that’s like.

ReelHeART: I have a 4-Part Question Part #1 Please explain a little bit about your film. The genre and why people should go to see it at ReelHeART.

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  I call my film a narrative documentary. It is based on the actual letters between my great great grandparents during the American Civil War. Their letters are among the best, if not the best, set of letters between a husband and wife during the Civil War. In addition to having their letters, the movie goes into the strange stories on how I found their letters. The movie can be very touching – it presents both the stories of the husband/soldier and the wife/mother.

With their actual letters, we have a background of scenes we shot at Civil War re-enactments, turned into a great looking sepia. Our narrator, is the famous actor Brian Dennehy.

ReelHeART: Don’t give away all your secrets. Leave something for the viewers who are going to see your film. That’s got to be amazing inspiration for a film…

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Their letters truly were an inspiration to me.

ReelHeART Ohhh we love Mr. Dennehy over here. His John Wayne Gacy still gives me shivers.

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Brian Dennehy is a great actor. People really love him.

ReelHeART: Yes. he’s great. Were you there for the voiceover work?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Yes – we did his voiceover work in Connecticut. I flew out to Hartford for a day, and we did it in a studio close to where he lives, that he recommended.

ReelHeART: Was he in good health…?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  He was in good health. I first met him in Chicago at the Goodman Theater, where he regularly performs.

ReelHeART It must be amazing to now have this aspect of your genealogy and family history preserved on film Charles.

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  It really is amazing. My ancestors left a great paper trail, and it has been a lot of fun, and fascinating, to piece it together. I still continue to find additional pieces to their stories. I will probably be researching their story for the rest of my life.

My biggest find in the last couple of years – my great great grandfather’s aunt ran a boarding house in Chambersburg, PA where the famous and fanatical abolitionist John Brown lived while planning his raid on Harpers Ferry – one of the events ”:  that kicked off the Civil War.

It seemed like a natural story to put on film. Early on I was working with another filmmaker – at that time I would not have called myself a filmmaker. In order to help explain my ideas to him and to others, I went ahead and made a 7-minute demo of the movie. The demo was pretty good, and if anything, it convinced me that I had some abilities in putting a movie together. Brian Dennehy saw my demo, and it helped convince him to be part of the project.

ReelHeART Wow, that’s amazing that Dennehy saw the demo. Talk about fate finding you…

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Also, when I was a kid, my father was regularly taking 8mm movies, so cameras and film were always around.

ReelHeART: I love seeing old home movies. They really bring back an era

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Old home movies are great!

ReelHeART: My next of the 4-Parter coming up

What do you hate most about being a filmmaker?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  I also published a book based on the same letters. A book can be so much more complete than a movie. The movie stories have to be much shorter, much simpler and much more concise. I really struggled with reducing the movie stories to a simpler, more understandable version.

ReelHeART You’ll have to bring a copy or two of the book for audience giveaways at your screening

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  When I see the stories of how I found the letters and how I found other things, I want to jump up and provide more details. But the movie is really much better after I had simplified my stories.   I will bring some copies of the book to give away!

ReelHeART So was that answer also what you hate about being a filmmaker? That sometimes the source material has to be shortened and taken out of context?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Yes – it was painful to remove so much material, and sometimes painful to tell such abbreviated stories on how I found the letters and other things.

I had to leave out a story where down in Savannah, GA, during the process of finding the great grandson of the man who had hosted Jacob Ritner for Christmas dinner in 1864, I met a man dressed in a Confederate Private’s uniform who looked like he wanted to punch me in the nose. This man was a key link in finding the modern day great grandson.

ReelHeART: WoW! That’s quite a story. Sounds like you can do a whole semester history class on this topic alone I’m going to move along so we can get to all out questions. Last of the 4-Parter “What do you love most about being a filmmaker?”

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  It is thrilling when I see my work up on the big screen, and I easily think back to the time when it was all just a concept – ideas in my head, that I eventually put down on paper, and then all the intermediate steps. It also is a thrill thinking about how we were able to get so many other people to buy into the concept – and help with the creation of the movie. We had tremendous help from the Civil War re-enactment community.

ReelHeART: Sounds amazing. I want to see one of those re-enactments the next time I’m in Virginia. I narrowly missed one last time I was in those parts.

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Civil War Re-enactments are fun to see – a great outdoors event.

ReelHeART: I’m on to some more questions Charles: When does your film screen?  And Is this a Canadian premiere?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  This is the Canadian premiere. I believe it shows on Wednesday June 22 at 1:45pm.

I have two sisters who live in Toronto, plus some cousins there, so I am really looking forward to the trip to Toronto.

ReelHeART: Yup. Your right. Here’s the link http://reelheart.org/wednesday/wednesday-main-program-b-145pm/

How long did “Love and Valor” take from pre-production to post production?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  It took about seven years, which is much longer than I ever imagined. At some of the conferences I have attended, I have heard similar stories from other independent filmmakers.

ReelHeART: WoW! Some marriages don’t even last that long…

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Correct!

In order to do something that takes so long, the filmmaker needs a very high level of passion for his project, which I have.

ReelHeART: I can tell. Where there any pitfalls during any production phase?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  For the most part, things went pretty smoothly during the whole process. We had one situation, where we were filming out in the woods, where one of the PAs, while chopping wood, accidentally hit himself in the leg with a hatchet. Fortunately one of the re-enactors with us was a nurse and was able to treat his wound on the spot.

