SONS OF PERDITION; dirs. Jennilyn Merten & Tyler Measom
by Brian Lepire
Jennilyn Merten was finishing up her graduate studies at the University of Utah when she caught a news program that hit close to her heart.
It was a story about teenage boys who escape from the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saint religion, a polygamist sect of the Mormon faith that has closed itself off from the rest of the world. Once they make it out of a community where movies, music and truth are censored or forbidden, they forced to survive in a world they have never known. Merten, a former Mormon herself, felt like she needed to find out more.
More than three years after dropping her studies and joining up with co-director/producer Tyler Meamson, Merten finished SONS OF PERDITION, a film that follows three of the “lost boys” as they struggle to survive on the streets. They deal with alcohol, drugs, abandonment and the search to find a home in a new land.
SFF blog editor Brian Lepire met up with Merten prior to Monday night’s screening of SONS OF PERDITION to talk about radicalism, Oprah Winfery’s new network and where the lens ends and humanity begins.
Brian Lepire: You dropped your graduate studies, you left graduate school, to go and start work on this film. What was it about these kids, the sons of perdition, that made you want to step away from the life you were living and invest so much?
Jennilyn Merten: I think the big thing was it was this recognition of a story that my partner Tyler and I had been living for so long, which was this process of losing your religion and leaving your religion and losing your faith.
It was so traumatic, this process of not deciding not to believe anymore and going out in search of something else. When we left the mainstream Mormon faith, we went through so much trauma with our families and our communities because you go from having this built-in, amazing community to having nothing. People think you are bad and you are so “messed up” that you must have done something horrible.
It’s like this rebirthing process, and over the years, we went through this process with friends. We didn’t encourage them to leave, but once you do leave, you end up finding other people that have survived.
So we went through this process, helping other friends. It’s this really traumatic, social, cultural, familial process. When we heard about the kids’ story, we thought “This is it. This is that process at large, and it’s this story that needs to be told.” And it’s not just a story about these homeless kids, but a deeper, more spiritual story about losing your faith and a universal story about what you are willing to give up to find out who you are.
It’s a search for identity that has a lot of risk and a lot of sacrifices…A lot of people leave their country or faith to survive and get a better life for themselves, and that’s what we saw these kids doing. Even though they were teenagers who didn’t exactly know what they were doing, they just felt [that life] wasn’t right. I had a lot of respect for that.
BL: What was your first impression when you met them? You had heard about them on the news and immediately felt this connection. It took a little bit to get a hold of them, but once you met them, what was your impression of who they were and where they were at at the time you met them?
JM: You could tell there was a range of feeling or experience. Some of the older boys, who had been out for a few years, could articulate themselves and they could talk to the social workers, and then the kids who had just gotten out were just quiet and terrified and just looked like scared rabbits. They just looked petrified and very defensive.
You could see them at different stages, and some of the older kids said it took about a year, year and a half, to get your feet under you. When they come out, they don’t know who the Beatles are, they don’t know who Bob Dylan is, they don’t know what any of the movies are. They are like a Tablua Rasa. They get out and have this whole background in their religion and mainstream America is this foreign land to them.
Think of it like you are dropping this person off in a foreign country. They are moving through an alien landscape, and it’s mainstream America. They hadn’t seen a documentary, they didn’t know who Brad Pitt was, they hadn’t seen “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
BL: Alright. That’s a crime right there.
JM: I KNOW!
BL: I think we should back up a bit here. What is the difference between the mainstream Mormon church and the church this kids are being expelled from?
JM: Thank you for asking that question, because I think a lot of people conflate the fundamentalists and the mainstream church. They are very distinct communities at this point. The mainstream Mormon church gave up polygamy in 1890, and it took a few decades to completely abdicate it and get it out of their system. But by the 1930s, the polygamists were on their own, had their own prophet, were separate and anybody practicing polygamy were being excommunicated.
The mainstream Mormon church today does not practice polygamy [and] is a very sophisticated, bureaucratic American religion.
The FLDS believe the Mormon church…they call it the “Great Abominable Church.” They feel like they are the traitors because they gave away the principle of polygamy.
BL: Is that the defining difference, or are there other issues surrounding it?
JM: There are a lot of other differences, but that’s the main, defining difference. The mainstream Mormon church is part of mainstream America in all of its facets. People go to normal schools and everything is just like growing up in America. The FLDS is a hidden community. They pulled their kids out of public school. They are Millennialists who believe the end is near. They shun public education and the outside world.
Where the mainstream Mormon church works with very much with the laws and the cultural limits within America, the FLDS basically say “We are above the President. It’s God’s laws, not American laws.” So they break the laws with impunity, because they believe they are above and beyond it.
They have something called “Bleeding the Beast”, where its essentially “We are living in America and we think it is doomed, so we are going to take advantage of its’ opportunities.” So they’ll take all the welfare they can get and strain the system.
BL: This community is both completely separate from the Mormon church and stripped of modernism, of what society is today.
JM: To a point, and this is something that’s surprising. They dress in their pioneer-esque clothing and things like that, but they have I-pods. They have cell phones, and they have surveillance systems…and they have tracking systems, so they aren’t Luddites. They use technology where it is convenient for them. So they will have super-sophisticated surveillance equipment, and they have their own websites…They have I-pods.
