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“Yes, We Can” – How One Small Film Can Cause One Big Controversy


The trailer for Chris Townsend's short film, “Yes, We Can” begins with a phone call from the Secret Service. Unlike everything else that follows, this part isn't fiction. It really happened.

Even before cameras ever started rolling, Townsend's film about a group of Virginians planning to assassinate Barack Obama generated so much attention that it was almost shut down. In the summer of 2009, the Secret Service got wind of the project through local media reports and started calling the Lynchburg filmmaker. At first, the warnings were mild and friendly, merely asking him to give them a call back. Townsend contacted his lawyer, who said that he didn't have to do anything. However, the calls didn't stop, and when the Secret Service started threatening Townsend with a possible arrest, he finally picked up the phone.

While he was able to convince them that, no, he wasn't trying to spark a “race war,” the controversy around his film hasn't receded. Although it was released in November of 2009, Townsend hasn't been able to find a venue for an official premiere yet.

It's not surprising given the film's provocative nature, which comes through in condensed form in the trailer posted on the film's Myspace-page: underlined by Heavy Metal, the first scene shows a couple of 30-year-olds in sweat-soaked wife-beaters target-practicing with an Obama-poster. The only other glimpses we get into the film involve excessive cursing, racial slurs, and drug use. Immediately after one of the protagonists challenges his friends to join in his plan to assassinate Obama, the clip ends, asking, “What side will you choose?”



But even though the trailer focuses almost exclusively on the “Obama-assassination-plot,” as Townsend calls it, the film really isn't about that, he claimed, but a “love story.” Graem Kutt, one of the actors and a theater graduate of Lynchburg College, said the rejection they're getting is an example of “how misinformation and sheer ignorance can derail a creative process. – Which of course is ironic, because all of the characters in the film are quite ignorant themselves.” And yet the trailer makes it difficult not to misunderstand the movie. If the Obama-plot isn't the main focus of the film, it definitely gets your attention.

Townsend, who graduated from Liberty University, said that his interest in making the film was to see how people would react to watching these “not so educated characters talk from bullet point – like from Sean Hannity, or from Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck – and use that as their education on politics.” The inspiration for the characters came from people he knows. “They didn't really investigate too much outside of those bullet points that were given to them on their talk radio to make decisions as to who they were gonna vote for,” he explained.

Kutt said that more than half of the film is actually a comedy, and that there is no way anyone could take it seriously. But given the violent content of the movie, it didn't come as a surprise to Kutt that the film did not sit well with many viewers, or that it evokes opposition even in people who've never actually watched the entire thing.

“None of us were fooling ourselves into thinking that this was going to be some sort of widely acclaimed movie that everyone would love, and it would be ground-breaking and earth-shattering,” said Kutt. “We had to come to terms with why each of us accepted the parts that we did.”

Kutt was involved in the writing of the script, which included drafting the psychological mindset of the protagonists. He described his character Sam as a “good Christian kind of misled and delusional.” He said the idea was to show that his character “genuinely believed in this plan to kill Obama and believed that it would be in the service of the greater good.” Of course, any good acting requires a certain degree of emotional investment in the part one is playing.

“When you are in character, when you are that person, all other issues outside that film, in that moment, ideally should stay out there – and they did, for everyone, I think,” he said. Kutt was able to connect with his role because of the underlying psychological issues that drive the action.

“In the end, the strength of the movie, and what it's really about, are these characters and their relationships to each other, and how someone with an idea can focus a group of people who otherwise don't have any focus in their lives,” he explained.

According to Kutt, the message of the film is not “let's go kill Obama, or let's go insult and slander and kill all the black people. It's not any of that, it's not any kind of racist message.” Instead, the film traces the development of its characters “from the plight of relative instability in their lives to just desperation,” he said.

Kutt explained that the racial hatred and violence exhibited by the characters derives from a deep frustration with their own lives – something that happens not only among unemployed drug addicts in rural Virginia. Kutt believes it's a mechanism that has always been a part of human behavior.

“It's very much a cautionary tale...This is a kind of mentality that has been enacted on various scales since the dawn of human history,” he said.

It's easy to understand your own film, but what about the average audience? Kutt and Shawn Lee Hansen, who star in the roles of Sam and Charlie, said they contacted several venues in and around Lynchburg to screen the film, but without luck. While some of the people they asked never called back (among them Sweet Briar College), those who did were either concerned about the content of the film and did not want to associate with it (the Kirkley Hotel and various Ruritan Clubs in Lynchburg), or simply charged too much rent. The Holiday Inn wanted one thousand dollars, said Hansen.

