The Last Day of Shooting

Okay, so it was different having Dawn, Charlie & Hank gone. But we had the good fortune to have Pascal, Joel & Sandy come back.

They rented a Jeep and pulled up at about 6:30AM. We did a repeat of yesterday. They filmed me getting everyone up and getting them ready for school. Then I took the kids to school. Joel tried to go in to film Sophie in her bedroom, but she slammed the door on the camera as they tried to get it. Joel came up to me and complained that he hardly had any footage of Sophie.

Of course, Sophie is still angry about participating. But I reminded her that we had an agreement that she needed to participate when they wanted us to all be together. We got some footage of the whole family on the porch.

When I got back from taking the kids to school, they were interviewing Martha & Temple in the kitchen. Temple later complained that every time they asked her questions, Martha would answer for her. You can see Temple's frustration in the photo. They later interviewed Martha privately, but they never got around to interviewing Temple. They only filmed her doing flashcards with the younger kids. She interpreted this to mean that they considered her the "insignificant wife", but I am pretty sure it was just time constraints.

They wanted to film me looking at my father's grave. They asked me some questions about my family history, and then he tried to pry into questions about the recent division in our community. He said, "The building behind you is your chapel, but you are not allowed to go in there. Do you want to talk about it?"

I told him that I didn't, but he kept prying, saying that it made for a compelling story about the difficulties that I had to go through being a polygamist. I tried to talk about it without talking about it. The thing they don't realize - one year later, I have just barely come to the point where I can talk to my mother and other family members without things getting awkward. Later, I agonized that I had talked about it as much as I had. But I don't think that they will show it. I didn't give them enough to make it a strong story point.

We decided to move the interview up to the hill behind my house. It is actually about 25 yards past my property line on the property of my neighbors - also polygamists. We had done our interview up there, because there was a pocket up on the hill where the wind was not blowing so hard. The wind had caused tons of problems for the microphones. Up on the hill, there was a spot where we could sit on the rocks, there was a great view of the valley, and we could interview without the wind causing us problems. Yesterday, Dawn had interviewed me up there, and my neighbors had driven by several times & said nothing.

Five minutes into the interview, a truck pulled up & my neighbor - usually a soft-spoken guy - started yelling at us to get off their property. I went down to reason with him, and he got in my face, yelling. At this point, I lost my cool and said a few choice words myself. He claimed that the camera crew had filmed his mother when she was down hauling water by my mother's house. I told him that I would speak to the director.

Pascal denied that they had filmed anything or anyone down at my mother's house. Even if they had, they could not air her image without her consent. However, this whole thing upset me.

We finished the interview up on top of the hill on my father-in-law's property.

We had lunch, wrapped up the interviews. The last thing that Pascal wanted to film was me doing something around the house. He asked me what my chores usually are. Don't get me wrong - I do alot of things around the house. But I am not Mr. Fix-it. They filmed me hauling away our broken generator to our junk pile. And I sliced my finger open doing it. Some Mr. Fix-it.

After they finished that scene, they said, "It's a wrap." So I guess it's not just a cliche.

The guys had to get to Phoenix to catch a plane. So we said goodbye to them. We will really miss the crew. It was a good experience.

I ran into town to deposit my check, and I ran into my brother. He told me that alot of people were upset with me for doing this. I just feel like I have angered everyone. But it is hard to describe - it is something that we felt to do.