What's it like to make a movie about your father? And what if your father once held a Guinness World Record for running a marathon a week for an entire year?
Lexie Helgerson's documentary "Age Group Winner" chronicles her attempt to wrestle with these questions and her sometimes strained relationship with her father, Jay Helgerson — who, it turns out — is a former Wichitan. Lexie talked to KMUW's Fletcher Powell from Portland, Oregon.
Transcript
Fletcher Powell: You say at one point during the movie that you've been working on it for 10 years or so... was there a point when you sort of just woke up one day and realized, "oh, hey, I'm making a movie about my dad," or was it actually a conscious decision, "I am going to do this, to make this movie about my father."
Lexie Helgerson: It was a conscious decision. It was October of 2015 and it was also kind of a like quickening to our mortality. I was living in LA at the time, and realizing that I could come home to Portland, and my dad might not be there. And I think maybe witnessing my grandfather pass away. I mean we're really, I don't know if it's good fortune or not, but being Westerners at this day and age, we don't really experience death that frequently, unless maybe we're working in that field of medicine or at a morgue or something. But, you know, it's not really part of our everyday lives, losing other human beings. So yeah, I was just, wow, my dad could be gone. Do I really know him? He certainly makes me laugh, makes my sisters and me laugh, but he's also really elusive and enigmatic, and there's so much that I don't know about him, and I want to know him, and I want him to know me. And there have been some really hard moments and points of conflict with my career and life choices, and I was still feeling like that bothered me, I guess? Maybe not so much anymore, becoming more of an adult. But yeah, then I realized, oh yeah, he did this pretty cool thing, becoming the first person in the world to run a marathon a week for a year, each under three hours. That hadn't really dawned on me that that was such a unique and kind of incredible feat. Really, only in making the film that I've realized how special that is. And then now being on the road, there's like a whole added layer to somebody taking off every week to run a marathon.
FP: Isn’t that weird how your father or your mother is your father or your mother, and maybe they did this amazing thing, but they're still, I mean, you think of them as your father, not the guy who did this amazing thing a few decades ago, right?
LH: Exactly, exactly. And growing up, that was just how we always communicated, my sisters and my dad and me. Only recently do we now have the ritual of going out for a pizza dinner and sitting down and talking. My sisters and I all live in Portland now, but for 20 years, from college through, yeah, just almost 20 years, college and becoming an adult, I lived away from home, and so anytime I'd come back to Portland, to communicate with my dad we'd go for a run. It didn't matter if I was hungover, or anything… go, go for the run. Yeah, that was just our language.
FP: Was it hard to communicate with him otherwise, or was that just sort of like you had to meet him on his terms? And that was running.
LH: Yeah, kind of had to meet him on his terms, and that was running. He's, like, in some ways, an excellent communicator, and prides himself on that, you know, in certain, especially in like, logistical areas of showing up on time, maybe that's the Marine in him. But in other ways, we're very different about the way we communicate, and that also, I think, maybe boils down to how one perceives the world, like what we take in and what we perceive then allows us some kind of context to put it back out. And I think he's become less and less difficult to communicate with as we've gotten closer, and we've certainly gotten closer through the making of the film.
FP: You know, I work in radio, and so I have the opportunity to record people a lot, and I've thought about doing that with my parents, and I have, I have a really good relationship with them, and they're really interesting people, but the idea of doing that is absolutely terrifying.
LH: Yeah, it was terrifying at times. And sometimes, when I was living in LA we'd talk on the phone and talk about what I was doing and his reservations around it, and we'd hang up, and I would be on the edge of tears. I love him, I don't want to upset him, but I'm also, there's something I'm scraping away at and need to find a greater expression for, and something that I believe is universal. I think that part of the project, really just centering on me making it, you know, that I didn't have a lot of people around most of the time, allowed him to feel comfortable, even when he was uncomfortable, and to be more vulnerable. The stuff in his apartment all just came on a whim. I mean, so much of the film just came on a whim, but it was on a whim because I was constantly there with a camera. So it's like, what's that saying? You know, when preparedness and timing… luck emerges from preparedness and timing, right? It was that, my family was always annoyed that I was filming. (Both laugh.)
