Fantasia has ended and it was one hell of a ride. When Fantasia rolls around town, the festival is a unique opportunity to sit down with filmmakers and cinephiles and have candid conversations about the love of reel. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tom Berninger, whose film Mistaken for Strangers was one of the most under-hyped gems to screen this season.
In fact, I would have missed seeing the film entirely were it not for Berninger stopping by to greet fellow filmmaker Matt Johnson (The Dirties) during an interview. Johnson praised Mistaken for Strangers and urged me, who’d just presented herself as mainly a music journalist, to see the documentary.
If Berninger’s name rings a bell, that’s because he is the younger sibling of Matt Berninger, also known as the lead singer of indie rock sensation The National. Mistaken for Strangers takes a candid look at the dynamic relationship between Tom and Matt as well as the process of artistic production itself. As Tom joins The National’s roadie crew on an international tour, viewers are privy to the ups and downs of having fame enter the family portrait and of being at a crossroads creatively in ones life.
In Mistaken For Strangers, Tom shows members of The National as well as the audience, clips from short films he’d made in his younger days. Bloody shorts that would have found a perfect home at Fantasia. Tom recalls having always wanted to make films citing an artifact his mother found dating back to third grade in which his younger self had professed himself a future director. Starting with small stop motion pieces now lost to time which he made with his first camera, Tom was in college when he really began experimenting with filmmaking.
“Coming from Cincinnati, Ohio which was mostly an urban environment or suburbia. I saw where I was going to college right on the Rocky Mountains on a beautiful campus and decided to embrace where I was. Having always been more of an indoors kid, I was fascinated with hunting and nature. While my peers were trying to recreate urban film settings in Montana, I found inspiration in the location itself,” Tom recounted.
“My first film is called From The Dirt Under His Nails and is about an insane animal trapper whose gun is stolen which causes him to resurrect from the dead and seek revenge,” Tom recalled, “The second movie I made, Wages of Sin, was my attempt at two things: One, I was trying to make a film that captured the feeling of playing a Sega Genesis video game. I don’t know what that meant to me at the time, but that’s what I did. Two, I wanted to make a movie that captured what it was like watching those VHS films in grade school and high school.”
Nodding towards VHS documentary Rewind This, also shown at Fantasia, Tom explained that when he madeWages of Sin he’d purposely shot it in 4:3 because it was the format he’d been used to as a kid. Even his media company’s logo, Price Hill Entertainment, was designed in a way that is reminiscent of the VHS era in its hay day.
Overall, Tom recalls these filmic beginnings with fondness: “I was definitely having fun. Those movies, horror action, were simply an attempt to capture what made me fall in love with movies as a kid. I’ve kind of moved on a bit since. However, I fall asleep to stupid violent movies like that still to this day. I’m out within five minutes, it comforts me a little more so than scares me.”
The question then is, how did Mistaken for Stranger, a documentary with very little blood, come about? All of Tom’s previous films were period pieces – including a Johnny Appleseed romance. He’d kept all of these to himself, something which he now feels he should probably have done differently.
With many elements seemingly coming together and the changes that come with going through the tumultuous twenties, Tom felt the weight of thinking that his time to be a film prodigy had passed. With a chance to go on tour with The National with full access to the band and a video camera (so long as he did his roadie duties), Tom felt that this was his time to shake off a growing sense of complacency and make something that might be seen by many. The film that Mistaken for Strangers eventually became wasn’t something Tom had originally set out to do, but rather came about as he fully lent himself to the creative process and some of its harder elements.
“I just knew that if I was going to make anything good, I had to be honest. If this thing was going to be good at all, I had to be a hundred percent honest. It had to be made up one hundred percent of things I felt were either interesting or funny or both or something I’d never seen before. I had to be completely honest with myself and about my relationship with my brother,” Tom revealed, “It could never be a The National documentary, I wasn’t the filmmaker for that.”
ITom’s unabashed honesty most definitely paid off and Mistaken for Strangers is one of the most engaging and moving films programmed at this year’s Fantasia. Tom’s perspective and less contrived approach to depicting famed musicians off-stage was extremely refreshing and relatable. The segments in which Tom interviews the members of the band are pure gold on many levels. They toy with the idea of traditional music interview set ups and the awkwardness behind the curtain. During the film, I found myself laughing heartily, tearing up, and clapping along with audiences in the film. Most importantly, Tom succeeded in getting audiences fully immersed into the world projected on screen.
What’s next for Tom and Mistaken for Strangers? Currently in discussions about the best way to bring the film to wider audiences, Tom pointed to a likely theatre release – wide or selected. Mistaken for Strangers recently played at Michael Moore’s film festival where it was received for the first time by Middle America audiences with whom the film struck a chord. People really responded to the film, earning Tom many hugs and even flowers from Michael Moore.
As for future projects, Tom spoke to the way in which Mistaken For Strangers has him considering different ways of taking part in film creation including a possible turn towards performance and acting. This sounds promising since at the very heart of Mistaken for Strangers is Tom himself with all of his best and worst traits right smack in front of the camera. In terms of directing, Tom isn’t sure if that’s what he wants to do next but felt his own creative batteries fueled by the Fantasia experience: “Coming from Fantasia, I’d like to do another horror movie short. The Fest kinda got my juices going again, a fun little project to do with my friends – make it funny and scary.”
*Photos courtesy of Tom Berninger
REEL MTL would like to say thanks to Tom Berninger for a great interview and for reassuring us that we aren’t the only ones watching horror action films before bed time.