As all of Townsend's films, “Yes, We Can” is a very low-budget production; none of the actors were paid, and everyone had to pitch in to make the filming possible. Kutt doubts that they will be able to find a venue in town. “As far as Lynchburg has come, and is continuing to move forward culturally, there's really – still – no local independent film theater,” he said.

Even people they know personally are uncomfortable with the film. According to Townsend, even his own wife, who is African-American, found it “very racy.” She also warned him that it would probably not be well received by a mainstream audience.

The Danville band, “Timid,” who are friends with Hansen, told him they liked the film, but said they couldn't endorse it.

“They know that it's just a movie, and that I'm really not like that, but they're afraid that people are gonna get the wrong idea,” said Hansen. “They don't want it coming back to haunt them, and I respect that.” According to Hansen, the band's affiliation with the Christian community in Danville, and particularly with African-Americans was a deciding factor in their rejection of the film. And he does admit that the characters in the film are “pretty gosh-darn racist.”

One of the places they're looking at now is an independent movie theater in Virginia Beach that promotes Virginian filmmakers. The idea is that the venue may be more supportive of regional artists, and more receptive towards edgy productions.

But it's not only local venues that are cautious about the film. So far, none of the film festivals Townsend submitted his movie to have accepted it. One of them is the Independent Film Festival in Washington, DC, another a film festival in Florida. Most festivals argue that the content is “too intense,” said Kutt.

And yet, this is not the first “intense” film Townsend has made. In 2006, “The Clarence Frazier Project,” a film about a man who intentionally infects women with HIV, made it into the New York Independent Film and Video Festival and even won the award for best short, dark comedy.

There seems to be a different dimension to a film that involves racism, especially after Obama's election in 2008. Maybe that's why “Death of a President,” a recent film about the assassination of George W. Bush, caused a lot less uproar. While both Kutt and Hansen suggested that race may have played into the mild reaction, Kutt pointed out that there's another reason, too: the movie was filmed and produced in Europe, where it's always been common to ridicule Bush.

The controversy around “Yes, We Can” affects not only the screening of the film, but also caused problems for some of the actors involved in it. Ernie Chandler from WSLS 10 in Roanoke almost lost his job because he posted the trailer on his personal website. The company forced him to delete the video clip. “Due to the edgy theme of this film, some backlash was most certain,” he admitted.

But Chandler doesn't regret making the movie. “Anyone who knows me understands the acting opportunity that I had here and knows that this is just a movie,” he said. “I really hope that anyone who watches this film can take away something from it, even if they just get a few laughs out of some of the comedy that my character provided throughout the film.”

Though both WSLS 10 and Fox 21/27 reported on the making of the film and its controversial content last summer, it's difficult to find information about “Yes, We Can” on the Internet. A news clip in which Jarret Henshaw (WSLS 10) interviews Townsend and mentions Chandler has been removed from youtube.

To make things worse, many of the copies Townsend has distributed so far don't work, and Kutt said they were starting to wonder whether that had something to do with the lack of positive responses from film festivals.

And yet, the fact that not many people have actually been able to see “Yes, We Can” doesn't seem to bother Kutt and Hansen, who are friends and roommates in real life, too.

“I just want my damn copy, that's all I want,” said Hansen, smiling. “I don't care if it gets into a film festival. I just wanted to be a part of something like that. I've never had that privilege.” But he does want his friends to see it. “I know a lot of people between Lynchburg and Danville. I don't care if I have to personally buy every copy that Chris Townsend makes of this movie, I'm distributing it to every one of these people, and they all really wanna see it.”

One of them is his former drama teacher, Barbara Anstead, who recruited him for Chatham High School's theater group and “always knew I was gonna be something in life,” said Hansen. “She's real proud of it.” He said he had warned her that she might not like the movie, but she still wants to see it, even if it offends her Christian beliefs.

To Kutt, it's all about the creative process, not how many people get to see it in the end. “It has to be about you. It also is about the collaboration,” he explained.

Kutt and Hansen are just happy to have made a movie, and are looking forward to the next challenge. Both actors will have small parts in Townsend's new project, and Kutt is co-writing the script. “The Life and Times of Sean Madden” will be Townsend's first feature film, and his first romantic comedy with “no death towards anybody,” as he put it. Kutt said that they are working on the “character bank” right now and hope to finish writing in May. Shooting is scheduled to begin in September.

In the meantime, Townsend and his crew are designing the DVD boxes and film posters for “Yes, We Can.” Inspired by the governmental interference that almost stopped the project before it was ever filmed, the slogan will be: “The film that the Secret Service did not want you to see.”

Bad publicity can be good publicity, too.