FP: Did they ever get used to it?
LH: Kind of, yeah, I mean, but I think my dad, he's a ham for the camera in one sense, you know. So he's a little bit performative some of the time, but I found that so much of that stuff in his apartment wouldn't have happened if there had been anybody else there, you know, any other kind of crew. Probably not anyway. I think just through my, maybe call it persistence, like, I know he's told me to turn it off, but I'm just gonna keep the camera down. And so maybe he sees it, maybe he doesn't, but I'm just going to keep going and let him talk. And I hope that it's making this film is, I think it has, taught me, helped me become a better listener in allowing people the space to tell their story. Because I think a lot of the time, even if we're defensive or, like, with your parents, even though you said you have a great relationship with them, but how do we pull the story out? A lot of us, and I'm sure you know from your work, we do want to talk. We do want to tell our story, and life is hard. It can be hard, even if we've had general privileges and experienced all the goodness and beauty, it can still be really hard.
FP: A major part of getting through very uncomfortable things is just to keep going. Right? It's that, whatever, you do the next thing, whether that's taking the next step or just staying there with the camera, you just keep going, one way or another. Obviously, your father has that ability, through all of those marathons. It sounds like maybe you picked up some of that. Did you find that sort of thing happening with you in those very uncomfortable situations? It's just—keep going through?
LH: Yeah, definitely. And it makes me think of editing too, because editing was so hard and I found myself, you know, what am I doing? How am I going to find the story? I know it's here, but where do I start from? And it required so much persistence and belief that I could finish it and create something worthwhile that was not just a home movie. And again, I think like through that persistence, other things may just fall into your lap, like I had been trying for years to get the footage, the Paley Center for Media had it, the footage of the Wichita marathon in 1985. For years I'd been trying to get that, and they finally said, okay, you know, we found it, you can actually view it, it's viewable, it hasn't been destroyed. Do you want to come see it in New York or LA? And I was like, no, I don't. I want to have it. Nobody else cares about this but me. And they're like, ok, well, you need KAKE-TV to sign off on that. And I'm like, oh my god. Okay. But eventually getting through to KAKE, they were super receptive to my position as an independent filmmaker and very generous. And so, to finally receive that footage was like just groundbreaking, because it congealed things in a different way for the film and then on a personal level, to hear my dad's voice in 1985, it was just like, wow. It was really profound. But it was, yeah, the persistence of like, I know I can get this. I know I can get this. Years.
FP: You mentioned the editing, and since you brought up mortality at the beginning, I'll ask it this way: Do you think you would have made a different movie if your father weren't with us anymore? You know, you choose what we see. Were there things that you left out because he's still with us? Because that has an effect, he’s going to see it.
LH: In the early phases of editing, I thought about taking more of an angle in regards to military and the Marine Corps, and maybe from the grounds that it does more harm than good. But yet, we're still left with this conundrum that for a lot of people, to find more opportunity in life, the military is the only way to go and I think my dad felt that. And I went to Parris Island before I started filming, before I started making "Age Group Winner," and was really moved kind of in a sad way by being there. So, I thought about that and sketched out some ideas, but it didn't seem right. My dad wasn't so close with a sister of his who passed away and he has a brother in Wichita who he's not so close with. And I thought about that, too, of how much do I want to dig into that? And also kind of felt like, you know, that's not my story to tell. And maybe, I think in some ways the film, as much as it is an exploration of a man and maybe his psyche and his mode of being, it's perhaps also a celebration too, and it's okay to be that, and maybe we need more of that, and maybe it's actually hard to do that.
