5 Questions: ‘The Searcher’s’ Joe Shaffer

Madison’s Joe Shaffer is quickly making a name for himself — and he hasn’t even graduated high school yet. In fairness to the West High senior, to reduce him to his age is to overlook the aplomb and whimsy on display in his festival selection and 2015 Golden Badger winner, The Searcher.

Aided by no sound save Max Steiner’s rousing 1956 score for The Searchers (you guessed it, the short’s namesake), Shaffer’s film captures the frustrations and creative catharsis of burgeoning adulthood in a young man (Reid Annin) as he vies for the attention of the girl next door (Chelsea Clark-Edmiston). Armed only with Annin’s rubbery facial dexterity, a cleverly edited soundtrack, and a toy revolver, The Searcher both fits right in with the festival’s “Storytime” program and promises more greatness to come from its director.

We’ll have a little more on Joe later this week, but he was already kind enough to continue our “5 Questions” series by extolling the virtues of silent film and dubbing the Western cinema’s ultimate epic genre.

1. In an article for the State Journal, festival coordinator Ben Reiser called this “a wonderful homage to silent cinema.” But was The Searcher always envisioned as a silent film?

From the start, I imagined The Searcher as a silent film. It always existed in my head in images, not words. I think so much of what the film’s about is hard to put into words because it’s the kind of stuff you feel when you’re alone and not talking to anybody. At first, when I was planning on composing an original soundtrack for the film, I was going to have little musical flourishes, but it ultimately seemed unnecessary. Reid (the lead actor) says more with his expressions than a page-long monologue could.

2. At what point did you start mapping your narrative to Max Steiner’s score?

Steiner’s score fitting the narrative in the way that it did was mostly luck. I did the first and second cuts with no sound, and after that, I was sure I was going to use a song by Delta bluesman Charley Patton. Only after the movie was basically picture locked did I come across Steiner’s score and fall in love with it. Then it became a matter of choosing the right pieces. I found three that I liked and shaved a few seconds off the movie here and there to make everything fit.

3. Why use The Searchers?

I think the Western is the ultimate epic genre. Big landscapes, big emotions, big characters. The essential tension of my film is the dichotomy between the grand sweeping fantasy life of the protagonist and drab reality. I hoped the cowboy genre would illustrate this conflict. I chose The Searchers specifically because I’m a big fan of the film and because it’s such a savage piece of work that it seemed funny to contrast it with a milquetoast adolescent.

4. Was this your first submission to the festival?

It was not my first submission! As a matter of fact, I think it was my sixth. I felt thrilled to finally have a film accepted.

5. It’s not every day you see filmmakers referencing classic Westerns, let alone filmmakers still in high school. What’s next for you?

I’m working on another silent film. At my current budget, not having to record location sound frees me up to make more complex films at a higher production value. The next movie’s about a high school relationship. Are you sensing a common thread here? I recognize that a high schooler making a movie about a high school romance must sound pretty self-involved and a little provincial, but I’m hoping that if I can accurately capture what it feels like to experience a connection with another person then the film will be some sort of mild creative success. I’m interested in grand sensibilities. To me, there’s nothing more overwhelming or monumental than connecting with someone. I think that’s what The Searcher is about, too. The seeming impossibility of really connecting with someone, and how miraculous it feels when you succeed.