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  At our biggest re-enactment shoot involving battles, the people running the re-enactment gave me a run down on which re-enactment groups did not like other specific re-enactment groups. Some of those other re-enactor groups had some grudges against our main set of re-enactors, and I was able to work around that – I was very happy that I had some advance warning on that issue.

ReelHeART: Sounds like “civil war politics” all over again.

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Absolutely! I always thought that all these re-enactors must like each, but they don’t! Just like in any large group of people, not everyone likes each other.

ReelHeART: Play nice or go home

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  That’s right, except that a lot of those guys have guns! At least they are supposed to be shooting blanks!

ReelHeART Back to my 20 questions Charles: Were there any happy surprises during production of Love and Valor?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  There are several scenes that turned out better than expected. We had a few crowd scene, one a church social, and some of the re-enactors were able to block out the cameras and just have normal conversations, and normal facial expressions while talking to each other. This is a small thing, but I am always happy when I see it.

Another pleasant surprise – we used a very special sepia for the Civil War scenes, and it looks very good. It took a long time to convert it to this special sepia, but it was worth it.

I tell some of my extra stories in old cemeteries, and I always think that the old cemeteries are great backgrounds for telling the stories.

Another surprise – I learned about the John Brown story (the fanatical abolitionist who lived at Aunt Mary Ritner’s Boarding House) because of (and after filming) the Underground Railroad scene which shows early in the movie.

ReelHeART: Sounds like there was a lot that pleased you about your film and some great “happy surprizes”.  What displeases you most about your film “Love and Valor” if anything…?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  There is some wind noise I have fixed, but I want to fix it again. I want to tell more of the strange stories of how I found the letters and other things – they will just have to be included in the DVD extra’s section.

I wonder if I should have changed the focus to more of a “Forrest Gump” nature, where I include more of the close connections to famous people. I do mention ReelHeART) there is a man from this small town in Iowa, who is buried right next to Emeline’s parents, whose daughter married Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln. This man from Mt. Pleasant, IA became the co-grandfather of three children along with Abraham Lincoln. b) more details on the John Brown story.

Stories I painfully took out – c) two of Emeline’s brother served with George Armstrong Custer immediately after the war. They both hated Custer. d) Jacob’s grandfather has some correspondence with Daniel Webster in a Time Capsule in the Washington monument. Plus some other good ones.

ReelHeART: Wow! that’s so much historical information and it seems it was like an onion for you. Every time you peeled a layer back, another layer revealed itself…

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Yes – and it keeps happening. I keep finding things – sometimes more details about something I have already filmed. The soldier in Jacob’ company that he most admired was a guy named Charles Wilson “Wils” Payne.

I received typed copies of Wils Paynes’ Civil War letters about a year and a half ago, and he describes many of the same things that Jacob discussed in his letters. In a couple of cases, Wils provided dramatic details on scenes we had already filmed.

ReelHeART T: Okay Charles only a few questions left. Do you have distribution for this film yet?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  No – we have not lined up distribution yet.

ReelHeART: What’s your next project Charles?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  I may do something with my key group of actors. I might venture into period fiction, since I have a group of great actors (re-enactors) who specialize in that, and I really enjoyed working with these people.

ReelHeART: It’s always great to use the same actors again in another project if there was a great camaraderie.

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  I think so. If you have a group that clicks, and you can rely on them, there are many reasons to continue with the same group.

ReelHeART: Are you ready for a “curveball” question Charles?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Yikes – ok.

ReelHeART: What sound or noise do you hate?

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  I have some hearing issues. I hate the sound of fire engines. I hate motorized buzzing sounds. I don’t like music that is played too loud. (I love music and it pains me to have said that.)

ReelHeART: I hate fire engines too. And also the cars that don’t get out of their way when they’re screeching down the street.

Another “curveball” question Charles. “What’s your favorite curse word? ”

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  I try to avoid cursing. I have a seven-year-old son, and I try to be careful not to swear around him. The s-word probably comes out more often than any others, but I really try to avoid using it or other swear words.

ReelHeART: Most children hear the things you don’t use at school and on TV anyway.

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  That is correct – he just told me that he knows how to spell the f-word, and then proceeded to spell it for me.

ReelHeART: Yikes. let’s hope that doesn’t come up in a spelling Bee

ReelHeART: Finally, my last question:
Is there anything you’d like to mention in this chat, knowing that it’s published on the Internet and will live on forever.

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  I would like to extend a big “Thank You” to everyone who helped make this movie. In particular I would like to thank the Civil War re-enactment community – they provided a tremendous amount of help to us – both in their acting, but also in advice they gave to us in many of the scenes and situations we created.

I would also like to thank my great great grandparents, Jacob and Emeline Ritner, for having written such a great set of letters to each other. And a big thank you to all the family members of generations in between who saved these letters and passed them on to the next generation.

ReelHeART That’s a great sentiment Charles.

ReelHeART: I just want to remind our website visitors that Charles F. Larimer’s film “Love and Valor – The Intimate Civil War Letters” premieres at the 7^th Annual ReelHeART International Film Festival, 1:45 PM – WEDNESDAY June 22 in MAIN PROGRAM B, Theater 222, Innis College, 2 Sussex Street, M5S 1J5

And here’s a trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0w6bC9DSRI

Advance tickets are on sale online at http;//www.reelheart.org or go directly to Charles’ film link at http://reelheart.org/wednesday/wednesday-main-program-b-145pm/

ReelHeART Thank you Charles! It’s been great chatting with you today!

Charles F. Larimer, dir “Love and Valor”:  Thank you Ben! I’m looking forward to being in Toronto and attending the film festival!

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