FP: It's interesting to me what you show us in the movie but you don't explicitly say. Like, you don't talk a lot about how religious your father is, but we see a lot of Catholic churches. And you don't talk a lot about his military background, but there's that stretch during the Prairie Fire Marathon when we see all of the flags and the people talking about that, and it's like you're highlighting aspects of your father. What you also don't—you sorta—you let him talk. There are long stretches where you're just letting him talk, and whether that's right in front of us or on phone messages that he's left you. And I found that really interesting, because I think we, as an audience, get an idea of the sort of person he is. And I'm just wondering if you can, I guess maybe now talk a little bit about what you were doing there, why you made that decision to let him talk without you really commenting on it that much.
LH: Well, I think with film, the purpose is to show, you know? Like, I don't need to comment on it. This is just what's happening. And each viewer, each audience member, may interpret it to be something different, so I didn't want to, or feel the need to, always. I can certainly speak more in this moment, to like, why is he leaving a voicemail suggesting that I go to Ash Wednesday mass, and like, tell my students to go, and it’s not even in a Catholic school, to go to Ash Wednesday mass. And why don't we just have a conversation about religion and his beliefs or my beliefs, I can speak to that. But I just wanted to show it and leave it there. And this is maybe how these two people communicate at this time. And maybe it's wrong, maybe it's right, maybe it's neither. But isn't it interesting that this is what’s said and what's not, and this is what I'm showing while he—or this is what I’m prepared to show while he speaks about religion in a way that may be important for him. This is what's important for me. And do you see that? Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, maybe the audience does, maybe the audience doesn't, but I think if you're looking and listening closely, you'll see it and get it.
FP: The first question everybody, of course, asks about your father is, why did he run all of those marathons? There's not really an answer that comes up in the movie. Did you have an expectation of getting that? Or did you even have any intention of finding out for yourself? I don't think it's the most important thing about the man, but it is an important thing, and it's the first question everybody who is not you asks. So, I'm just curious about you, as a person. Did you ever really have an intention of finding out if there was a why?
LH: When I first started the film? No. But as I'm sure you know, with documentary filmmaking, the why changes over—or any kind of storytelling, maybe, but especially with documentary, the why may flip and flip and flip again. It's interesting, especially as someone that's, my dad is now at 70, you know, someone who doesn't travel, who doesn't like to travel, who's not especially good with technology, although we didn't need that in 1979, ’80… I think he was adventurous. I think it just kind of comes down to that, of, like, wanting to. And that he was good at it, that he enjoyed the marathon, and he had run 25 in 1978 and so thought, oh, wow. Well, I feel pretty good, I ran 25 marathons this year. What if I just double that? And that would be kind of a cool thing to do. So, I think it was that that led into to do the 52. And then that became, like, the most important thing. As any adventurous or creative endeavor can be, there wasn't anything else calling him at the time. He wasn't like, I'm going to go to law school or be a doctor or an actor. It was just that.
FP: I think sometimes we just do things. It's the thing that we're doing then, right?
LH: Yeah, it is. We're just doing that. And there doesn't need to be any justification for it.
FP: Did you have to get comfortable with just not knowing some things? Maybe that, as an example, you know, the why of your father running, but plenty of other things. There are things that we just don't know about other people and we never will. Did you have to get comfortable with that as you were making this?
LH: Yeah, and I still am, you know? I think it's like a constant for the human experience. It’s like having a crush, you know, and just wanting to know that other person, but you can't be texting them 24/7, you just have to be comfortable with not knowing or letting your imagination go, or also maybe trusting that we're alike in as many ways as we are different. I just finished, I mention Toni Morrison a couple times in the film, and I just finished rereading "Sula" yesterday and then read some short review on it in the Paris Review, because I didn't want to let it go, you know? So, this writer was saying how all the women in "Sula" are Sula. I'm like, yeah, I get that. So, yeah, there are things that I want to ask my aunts, but it's that line of, like, I want a relationship with them, and I want to be respectful, and so maybe they've dropped certain hints here or there. And so I know something happened, or I know there's more, but to what degree… like am I going to continue pushing the conversation? Maybe that's not for me to know, or it's just, my imagination can fill in the blanks and that's enough, or what they've said is already enough, and that's okay. So then, it's a great question, because that's life, too, like there's so much we don't know, and it's really, just being able to accept that all the time can be hard.
