Los Angeles filmmaker Graham High has spent the past several years traveling to Wichita on a quest.
“Everyone knows someone who has had a Harrison sighting,” High narrates in the opening scene of his new documentary. “Harrison at a restaurant. … Harrison at a grocery store. … Harrison in a hotel elevator.”
The documentary, “Harrison Ford Comes to Wichita,” will have its world premiere Saturday at Wichita’s Orpheum Theatre as part of the Tallgrass Film Festival. It explores Wichita’s fascination — some might even say obsession — with the actor who brought us Han Solo and Indiana Jones.
Starting around the late ’90s, Ford, who is a licensed pilot, spent time in Wichita whenever he needed to train on a Cessna flight simulator or have his plane serviced. During those visits, he would eat at local restaurants and pose for selfies that got shared on social media.
Graham High and his sister Brittany learned about the phenomenon when they were in Wichita looking for a place to eat.
“We had heard that he liked to go to Sabor in Old Town, and we said, ‘Let’s go to Sabor. Let’s eat a meal there,’” Graham High said. “I mean, Harrison goes there. It’s gotta be good.”
So they went to the local Latin-American restaurant in Old Town Square.
“And sitting there, eating dinner, looking around, I was like, ‘Wow, Harrison has been here — right here — and it made my relationship with Wichita feel a little heightened, because he was seeing what I was seeing.”
The Highs’ documentary explores the folklore surrounding Ford’s annual visits, including his run-ins with ordinary people. They talked with restaurant owners who took the actor’s order, a Flight Safety employee who crafted his omelet, and Wichita Eagle reporter Denise Neil, who tracks Ford’s comings and goings and posts them on the paper’s website.
“I realized that people got excited that they could be sitting down at Doo-Dah Diner and look over their shoulder, and there’s Han Solo,” Graham High said. “So that feeling was really a thing that we enjoyed exploring.”
Everywhere Graham went in Wichita, he met someone who knew someone who met Harrison Ford.
“My mom has a neighbor that met Harrison multiple times. There’s a lore about Harrison that I don’t even really get into all the way,” he said. “I think we do a pretty good job of giving a relatively comprehensive idea of what his time in Wichita is like.”
And while the movie focuses on Ford, it also served as a tool for High to reflect on his childhood and his own complicated relationship with the city.
“We moved away after my parents divorced, when I was pretty young, and Wichita came to symbolize that fracture in my family history. And I had a lot of negative or sad feelings about Wichita for a while,” he said.
But as he worked on the documentary, he came to love and appreciate the city — because of, and not despite, its weird little quirks and obsessions.
“It’s been a journey, and I feel like I’ve been accepted by Wichita, and that was something I was really not expecting that I needed,” he said. “I feel like I know Wichita better than I did before.”
High said showing his film at the newly renovated Orpheum is a dream come true. And he hopes the local audience appreciates his love letter to Wichita.
“The lens of Hollywood romance is what we wanted to put to Wichita. And Wichita deserves it,” he said. “Because it’s a worthy place. It’s a cool place. A lot of wonderful people doing very interesting things, and that’s what made it fun.”