That’s how we got the sermons of [FLDS’ leader/ “prophet”] Warren Jeff’s. We found a woman who had over a hundred sermons of his on his I-pod…That’s the only thing you are allowed to have on your I-pod, only Warren Jeff’s teachings or his sermons or his music. He actually covered Bob Dylan and the Beatles and said they were his.
BL: With the kids coming out, did you notice any trends in them? Was there anything that really stood out about them and their progression? You spent a good amount of time with them as they worked through the process and worked their way into society. What were some trends and some problems you noticed them all going through?
JM: The biggest thing for them is that they believe they are going to hell. Once you leave, you are condemned to hell and are separated from your family. You are cut off from your family, no longer allowed to have contact with them, so…not only are you separated from your family, but you are separated from them for eternity.
Basically, the kids feel like they are doomed, so they have the feeling that, “Since I’m doomed anyways, I’m going to have the most fun possible in this life.”
They get out, absorb everything they possibly can and go a little bit crazy. Their first sort-of step is they go deep down into alcoholism and drug use.
You know, you see kids party in college. These kids drink to anesthetize themselves. They drink to wipe away the pain. They go through a lot. Drugs, alcohol, crime, which is awful, because it makes them a little bit unlovable and people don’t want to help them because they seem like a burden. But really, their souls are crushed.
Can you imagine at sixteen being separated from your family and being told you are an evil person? Family is everything to those kids. So then they start to pull out a little bit and look around and think “Maybe I can make something of the rest of my life.”
They slowly begin to learn about the rest of the world and learn about other religions and begin to realize they’ve been lied to and that there is hope for them. The big turning point is when they realize that they aren’t going to hell for leaving.
BL: At this point, what role does religion play in their lives? Do they hold onto the Mormon teachings, or is it similar to the process you and your friends went through where you find yourself leaving the church? They were kicked out of their church, kicked out of their communities, but did that mean they left their faith behind, as well?
JM: The way the kids have said it to us is they still believe in God, but they are tired of religion for awhile.
They still love their families. Sam, one of the boys, said it best when he said “I had the best childhood. I wouldn’t trade it for anything…but when you grow up, you realize that you’re different.”
They have a deep appreciation for their community values: family, home, siblings, food…actually, when they first got out, that’s all they talked about. They missed the food. They missed the home cooking. I wish I could’ve put more of that in the film…It’s really adorable.
BL: You ended up over the weekend mentioning that you ended up taking a big step into the movie itself helping a young woman escape, someone who had escape numerous times before. Does that make it into the film at all?
JM: It does a little bit. There’s a couple of escape attempts we do get involved in, and you see those in the film. There were three more. I think there was a total of six escape attempts this young woman made. So you do see that in the film, and you do see us involved, which is why you hear the questions at screenings “You guys are driving the getaway vehicle?”
It happens so spontaneous. We had gone out there a couple of time to help the kids try to see their parents and, one time, we went out to help one of the kids contact his mom and the little sister runs out with a garbage bag of clothes, and we had no idea that was going to happen.
What do you do? We know she’s trying to escape, and they are yelling at us “GO! GO! GO!” We aren’t going to say “Go back in with your garbage bag,” because if they see you go back in, they are going to kick the s**t out of you.
BL: As a filmmaker, do you have any qualms about that, in hindsight?
JM: Actually, I feel like we did the right thing. I feel like we tried to be objective, but then, I also think when you are involved in a story like that you have a responsibility to the story you’re involved in.
I think people just want to approach story telling from an academic perspective and say “Never affect the story.”…I don’t believe objectivity exists. I believe you can be fair, and truthful, but I think objectivity is an academic concept that already changes by the time you’ve made a relationship with somebody. I feel it’s more important to honor those relationships and the fidelity of that interaction…My partner always says “You are a human first and a filmmaker second.”
BL: I guess that’s the question: “What would you do in that situation?”
JM: Right. These kids depended on us. When I’m in the next situation, I’ll handle that differently. When the law failed, we felt like we could break the law.
BL: I’m going to jump off track and talk about the business side of film-making. The film just got picked up by Oprah Winfrey’s television network, OWN. How does that make you feel as a filmmaker, a documentarian who has gone around to all the different film festival trying to get the money, trying to get the funding back?
JM: It’s amazing! We feel really lucky that for our first doc we have the support of Oprah and her new doc club. We are not only happy that she involved us, but that she is doing this and taking documentaries seriously, so it’s really nice.
But there’s still a lot of work to do. We do a lot of work on our own. We are doing our own theatrical. We are working with somebody else for international. No one loves your film like you, and you have to be willing to get out there and work.
BL: Are there any parting thoughts you would like audience to think of when they go to the theater to see SONS OF PERDITION?
JM: Just that I hope the bigger context of the movie comes across. That this is a coming of age story, and that they see themselves a little bit in it…I hope they walk away with something a bit more personal.
SONS OF PERDITION screened Monday, March 7 at Cinema Salem to a sold-out audience. Merten was in attendance.
