French TV - Last Day of Filming

A few days before the crew arrived, I broke silence and told the kids about the shoot. It went something like this:

"Kids, do you remember when Hank came and filmed you, and you were on TV?"

A collective "Yeah!"

"Well, would you like to do it again?"

Enthusiastic "Yeah!"

"Well, guess what? In a couple of days, we have some special visitors coming..."

When I broke the news to my oldest daughter, Sophie, of course, she declined. I learned my lesson last time. I shouldn't force my kids to do something like this. Or should I?

Conveniently, the older kids had events going on the weekend of the shoot. There was a basketball game on Friday (the first day of the shoot). My oldest son Christian plays basketball, and Sophie cheers. On Saturday (the final day of shooting), Sophie had some activity in town. But Christian didn't.

Generally, on days they get back late from school activities, they will go to their grandmother's house in town, and I will go pick them up the next day.

Early on Saturday morning, I went to go pick up Christian. I briefly told him how the shoot was going, how cool the crew was. There were a few minutes of awkward silence, and then Christian spoke.

"Dad, do I have to be there when they are filming?"

I thought about it for a moment. "I will tell you the same thing I told Sophie the last time. If you can give me one good reason that you don't want to do it, I will let you skip out. So what's your reason?"

He fumbled for an answer. "I just don't want to."

"That's not a good enough reason, son," I told him. "You have to be there. But I will tell you again the same thing I told Sophie. You can stay out of the way - except when it's time for us to be together."

I pulled up to the house, expecting to find the French film crew to be there. Instead, I found my landlord. Typical. For the most part, we had kept the presence of our guests somewhat inconspicuous. Now I was going to have to explain to my landlord why we had cameras running around his property. Immediately, I went over and knocked on his door. He was fine with it.

In fact, as soon as the crew got there, Frank went and set the camera up on the hill and started taking scenery shots. My landlord went up and started talking to them, pointing out that he descended from French Huguenots.

Before the elusive Christian could slip away, I suggested to Ted that they should film Christian chopping some wood. So I conscripted Christian to chop some wood, and the cameras were rolling. I couldn't help myself. I stood aside, snickering. I joked with him later that some young, hot, French chick would see this tall, strapping young man swinging the ax, and ask, "Who ees zees Amereekan boy?"

Then I let Christian slip away and he was absent the rest of the day, doing his own thing - probably PSP.

The whole family remained outside after Christian cut the wood. The cameras kept running. The children were playing at our little playground, and my wives and I were leaning against the car while they asked us questions.

Again, they were very respectful questions, and I was very proud of the girls. I must say, I was't very proud of myself. I didn't say any stupid shit like I did with Dawn Porter. But I'm in a weird place spiritually right now. Everyone goes through spiritual highs, and everyone goes through spiritual lows. Even if it might be bad timing, I was going through one of the spiritual lows.

Most of it stems from trying to adjust to having our families divided into two houses (and we talked about that on camera). I felt that some of my answers were a little dry and empty. Not disingenuous. It's just hard to be upbeat about something as all-encompassing as plural marriage when you are not feeling like you are doing a good job at it. I was right in the middle of

a huge adjustment, and I was expected to say loads of positive things about it.

So my girls - great job! Me - hmph.

Next, they wanted to film my kids and I in a religious discussion. We all retired into the spare bedroom, and I asked my kids questions about their religion. I was also proud of my kids.

During a break, I happened to put the History Channel episode on the DVD for them. When they saw the bit about me standing at my dad's grave, they immediately wanted to mimic that. So again, I went out to the family cemetery plot with cameras. Except that my extended family was cluing in a little bit to what I was doing and many came out to look. I was a little bit uncomfortable, so we ended that.

So many of these interviews were in French. I had been practicing my French. Since Frank hardly spoke English, many of my conversations with him were in French. I seemed to do fine. Ted and Frank were very respectful in the way I spoke French. They didn't treat me like I was a dumb foreigner. They spoke to me in the vernacular they spoke with each other. Sometimes I had to struggle to keep up with them.

But something strange happened. When they turned on the cameras, I started struggling with my French. I don't know if it was psychological. I was having a hard time expressing myself, or remembering certain words. So I would often revert back to English to get my point across. Instead of Spanglish, it was Frenglish?

As the sun set, we had one of those beautiful Arizona sunsets. They took advantage of this by filming me walk in between the houses. The kind of displaced feeling a polygamist feels in going between homes kind of intrigued them, and they wanted to explore that. I talked about the paradox of the Principle - that in having more wives, a polygamist actually feels at times... more lonely.

The girls had gone through much detail to prepare a Mexican meal - enchiladas, frijoles, and Spanish rice. We expected that they would film us eating, but Frank and Ted put aside the cameras and came and ate with us.

Temple later remarked, "That was the difference between Dawn's crew and the French crew. Ted and Frank actually wanted to get to know us as people."

The previous crew didn't want to eat with us. Once when they were shooting the breeze at their van, I went out to socialize with them, and they all got quiet. Once of the producers took me aside and said that it wasn't quite kosher for us to associate with the crew too much, because we were the subjects. When the shoot was done, they planned a big dinner in Show Low. I hinted that maybe Martha, Temple and I might want to go, but they shot that idea down.

Here, Frank and Ted put business aside and treated us like human beings and ate our food. They also gave every child a gift - coloring books and markers. They had brought us French wine and the like, but one of their bags never made it on their flight.

In other words, this was a very, very pleasant experience, one that we don't regret.

Next time, I will talk a little bit about the fallout from this shoot... there's always fallout...